616 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



views the fair merely as a market place, or as a means of winning a little 

 prize money. Hundreds of fair goers see only a frolic in the event. These 

 people being blind see not; but thinking men, men who keep their eyes and 

 the avenues to their brains open, understand that education of the farm folk 

 is the underlying idea of the agricultural fair. All else is incidental, of more 

 or less importance, but not relevant to the present discussion. 



The broad modern view, the only one tenable under present conditions, 

 the one that is absolutely rock-rooted in fact, is that the State fair is as much 

 an educational factor for the farmer as is the agricultural college. Discus- 

 sion can properly proceed on no other basis. It has long passed the bounds 

 of controversy, if indeed controversy ever found a peg on which to hang in 

 the discussion of the subject. As an educational force the State fair is as 

 properly the subject of State aid as any other educational factor which deals 

 with the enlightenment of farm folk. This point is conceded; it is estab- 

 lished beyond all cavil by the magnificent financial support extended by 

 various States, but no man of depth of information and breadth of reason- 

 ing faculties can fail to give hearty assent when once his attention is directed 

 to an exanination of the subject. 



A number of essentials inhere in the successful State fair— and by the 

 word successful we mean a fair which not merely makes money but rises to 

 a high realization of its object and discharges well its obligations. Location 

 comes first. It should be located at a point which is most convenient to the 

 largest number of people whose interests it serves. Second, it should be 

 located at some center of population on which reliance may be placed for 

 gate receipts and which can afford ample accommodations for all visitors. 

 This location should be a railroad center, and the more extensive its ramifi- 

 cations of these arteries of travel the better. Easy access to the fair is a 

 prime essential. 



The home of the State fair should be ample in extent but not so large as 

 to occasion too wide distribution of its exhibits. Grounds may be too large, 

 exhibits too scattered. Muscle must bring brain in touch with these educa- 

 tional exhibits, and there is a limit to human endurance. It is easy to make 

 this mistake. It finds its greatest exemplification at the St. Louis World's 

 Fair. The chief weakness in this most magnificent of all creations of its 

 character is the tremendous spread of its exhibits. Twelve hundred acres 

 have been included in its borders and the waste spaces are appalling to 

 human energy when the task of sight-seeing is attempted. Two extremes 

 must be avoided — too great expansion, too great condensation. Cramped 

 quarters are as bad as scattered exhibits. 



The greatest mistake made in the equipment of the State fair grounds of 

 this country has been the temporary character of the construction, the build- 

 ing for today instead of tomorrow. The fair itself is short-lived — six days 

 and it fades aways into history. Mistaken ideas of economy have led men 

 to provide temporary ephemeral inadequate unsafe quarters for this brief- 

 termed exhibition, and their ideas have contemplated little of the future. 

 They have not considered possible expansion nor durability. Cheapness has 

 characterized their construction, and already on some of the grounds which 

 a decade ago were considered the best equipped this mistake stands out 

 conspiciously and rehabilitation of equipment is necessitated. Fair man- 

 agers should build for the future. Presumptions, indeed, is he who ventures 



