NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XI 549 
Ticenticth Century Farmer, Omaha, Nebraska. 
Tin-: IOWA STATE FAIR SHOWS THE TREM::XUOUS RESOURSES OF THIS GREAT 
COMMONWEALTH. 
Iowa is indeed a great state. Never before has it given so pronounced 
a demonstration of its real greatness in its agricultural and industrial re- 
sources as was displayed at its recent State Fair held at Des Moines 
August 23 to 28, 1908. This annual exhibition of the Iowa State Fair is 
only the presentation of the evidence establishing the fact that this great 
commonwealth is on the highway to a still greater degree of success and 
achievements in agricultural prosperity than has heretofore existed. 
Each year sees this great agricultural enterprise climb higher and 
higher in the scale of exhibition achievements. 
The Iowa State Fair is the exponent of a great agricultural state, 
whose resources are primarily the soil and the products thereof. The 
man behind the plow and the boy upon the cultivator have been the 
prime factors in building up the conditions which today assert the great- 
ness and grandeur of this highly prosperous and wealthy district of 
country. Iowa has developed in recent years with astonishing rapidity 
in every feature of farm and land improvement, production and enter- 
prise. Almost from the beginning of settlement on the prairie lands 
of Iowa it acquired the distinction of being the corn country. It has 
also gradually developed into a clover, timothy and blue grass country, 
until today it is the greatest combined corn and tame grass district in 
the United States. 
Iowa is great in its live stock industries and interests. It is the 
great center of live stock improvement. No state, district or section of 
country of equal area is displaying more activity, energy and real breeding 
enterprise than is found in Iowa. Thus the Iowa State Fair has behind 
it the backing for the greatest live stock show in the country. Its large 
and spacious grounds, its greatest hog barn in the world and its live 
stock pavilion, where seven breeds of cattle were congregated at one 
time in classification, being passed on by the judges of these several 
breeds, gives some idea of how the fair management is trying to keep 
pace with the development of the farm and state. 
The 1908 fair was in all respects an advancement over last year and 
all fairs that have gone before. State fair officials expressed an opinion 
that all departments were increased this year over last by 10 to 50 per 
cent in extent. 
THE RIGHT MAX IN THE PLACE. 
President Cameron, the genial and courteous official of the Iowa State 
Fair, who has a smile and pleasant greeting for all callers, even for the 
newspaper man, in an interview concerning the fair in general, said: 
"We feel that the State Fair and the people of the state are in closer 
touch than ever before, that the citizens of Iowa are realizing more and 
more that the State Fair is really and truly an Iowa institution and 
that they are a part of it; that one of their first duties is to attend the 
fair end lend their influence to the enterprise by their attendance. 
