Arizona republican., 1907-11-26
CONFIDENTIAL TALK
 WITH HOME PEOPLE
Fair Was a Magnificent Success and Phoenix Worthy Host But as a County, Great Opportunity Was Lost

tilt oit OilAs
 to the culture and progress than fol
 lew the competition of all the people
 in the principal lines of activity Ev-
 cry county and every community ir
 Arizona which chooses to do so may
 draw some lesson from the fair by
 which it may profit IL is the purpose
 of this article to pick out bit of busi-
 ness gospel for the special benefit oi
 The people of Maricopa county. The
 Republican will therefore go into eX-
 ecutiye session for a few minutes. with the home folks. Outsiders are request
 ed to withdraw. or if they read this on
 the sly. to keep il 10 themselves. for
 it is intended only for home consump-
 tion. The only way The Republican
 can talk confidentially with the home
 people is to depend on the honor of the
 nonresident to keep still. Anyhow what is to be said here applies in the same or in some similar way concern ing the same or some other things, to every county in the territory. so mo- body is really justified in pointing his finger at the other fellow.
 Now about Maricopa county. un- Questionably the richest county in the United States in natural agricultural resources, though others of smaller area may vie with it in proportion to size. The exhibit of farm and garden and orchard products was a most elo- quent disgrace. IL was skinned a city block by the Verde valley of Yavapai county and by Yuma county. Even old wind-swept Navajo up on the Rocky Mountain plateau. and rugged fHnRhiS.a Inurra in h. r-ie .1aC ert section. while sending but very few exhibits. caught the public eye on what they did send The Buckeye section. of course, is not forgotten in these re- marks. Buckeye had a small booth and 1t was crowded full of fine pro- ducts. and Buckeye is in this county Phoenix should be thankful that il is for without it where would this county have been in the running? A part of the Buckeye exhibit was as good as it could be but even so. il was not as large in quantity as it might have been and the products shown were only from a few ranches. Truth 10 tell, it is likely Buckeye would have been among the also rans" only for the fact that few energetic farmers got together just before the fair and decided to come to life. make a noise in the world and put a twist in the tail of the mule of for tune. so he couldn't slip through this valley entirely without offering at least a little chance for tail holt by the Buckeye people. Having launched a mighty creditable advertising cam paign. about a. week before the fair. these farmers began scraping around for show on the grounds in order to make good their advertising. COnsid- ering their limited time they did mar velously well.
 number of the Mesa people came down to the fair on Monday and mighty near went blind looking for the south side exhibit of farm and garden products. They didn't find it and that night after dark they went over a few of the nearby ranches with q fine tooth comb and gathered up quite a creditabIe display considering the time and effort devoted to it Either the Buckeye or the Mesa city display would have been a fine one had it come from the upper Gila val ley. the San Pedro valley. the vicinity O. Florence. Skull valley. Kirkland val ley. or a dozen other little valley set dement's that might be named. but considering that they came from the east and the west ends of the greatest valley on earth they had no such ex- hibits as they might have had. good as they were
 And what about Phoenix and vicin- ity. the very dead center of the$inest valley on earth? Phoenix. whose IF nches valued at siOO per acre bump right up against the fair ground fence. Her exhibit could not have been found with a search warrant. The third ter ritOrial fair gave the lie to all the fine literature sent out about this immedi- ate vicinity. and for fear some reader may get wrong impression it is stat ed right here and now that the fault does not lie with the literature nor with the fair. The.people of this vicin- ity simply overlooked a great oppor- tGnity. There was d little something shown. of course but not really as an exhibit for this section. on it's own ac- count. There was some fine honey in the apiary department. few pounds Of butter in the dairy department and Hall brothers, the nurserymen, and MT Burroughs. the florist. awake to their personal interests. had private exhibits. The experiment farm made good showing in dates and pears and Munger Bros, with the same inspira- tiOn as the others named. had q fine booth, the products of olive trees. But the visitor who had been reading the Phoenix literature and went to the fair tO see the strawberries, pumpkins, ap- ples. pears. peaches, grapes, asparagus. | sweet potatoes. plums. apricots. sugar beets. sugar cane. alfalfa. wheat. bar ley. oats. millet kaffir corn. Indian corn, sorghum, broom corn. etc, both | seed and forage. the oranges. lemons. | grape fruit. tomatoes. carrots. turnips, | squashes, onions, spinach, lettuce, rad | ishes. cabbage and numerous other things that grow here as almost mo- where else in the world, simply did | not see them in the general Maricopa county exhibit. for they were not there. |
 There is no disposition at this time to blame any particular person. It | will be well enough here in executive | session, for all to plead guilty together. | though The Republican insists in its own defense that it often called atten- tion during the spring and summer to the need of work in getting an exhibit ready. The situation is analogous to that which prevailed in the Limekiln club after a brothers careless handling of the truth had been proven and var T