190 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



I thank you and wish you great good luck for tomorrow. 



The Toastmaster: It is an ill wind that blows no man good. I^don't 

 mean, by making this remark, that the Kansas wind has blown from its 

 confines one of its best citizens over into the boundaries of Iowa, but 

 I do know that we have with us tonight a man who calls Kansas his 

 home, whom we all know well, especially the fair secretaries, as the 

 president of the American Association of Fairs and Expositions and sec- 

 retary of the Kansas State Fair, Mr. A. L. Sponsler. 



A. L. Sponsler: Gentlemen: I want to congratulate the fair secre- 

 taries of Iowa upon such a magnificent program as you have had here 

 tonight. I have attended meetings of this kind for many years, but I 

 have never attended one that seemed to me to be just as full of heart 

 and mind and soul as this meeting. I have been literally carried away 

 by our great oration here tonight, delivered by Mr. Weaver, through the 

 history of ages, and it has been soul-uplifting to listen to such a mag- 

 nificent address on the spirit of our country. We fair managers are 

 taught to work more than to talk. I think in my experience and ob- 

 servation of fair secretaries, that the work has developed very few 

 orators. We most of us were raised on farms and had to do with con- 

 trary mules and pokey horses and teaching calves to drink out of a bucket 

 and those things weren't conducive to oratory. But we profess to know 

 a good thing when we see it and when we hear it, and that is our life's 

 work. I often wonder why we are such idealizers — 'because that is our 

 business; we are engaged in a comparison of everything that touches 

 the industry of mankind, the art of the home, the work of the loom, the 

 product of the mines and the great manufacturing institutions of the 

 country. I am sure that we are making magnificent progress, as the gov- 

 ernor indicated, as Mr. Weaver depicted, and as we hear on eyery hand. 



Now, the hour is growing late and I am not prepared to make any 

 after-dinner speech, and I am not in the business of doing that anyhow, 

 but I just want again to congratulate you on such a magnificent evening. 

 My friend here (Faxon), who used to live in Kansas for many, many 

 years, developed into a most successful commercial club and chamber 

 of commerce man, and is showing the evidences of his work here since 

 my last visit to Des Moines. I believe there are more buildings going 

 up in Des Moines than in any city of its size in the United States, and 

 I want to congratulate Des Moines and Iowa upon its magnificent prog- 

 ress, and always remember that it has men that do things. 



