Group No. 78 was the first on the list in the general Department of Agriculture. It covered exhibits on main lines, other groups taking what I might term subdivisions.
We examined farm improvement as related to inventions and
devices which were intended as fixtures to farm buildings. Group
No. 79 was devoted to such exhibits as were movable.
To illustrate: No. 78 collected data and awarded prizes on barn gates, doors, hay carriers, silos, windmills, pumps, etc., while No. 79 was concerned with thrashers, plows, and the various implements which are not sold with farm buildings as necessary fixtures.
Having lived an active life on a Georgia plantation for fifty years, all these matters were of exceeding interest to the secretary, although a woman.
Our jury made an exhaustive examination of the exhibits of irrigation models, with various reports and statistics, that were carried to St. Louis. Germany made the finest exhibit as to number and completeness, and I feel sure there never has been such a far-reaching display of irrigation methods in the United States before. I was intimately connected with the Columbian Exposition, as a lady manager from Georgia and chairman of the woman's executive committee in the Cotton States and International Exposition, and I feel I speak advisedly when I tell you that nothing I have ever seen compares with the agricultural exhibits of the St. Louis Exposition, as uncovered to my view in performing the duties of a juror, especially in regard to the greatest problem of the twentieth century, namely, in regard to irrigation and its future possibilities for our various States and Territories. You will understand, of course, women had no part in the various governmental works where land has been reclaimed and converted into the finest farming lands known to this era, but in the results which followed such reclamation the farmer's wife and daughter has been seen and felt everywhere, although no percentage of women's work was noted in the exhibits examined by Group Jury No. 78.
Germany, Italy, Belgium, and France were prominent, and the States of Utah, Montana, California, and Louisiana gave most satisfactory evidences of advanced progress by irrigation in farming methods.
In the Belgian exhibit we were shown the beautiful and remarkable flax grown in the irrigated districts, the material from which the finest lace, known as the Brussels product, is constructed. If the investigation had been pursued to the limit, every benefit, or profit, or financial opportunity resulting from the improvement of farms, abroad or at home, touches somewhere the lives of our farm women in comfort and happiness.
Our jury passed upon the magnificent exhibit made by the State of Missouri in the Agricultural Palace—the finest State exhibit known to this continent—up to date in agriculture.
The construction of an elegant lay figure, made entirely of corn shucks and corn silks, representing a lady of style and fashion, was the handiwork of a woman and richly deserved the prize that was awarded.
Group No. 78 being confined to general lines, and covering the idea of farm improvement on an extended scale, grasping, as it were, the great and fundamental principles of modern agriculture, the work of the sexes was not indicated by the exhibitors. The percentage of each was not required by instructions given to Group Jury No. 78.