NINETEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 175 



kind or character. In the first political fight I ever made, it was against 

 the gamblers, and I am still against them. The gambler hasn't any place 

 in human society. He produces nothing; he does no good; he has no 

 place. I would have a system of reports — twice a year, at least — com- 

 ing from the school district — say, on the 15th day of June, a report show- 

 ing the actual number of acres of every kind of cereal that is planted; 

 then at another date, some time in November or December, the actual 

 number of acres grown. In <the course of three or four years you would 

 have a fund of information, and the farmer could sell at an honest-to-God 

 market; and then some information that could be easily furnished, about 

 the best place to sell and the best time to sell, and all of that. We could 

 accomplish a great deal for the man who makes the real wealth, and 

 greatly stabilize one of the principal industries of the world. But I am 

 not going into that.. It is always a pleasure to meet with all of the sec- 

 retaries of the fairs together, and it is always a pleasure to meet with 

 you in your own home community when the fair is on. I didn't have to 

 visit with you very much then — in fact, you wouldn't let a fellow visit with 

 you very long. I didn't show at so many fairs last year as I did two years 

 ago. I had a good many invitations, but I wasn't able to make them. 

 Some of the best meetings I had on the various phases of the war were 

 at the county and district fairs. It is a wonderful place for a man when 

 he is running for office to present lys cause, or, at least, to give the peo- 

 ple a chance to look at him, and that is what a candidate does, and it is 

 a wonderful place if you have a message about the war. Keep on with the 

 county fair! I am a firm believer in de-centralization. I believe in 

 keeping up the interest in the local community. I would rather see an 

 ordinary bull at a county fair than to see the best bull in the world at a 

 national fair. It is better for the bull and it is better for the people. It 

 is all right to have the graduated fair, but you cannot get away from the 

 fact that you have got to have the common school, you have got to have 

 the local fair where you reach all of the people, and I sometimes think 

 that the big institutions like the livestock show that they have down at 

 Chicago really doesn't do the good that the fairs do out where you get to 

 the every-day folks, so keep up the county fair, and if you keep up the 

 county fair I am dead sure that you- cannot keep the state fair down. 

 But if we had to choose between the two I would take the county fair, 

 but in Iowa we don't have to choose, we have them both. 



I don't know whether you need any legislation, or not. I suppose you 

 would like to have the money increased a little, if you could, and I don't 

 know enough about that to discuss it, but so far as I am concerned I am 

 heart and soul in favor of building these institutions strong and perma- 

 nent and of lending whatever financial aid is necessary in order to insure 

 that they be a success every year — the year when the weather is good 

 and the sun shines, or whether the weather is bad and it rains. Keep 

 on with the work.. There aren't very many souVj that have the courage 

 to be a fair manager. It is only the brave that take up this kind of a 

 job and run the fairs. I do believe that in Iowa here we have the enter- 

 tainment feature and the educational feature well balanced. I wouldn't 

 want to go to a fair where it is all serious. I like to kick up my heels a 

 little — the Midway isn't so bad if you don't have too much of it, but a little 



