[LOCATING THE MINNESOTA STATE FAIR.]
The Minnesota State Agricultural Association is now working under the provisions of the new law passed by the Legislature last year. This law entitles to vote delegates in the management of the State Society, from each county association holding a fair and paying premiums to the amount of the donation by the State to these local organizations. At the late meeting at St. Paul over twenty county societies were represented. It was also decided to allow one vote each to the State Horticultural Society, and to the Southern Minnesota Fair Association.
The financial report showed that the State Society received from all sources in 1883 the sum of $14,068.78. The disbursements amounted to a little less than this sum. As it is a matter of interest everywhere to know what it costs, by items, to run a State society, we here give them for Minnesota: Salaries of officers and assistants, $3,601.39; printing and advertising, $1,415.65; general expenses, $2,520.97; special ring purses, $2,434; premiums, $3,945.50.
It will be seen that a little over sixty-one per cent of the whole amount of prize money went to the fast horse interest. Thus it is considered in Minnesota that racing is worth more money to the State Fair, that is, it brings more money from attendance and “privileges,” than all the cattle, farm horses, swine, sheep, fowls, farm products, vegetables, flowers, machinery, fine arts, domestic products, and everything else that can be brought out at the State exhibition. We do not take Minnesota as an example because it is any better or any worse than other States in this respect, but to show to the farming people of this country wherein lie the attractions of the modern agricultural fair. They are at liberty to draw their own conclusions. These fairs are in their own hands, or should be, and if reforms are needed it is from them that they must emanate.
For several years there has been a feeling of intense rivalry between the Fair Association at Minneapolis and the State Society. The rival fairs have been held at the same time, and the result has been detrimental to both organizations. We suppose the feeling had its birth in the commercial rivalry between the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. However this may have been, or whether good or ill has resulted, the State Society and the farmers of the State are to be congratulated that a movement is on foot to obliterate all differences, and to establish somewhere between the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis permanent fair grounds that shall secure to Minnesota one of the greatest fairs of the Northwest. At the meeting, about which we began to write, it was resolved to instruct a committee, appointed for the purpose, to negotiate with the citizens of the two cities for eighty or one hundred acres of land for a permanent location of the State Society. It was also advocated to call upon the Legislature for appropriations for the construction of permanent buildings.
[Wayside Notes.]
BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE.
I can’t help remarking to myself as I read my two or three foreign agricultural papers, how great is becoming the influence of American agriculture upon the farming of Great Britain. Our ways are gradually insinuating themselves into British practice and it will not be long before our respected “cousins” will be ready to acknowledge that we have in great part paid off the debt we owe them for the many lessons in methods of thorough culture and intelligent breeding they have given us. What has led me to mention this matter is an item in a London journal showing a tendency to bring beef stock to the block at an earlier age than has formerly prevailed in that country. It was not until inaugurated at the Chicago Fat Stock Show, I believe, that the English ever took it into their heads to make a record of average daily gain of bullocks for their Fat Stock Shows, or of the amount of food it took to bring them into show condition. It is only lately that stock raisers there have thought about selling by weight instead of the “guess” of the buyer. Farm scales are not half enough in use here, but we are manifold ahead of the farmers of Great Britain in this respect. It was only after Americans had pronounced upon the benefits of the silo that British farmers thought it worth their while to experiment with the innovation from across the channel. But about this early maturity question: I notice that a correspondent of the Yorkshire Post mentions that at the late Fat Stock Show two Prize Hereford bullocks weighing (dressed) 896 pounds, and 700 pounds, were aged respectively one year, nine months, and five days, and one year, seven months, and twenty-two days. At the Grimsby show there were two Short-horns weighing 14 cwt. and 13¾ cwt. live weight, the first being one year and nine months old, and the other one year, nine months, and fourteen days. They took the second prize as grazing steers. I don’t need to mention anything about the new farm implements we have given the old country, nor the many modifications that her own implements, wagons, etc., are undergoing, especially in the way of lightness in construction, that are directly traceable to the influence of American manufacture. Indeed, if the intelligent and unprejudiced Englishman of to-day who is familiar with our agriculture will sit down and reflect upon the subject he will readily acknowledge that the influence of the United States upon the political ideas of England has not been more marked than it has upon her agricultural ideas and practices.