NINETEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 165 



because we had no railroads. The only railroad in the state of Iowa was 

 the railroad from Davenport to Iowa City. The hogs were all slaughtered 

 at home, and when slaughter-time came the neighbors went around from 

 one place to another to help in the work. The hogs were slaughtered, 

 split down the middle, a stick put in here (indicating) and bled out; and 

 I remember when I took mine to the market the price was $2 a hundred 

 ;f they weighed 200 or over, and if they weighed less they were $1.75 a 

 hundred. Mine were the $1.75 kind. I remember a buyer picking up one 

 by the tail and holding it up at arm's length he said, "John, is that a cod- 

 fish?" And if you took hold of them by the ears, there seemed to be just 

 about as much body in front as there was behind. 



The first thing that gave me an incentive to get a better hog was a 

 visit I paid to the county fair. Some one had brought a Chester White 

 lioar and sow to the fair, and had them on exhibition. I thought that 

 was the greatest sight I had' ever seen, was that Chester White boar, in 

 contrast to the hogs we had at the fair. And so it was with cattle and 

 horses, the fair was the leader, and today we would be raising poor cattle 

 and wind-splitting hogs if it wasn't for the educational value of the fair, 

 and the legislature cannot do too much for our county fairs. As President 

 Cameron said, that is where it begins, at the county fair, and they are 

 the feeders for the great state fair. But for the county fairs, we would 

 never have a state fair. By all means, have your Legislature Commit- 

 tee see to it that a special appropriation is made to develop the best 

 interests of our county fairs; build them up, and the state fair will take 

 care of itself. 



Now, there is one thing I haven't always urged, both in our county 

 fair and our state fair, is to have some practical work. Now, we had 

 addresses at our county fair in Iowa county — we had noted speakers 

 come there to deliver an address, and do you believe it, some fellow 

 with a snide game outside had most of the people and the speaker didn't 

 have a half dozen. We had the same thing with our state fair — some 

 fellow with a shell game would draw the crowd. Some people go to the 

 fairs to learn something, but thousands of them go there to be amused 

 and at the same time to be entertained; but I have found at our state 

 fair where we had something educational, some practical demonstration 

 of some sort, that we could draw a crowd. 



One innovation we had at the state fair, when potato harvesters were 

 coming in, was to plow up some ground on the inside of the race track, 

 in the infield. I proposed to manure it with a large pile of manure, to 

 see if we couldn't raise some grass over there. We had four or five men 

 hiied and they hauled some manure that afternoon, but it was very hot 

 and dry at the time, and imagine my surprise the next morning to find 

 that some one had set the manure pile on fire and burnt the whole thing 

 up. It was accidental, of course, but I know how the match accidentally 

 dropped; but we had a pile of ashes there and I did make them haul out 

 the ashes, and we plowed them under on that sod ground. Some of you 

 may have been there, and if you were you will remember that we had 

 the largest crop of potatoes ever raised in the state of Iowa, but we put 

 on about twenty loads of ashes on a half acre. We had an exhibit of 



