Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1912-12-18

began bringing in material Of all
kinds and of so convincing a nature
that 1 came to the conclusion that
our own home people did not fully
realize the value of their farms or
none Of them could be coaxed to
Canada. One way to convince a
man Of the value of his own proper
ty is to show him how badly some
ono else wants it. Judging by the
way some Of our farmers are now
advancing their prices guess they
have been shown all right. will not
enumerate any of the advantages Of
Swift county as I do not see any very
good prospects in my audience but !
submit to you gentlemen, my belief,
that there can be gathered in any
county in this district a collection Of
agricultural products that will COM
pare favorably with any other dis
trict in the world. Further, that your
greatest difficulty, when displaying
them to land buyers, will not be to
convince them that they are good but
that you really raised them here.
This is especially true of our own
corn and it is hard to convince a man
in Wisconsin, Iowa or Nebraska that
we can raise IS bushels Of good corn
to the acre. You all know that we
do it and you must convince the land
buyer or at least get his curiosity
sufficiently aroused so that he will
take enough time and money to make
a trip up here to see for himself what
all the noise is about In order to do
this we began to look for a means Of
getting our exhibit of farm products
before the class Of people who are
looking for homes and as the st Paul
Land Show was soon coming on we
secured a space and put on our ex-
hibit there. We put on the best ex-
hibit we could arrange in the limited
time at our disposal and it attracted
a great deal Of attention. The show
attendance was about one hundred
| thousand and as most all Of them saw
our booth we were very greatly pleas
ed with the results that promised
from the beginning Of our publicity
work, and also for the silver cup that
was awarded us for the excellence of
the exhibit. We now wished to fol-
low up the work and get in closer
touch with the farmers in the older
states and to show them our exhibit
also. For that purpose we made it
up into the travelling exhibit which I
brought here for your examination
today, and sent it out with our man
to make one week stands in each
town that we worked in. We adver-
tised the matter literally ahead in the
local papers and then put up the ex-
hibit in some vacant store room or
hotel sample room in the town. The
attendance at these exhibits amount
ed to several hundred people in each
town and we succeeded in getting
personally acquainted with the men
who were looking for farms. We took
their names and have used the Or
binary follow-up system on them ev-
'er since with advertising matter suit
able to the occasion. The exhibit is
made up in such form that it can
be carried as baggage and weighed
all told about 1000 pounds. l feel
that this method of getting close to
prospective business is a great help
and that it has done us an immense
amount Of good. I am also convinced
that a person cannot make much pro-
gress by sitting at home and depend
ing on mailing advertising matter all
, over the country. There are thou
sands Of real estate men who send
; out mail matter and some of those
= farmers told me they had received