aicc 



BASEBALL PRESIDENT 

 Ebb Harris of Lake county. 



SOFT BALL ENTHUSIAST, 

 Alv!n O. Eckerf, St. Clair counfy. 



Sports Festival Program 

 Adopted at Peoria Meeting 



V/^^ HE tentative program for the 

 ^"—T^l^yi Illinois Farm Sports Fes- 

 ^J tival to be held at the University 

 of Illinois campus Sept. 3-4 was adopted 

 at a state-wide meeting of County Farm 

 Bureau officials and representatives of the 

 lAA, University of Illinois, Prairie Farm- 

 er, and WLS at Peoria, March 31. 



The meeting was held in connection 

 with the annual session of the lUinois 

 Farm Bureau Baseball League. The pro- 

 gram was formulated and presented by a 

 committee composed of Ebb Harris, Lake 

 county; A. O. Eckert, St. Clair county; 

 Otto Steffey, Henderson county; C. V. 

 Gregory, editor; Merrill Gregory and 

 Miss Lois Schenck, Prairie Farmer; 

 George C. Biggar, Radio Station WLS; 

 D. E. Lindstrom and George H. Dun- 

 gan. University of Illinois; Eugene Cur- 

 tis, Champaign county; C. E. Yale, Lee 

 county; Roy Johnson, DeKalb county; 

 Edwin Bay, Sanagamon county; J. E. 

 Harris, Champaign county; Mrs. Milli- 

 gan, representing the Illinois Home Bu- 

 reau Federation; Frank Gingrich, C. M. 

 Seagraves, and George Thiem, lAA. 



Leading features of the Festival will 

 be Farm Bureau Baseball Tournament, 

 Softball Tournament in five separate di- 

 visions. Track Meet, Swimming, Horse- 

 shoe Pitching Tournament, Horse-Pulling 

 Demonstration ; Tug O'War, Trap Shoot- 

 ing, Rifle Shooting and other events. The 

 organization of Farm Bureau bands will 

 be encouraged by offering expense money 

 to bring them to the Festival. There will 



be square dance and folk dance contests, 

 a contest for Novelty and Square Dance 

 Bands, Family Group Singing, various 

 women's events, checkers, etc. 



Participation in many of the events of 

 the Festival is dependent upon co-opera- 

 tion by the County Farm Bureaus in hold- 

 ing county tournaments. An added fea- 

 ture will be a pageant worked in with 

 the evening performance the night of 

 September 3, {xjrtraying the 25 years' 

 growth of the Farm Bureau, lAA and 

 Agricultural Extension movement in this 

 state. 



Radio Station WLS will co-operate in 

 providing entertainers and probably in 

 broadcasting the results of contests direct 

 from the University of Illinois Campus. 



E. G. Thiem, director of publicity; 

 Frank Gingrich, director of Young Peo- 

 ple's Activities; and C. M. Seagraves, 

 director of Safety in charge of the young 

 people's Skilled Drivers' Clubs have been 

 named a committee of the lAA staff to 

 organize the Festival and work with the 

 permanent state-wide committee to be 

 announced in the near future. 



Last year the Festival brought together 

 upwards of 25,000 people and more 

 than 2,000 contestants. "This year spon- 

 sors of the Festival feel that attendance 

 should be even greater. 



University of Illinois authorities are 

 co-operating and have designated a sub- 

 stantial part of the Campus, Stadium, 

 Illinois Field and buildings for use on 

 September 3 and 4. 



OX Ike 



ct^ 



Readers are invited to contribute to 

 this column. Address letters to Edi- 

 tor, Room 1200, 608 So. Dearborn 

 St., Chicago. 



IN THE April RECORD your editorial on 

 the possible boomerang effects of science 

 upon farming was fine. Most everybody wor- 

 ships science (and education) so it is high 

 time we farmers realized that science can and 

 does injure us as well as benefit us. Striking 

 an exact balance would be diflicult, but in my 

 opinion it has done us more harm than good. 



The matter of education is tied up with the 

 tax problem. Too much education is as bad 

 for the nation as it is for the individual. I 

 wonder if the increasing proportion of real 

 estate tax used for education is well spent. It 

 is interesting that in all the great cultures we 

 know about in this respect, they become 100 

 per cent literate just before the end. The 

 lesson may be that if we all think not many 

 of us are eager to do, and it is the doing that 

 counts. 



Your editorial in the March RECORD 

 "Helping the Tenant" in the main hits the 

 right tone. But I cannot see what maintaioing 

 even or high prices has to do with it. The 

 subject of land tenure is exhaustively treated 

 in Tumers' "A Graphic Summary of Farm 

 Tenure" Miscellaneous Publication No. 261, 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture. Fig. 2 

 shows a steady increase in the loss of equity 

 by the farm operator, of 4% to 5% every 

 decade regardless of prices rising or falling 

 during the decades. The same figure also 

 shows that in the districts of conunercialized 

 farming (grain and cotton) the operators' 

 equity is the lowest. In Illinois, the third 

 state from the bottom, the operator now owns 

 only 29.3% or less of the equity. This makes 

 me wonder, is the lAA goitlg to become just 

 an Association of tenants? 



You asked me in a recent letter if our me- 

 chanical developments did not make our 

 western culture so different from others that 

 we cannot expect our culture to travel in its 

 further development the usual path. 



Perhaps you underestimate the engineering 

 and mechanical abilities of other cultures. By 

 far the greatest engineering task ever accom- 

 plished, as it was also the biggest PWA job, 

 was the Chinese wall. For the most part our 

 public works, bridges, ships, aqueducts, cities 

 are a little larger than in the other cultures, 

 and our speed a little faster but not incom- 

 parably. There is some question whether 

 greater New York today is any bigger than 

 Tenochtettan (ancient Mexico Gty) was under 

 Montezuma. Ancient Rome reached a popula- 

 tion of over 2,000,000. The Mexican parcel 

 post system carried packages 200 miles a day 

 in those days. It was not so bad. They had 

 few mechanical devices and no horses. The 

 problem of supplying those great cities with- 

 out railroads, automobiles, etc. would seem 

 unsolvable. But they did it. Sometimes, even 

 usually, mechanical devices are not so efficient 



MAY. 1937 



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