Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, December 19, 1909, Page 21

PART THREE HALF-TONE PAGES1 TO 4 THE OMAHA SUNDAY BEE. VOL. XXXIX—NO. 27. OMAHA, SUNDAY MORNING, FOK ALL THE NEWS THF OMAHA BEE oEST IN TME WES) ——————— DECEMBER 19; 1909. SINGLE COPY FIVE OCENTS. REAL HIGH SPOTS AT THE NATIONAL CORN EXPOSITION Points that Drew Public Attention While the Show Was Open and Proved of Greatest Importance as Factors in Hewroninp HIS EAR AND TROPHY WON HE third Natfonal Corn exposition is over. What was it? The Corn Show was far more than exposition, a place where one might see many interesting objects of agri- cultural interest, hear beautiful music or find an hour or two of passing amusement. The Natfonal Corn exposition represents a part of the effort to give a hungry world something to eat. In this larger sense the Corn Show finds its raison d'etre, The ~show' aspect of the exposition was an attractive, but merely Inci- dental feature in the minds of the men who are working behind it all. The show tbat the public saw at the Auditorfum and about the several acres of exposition grounds might be called the blossom—the fruit yet to come. The exposition {s one means to an end and that end 1s food for the millions, occupations and happy homes and farms for the thousands. Time was when man did not have to woo nature for the ma- . terials of his liviihood. Like Topsy, they just grew and all that he had to do was help himself. Now the complications and complex- aties of civilization have made that helping. oneself into & most ser- fous problem. Man has to set himself about coaxing the forces of nature herself Into s more generous production that there shall be enough for all. In the solution of the economic problems of the last century we have heard much of the harnessing of nature's forces, particu- larly through the utilization of the transmission of power by elec- trioity as a particularly facile medium. Now the scientists have gone farther; a more subtle problem is being solved. Those very obnoxious sources of wealth and the materials of life are well under development. But ln the laboratorfes and out of the experiment stations, men are learning the laws that govern those little seen forces of soll and sunlight that with the action of plant organism produce food. While others have learned to harness the waterfall and to draw the mineral resources forth by gold dredge and mine machinery, the scientists are learning how to hitch up the potencies of the 3Sreen thlorophl and plant protoplasm. These silently working powers must be utilized by nature’s own transformers, the- plants themsplves. World’s Supply of Food The daring chemists have found a way to proauce synthetically food products from the very air and mineral itself, but that is but a laboratory curiosity. The world must get its food from the fields. How this is to be done is the lesson of the Corn Show. Through the National Corn exposition the public has had the opportunity of feeing & broadened glimpse of the work out on the farms. The Corn §now, 100, 18 itself an effort to make the farmer see how essential the adoption of scientific methods is to his own best interests. In the words of Willet M. Hayes, assistant secretary of agricul- ture, who was the government’'s chief representative at the big ex- position, it was a short college course. This officlal further pointed out that it uttered a call and plea for country life that the schools and colleges, not only fall of expressing, but really-contradiet. This educational effort is, however, hardly an end in itself ex- cept to those teachers who are engaged In producing it. The sum total of it all in the end must be seen as just the old, old fight to satisfy the belly-pangs of the human race. So the fruit organism of which the Corn Show can be called the flower, must be developed into being the ripeness out on the farms. James J. Hill, the railroad builder, whose success is unwitingly admitted by himself to have been builded on his study of the larger economic problems or races apd nations, has declared with an air of comviction, while at this sho¥, that the world is soon to be, if not now, face to face with the wolf. To some of the men at the Commercial club banquet, this seemed o daring assertiom, but Mr. Hill's declarations were often repeated during the show by other speakers who saw the problem from vastly different view points. From this aspect of the show as an effort to meet the cry for food, the exposition just closed presented one of its most striking and Interesting lessons—the dry farming exhibits. The state of Washington shawed wheat grown on soil that helped to give the “great American désert” its name In the earlier geographies. From the actual grain before and by lectures from the men that grew it the visitors at the Corn Show were told how this once dispaired of country could be made to yleld up bread for the world. “With a fainfall of sixteen inches a year we have grown wheat that produced above twenty bushels to the acre,” Weclared Roscoe W. Thatcher, who is in charge of the experiment station at-Pull- man, Wash, New Conquest of Nature This simple statement hears a significance in. the general ef- forts of the Corn Show, who has grown hr from its name, it is now the Agrioultural exposition. . The National Corn exposition sets forth in graphic terms, a story of a new conquest of mature, the utilization of territory un- avallable before. The farmer is being reduced to the same economy that has made the meat packer and the miner resort to the work- ing of the last extreme of possibility in