EXHIBITING FRUIT AT MINN. STATE FAIR. 187 
one can go there and find the horticultural department ready. Is 
it not an insult to the people who pay their admission to the state 
fair to come there on Monday morning and find Mr. Dartt with his 
boxes and baskets all in disorder and his exhibit not ready? For 
that reason we should insist that exhibitors should have their ex- 
hibits ready by the time the fair opens. If we cannot have the ex- 
hibits ready until Monday or Tuesday we will have to start the fair 
on Wednesday, and that is just what we are talking of doing. That 
is what we are talking of doing and having a ten days’ fair. It is not 
businesslike to open the fair and not have the exhibits in place. If 
you should have a position on the fair board and come in actual 
contact with the work there you would agree with me in what I say. 
With regard to sweepstakes. We have liberal premiums offered 
by the State Agricultural Society that are proposed and arranged 
for by the State Horticultural Society, under their advice and direc- 
tion, and there are now liberal premiums offered entirely outside 
of that source. Some good friends of the state fair. took it upon 
themselves to see if they could not hold out still greater induce- 
ments to make the Minnesota state fair in a horticultural way the 
greatest fair in the United States. Our friend Mr. Elliot, with his 
usual loyalty to the State Agricultural Society, went out of his way 
to induce Mr. Thomas to give this sweepstakes premium. Now, I 
do not see why any one should get up here-and criticize Mr. Elliot, 
who got Mr. Thomas to offer one hundred dollars for the best show 
of apples in Minnesota. Has he not a right to do what he pleases 
with his money? There are liberal premiums offered if this sweep- 
stakes premium were not offered, and that is outside of the pre- 
miums offered by the State Agricultural Society. What good does 
that sweepstakes premium do? It does this, it gets up the finest ex- 
hibition of fruits and apples that we can possibly bring together in 
the, state. Is that of any advantage to horticulturists? I think 
that is a good advertisement of the fact that Minnesota has got 
some good fruit that can be gotten up, and we would like to have 
enough sweepstakes premiums offered to fill that whole building. 
I do not think it is necessary to be so critical of those things. Let 
each one go ahead and do his part. If Mr. Dartt will come in and 
do his part and not be so critical of what other people are doing, 
he will have a good time’and will have justice done him, and I do 
not see any reason for his staying away because his apples were put 
in one place and his crabs in another, and he has nothing to show 
because they were separate. He wants to run the state fair and 
every other exhibitor. Suppose every exhibitor should say to the 
superintendent, “I want to put my apples just where I want to.” 
When the judges come around here is Mr. Dartt’s plate of Wealthy, 
over yonder is Mr. Philips’ plate, then they have to go somewhere 
else to look at my plate, and so they have to hunt all over the build- 
ing for the Wealthys, and the same with every other variety, and 
keep the fact in their mtnds how each plate looks and judge which 
is the best. There is no reason in such an argument. The rules 
that govern the state fair are the result of long years of experience 
of the most practical horticulturists we have, including such men 
