PART XI 
IOWA STATE FAIR AND EXPOSITION, 1908. 
Press Reports and Live Stock Awards, 
Results in Boys' Judging and Girls' Cooking Contest. 
Awards in the Corn Show at the State Farmers' 
Institute Meeting December, 1908. 
PRESS REPORTS. 
Wallaces' Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa. 
Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson probably would not lay 
claim to being a judge of what constitutes a good "horse-trot" fair, but 
when it comes to an agricultural exposition it will be generally con- 
ceded that he knows what he is talking about. ' In the course of his 
address on the state fair grounds last week he said: "I spent yesterday 
going over the fair and visited all of the different departments, and I 
want to say to you Iov;a folks that it is the greatest live stock and 
agricultural exposition in the United States and that, of course, means 
the world as well. Nov/here in the entire country can be found such a 
display of agricultural resources, while the live stock exhibit is even 
greater than most of the special live stock expositions, and the people 
who come to the fair are the most successful farmers in the world and 
live in the most fertile agricultural section of the world." 
Secretary Wilson was absolutely right. He made his statement 
none too strong. For the past five or six years we have been obliged 
to begin our report of the Iowa State Fair with the statement that it 
excelled all previous expositions. Each year we have cast around for 
some new way of telling the same old story. But what is one to do? 
The bald statement that this year's fair has never been approached 
by any previously held in Iowa or in any other state tells it all, and 
no quantity of rhetorical flourishes or literary ornamentations will 
add anything to the fact. 
