Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1910-07-28
SOUTH DAKOTA'S STATE FAIR
State Fair This Year Will be
Wonderful Exhibition of
the States Resources

While Nature smiles on every local |
ity; when everybody is prosperous and
opportunity is knocking at every door, |
all that the most favored section can |
offer to the possible immigrant or inves-
tor is fuller measure of prosperity or
wider margin of profit on his invest
ment. He is doing well-you ask him
to let go where he is established and |
cast his lot with you in the hope of do
ing better. That is all you can offer,
but the sound old maxim, Let well
enough alone" rings in his ear as he
listens to you and the conservatism
inherent in every man bids him hesitate
to change.
But when he is not doing well; when
his bank account is dwindling; when the
balance is on the wrong side of the led
ger; when his granary is empty after
the harvest time is past and his hay NOW
only half filled; when short feed forces
immature stock onto the market and
the crop is taken to pay the rent, he is
not only ready, but eager, to listen to a
promise of something better.
That is the condition today in South
Dakota's advertising field as it stretches
away from her eastern border to the
Atlantic coast. Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and
Virginia, except in very small sec
| tion-three or four counties in western
Wisconsin-cannot show a single field
of corn or small grain that can compare
with general average in the settled por-
tiOns of South Dakota. Nowhere is the
corn crop so we'll advanced or of so good
color, and in the grain fields the straw
is shorter, the stand poor, the heads
small and the grain dying for lack of
rain instead of ripening naturally as it
is doing here.
In proptious seasons the entire
United States is magnificent grain
field There is, apparently, but little
choice But the adverse season, the
late spring, the early fall or the year
of scant rainfall is the crucial test
which brings out the latest possibilities
and comparative advantages of the
more favored localities.
We jewellers in this favored land have
known full well of its magnificent
resources for years, but the balance of
the country does not know and only one
half believes the enhancing story. You
may hammer statistics into a man for
years; you may tell him all about South
Dakota's gorgeous wheat fields, her
miles of waving corn, her oats and bar
ley and rye, her potatoes and pumpkins
and cabbages; you may describe accur-
ately and in glowing colors her magnif-
dent studs of Percherons and Clydes
dales, her splendid herds of Shorthorns,
Herefords and Galloways, her Shrop-
shires, her Poland Chinas and Plymouth
Rocks; you may prove to him by cold
figures that the South Dakotan creates
more annual wealth per capita than any
other man, houses, feeds, clothes and
educates his family better than any
other man simply because he is able to
do it--and that he is able only because
he tills a richer soil under more genial
skies than the other fellow does; you
may show to him that share in all
these good things are at his command
for less than half the price per acre of
the stony hillside in his boyhood home;
and he may believe you, in a dull,
uncomprehending fashion, but you have
not impressed him. How do / know?
Why, simply because 95 percent of
them linger on the stony hill side and
they would not do it if they compre-
hended and believed the story.
But-talk to his eyes! Consider every
man a Missourian and "show him.
Show the grain, the hay, the vegetables
the sheep, hogs, horses and poultry
that South Dakota can produce in a
year of universal drouth; that she has
produced this year when not one of her
most favored sister states can show
half crop. Pile up at our State Far
such an aggregation of wonderful farm
produce as the state can get together
with only the most trifing effort; tell
him what you have and invite him to
come and see it. Get him here at any
cost. Organize cheap excursions from
all the nearby states. Let him see
what the state has done this year and
you have convinced him not only that
we have good state, but the best
state.
A state that can not only produce
wealth in abundance when prosperity is
universal, but can produce splendid pay
ing crops in year when failure is uni
versal, is state which has only to
place the proof before his eyes to become
the Mecca of every intending immigrant.
Of all years, past or to come, South
Dakota should this year make show
ing of what she has produced.
twenty counties have already made
Qualifications for snace for comfy exhib-