34 IOWA DEPARTMENT O'F AGRICULTURE 



but in most cases the amount was insignjficani, and not a single 

 fair suffered to the extent that it need be liampered for future 

 operations. 



I feel that the immediate future holds much of promise to fair 

 workers. Agriculture is the greatest and noblest of all industries. 

 It is the basis and support of all other enterprises. Now. with the 

 ending of the war, come problems of reconstruction and in the 

 case of both France and Belgium the work of rehabilitation. And 

 as the war involved all the nations of the earth the results of 

 more than four years of wholesale destruction will have to be 

 overcome. The loss will have to be made up. There is only one 

 way to accomplish this and that is by means of a world-wide in- 

 dustrial revival, manufactures, etc. The world will have to work 

 early and late, long and hard. The millions of workers will have 

 to live, will have to be fed. 



So you see it all goes back to the land, back to the farmer, tack 

 to the man who grows bread and meat. He is facing the biggest 

 job of his life today. And in such matters a.-^ labor and soil de- 

 terioration he IS probably handicapped more heavily than ever 

 before. Right here lies the duty of the agricultural fair, to uphold 

 the hands of the workers, to lead in the search for better methods 

 of farming, to teach efficiency, to encourage and to educate. If 

 the agricultural fair had a mission before that mission has been 

 amplified a hundred times; Your responsibility as leaders is 

 growing instead of diminishing. There is an unlimited amount 

 of work to do. There is a vast field still open for missionary en- 

 deavor. The average yield of corn per acre in Iowa runs about 

 thirty-three to thirty-six bushels. The average yield of wheat is 

 only about sixteen or seventeen bushels. The twenty-year aver- 

 age for oats is only thirty-two bushels to the acre. These averages 

 can be raised far above those figures and it is up to the agricul- 

 tural fairs to see that they are raised. There is still plenty of 

 scrub stock in evidence, also plenty of scrub farms and scrub 

 farmers. The leaven that shall in time transform farming and 

 stock growing in Iowa to a state that will be 100 per cent perfect 

 will be disseminated through the medium of the agricultural 

 fairs. 



Financially and otherwise our state fair was a success this 

 year. I believe it went beyond our expectations. While exhibits 

 in some departments show a slight falling off the reasons for it 