by produets. come, the world's people wapt it and must have it. It was not an unwilling lesson at the Corn S8how, that two weeks of college, lecture halls were crowded by anxious and inter- ested farmers and stock raisers. There were “‘experience meetings,” real farimers talkfests, where the man from Ohio and Illinois, or even the Hooslers, who bave been it all must 500580 #eo" 6 8461 Lai Model g 80 flagrantly successful in carrying off corn prizes, could trade ideas with the man out there on the Pacific coast or the alkali fields of the eastern slope of the Rockies. There was a part of the greater aim of the show, for while the sclentists may dig deep in the lore of nature and mgke his dis- caverys and inventions valuable by adaption, the final'realization of value must come from the farmer's application. Exhibits of the dry farmers made it plain that the more favored agricultural sections could produce little more varied yields than the once barren plains of buffalo grass. The best corn in the world will never be produced by the dry farmer, by his own admission, but he can still grow good corn. ‘When Fred C. Palin of Newton, Ind., produced what the judges of the Third Natlonal Corn exposition pronounced the best ear of corn that the world has seen he achieved much. The efforts of the hundreds of other farmers who competed for prizes and succeeded in much lesser measure, achieved much more. One good ear of corn is good, but thousands of bushels of corn, better than before, are better, Fred Palin's ear is none the less an object of much interest. There were few, indeed, who saw the corn exposition, who failed to see this beautiful specimen of corn. It stoéd out a gem of bucolic beauty, every grain perfectly formed and perfectly golden. “Jim"” Hill, a man of mighty railroads, who is something of a farmer himself, was almost piqued when he saw that ear of corn. “We'll just see what we can do about that best ear of corn next year up our way,” sald Mr. Hill in a decided sort of way. Which all means that a lot of farmers up on the Great Northern route will bhe put to their best paces in corn growing to please this buflder”” as they insist on calling him. Credits to His Wife It took scientific agriculture to produce the best ear of corn, but Mr. Palin credits his wife with its selection from the crop. In- cidently he wears an Indlan arrow head, mounted in the pin on his tie which he found In the same hill that grew the corn. He isn't super- stitious of course, but he just wants that arrow head. That Palin ear of corn might be called a syndicate product, how- ever. Back there in Indiana is a group of corn culture farmers, who have got together on the prize proposition. They have got the best ear and the top prizes in their grip for the time at least. J. R. “empire Sheep dlpfi)ng pl't Nebraskas Overstreet, the winner last year of the prize for the world's best ear, this year contented himself with the prize for the ten best ears. He is another Indiana corn specialist. As notable an achievement, perhaps more important in the world’s economic interests, is represented by the corn grown farthest north. Now way up there in the Black Hills where a few years ago the prospectors and trappers would have laughed at the man who even suggested agriculture, they are now growing corn. _ It is, to be sure, not prize-winning corn, but it is corn that would compare well with some that is grown under far more favorable conditions. The South Dakota exhibit exemplified well the way in which the corn territory 18 being pushed out beyond the limits of the more fertile flelds. A big map of the state indicated corn growing countles which but a few years past were beyond the agricultural zone of the northern states. This state had a story to tell, too, of raising of wheat and barley and some real sturdy oats. World Is Interested The people who came to the Corn Show gave evidence of the widespread interest and seriousness with which all the world treats the study which the exposition presented. Samples of American grain and hundreds of pictures from the show were sent hack to Russia by Julius Rosen, & government representative from the czar, who came to Omaha to see how they grow corn out in the real corn country. From the twenty-five states represented, he found a great deal that his wide country, with its complex agricultural problems will want to know of. At the show, the Nebraska and lowa farmers were well repre- sented, and undoubtedly the influence of the show will be seen very directly on the farms about Omaha. A wider degree of in- fluence, however, comes from the seed raisers and dealers who came to Omaha to buy the prize winning corn and the better entries. For three days a glib auctioneer cried his golden wares to a room packed with eager bidders, The corn that has made the show g0 attractive, the wheat and oats, have gone gut all over the land. This high grade seed 48 to be heard from next season and may be expected to become progenitor to another series of prize winners. A lot of town folk I ned something about what is going on out on the farm at the exposition. Many were probably brought to understand the all important part that the products of the soil and the countryside play in the national life and commerce. Nebraska's part in the exposition had much to teach that as- sumes especial importance in view of the improving methods of farming in this state and in the less fortunate soils of the farther west There the painstaking care and ingenuity of the scientist was Splendid Exhibit—~ What Bill Nye Had to Say Concernlng Comets HE COMET is a kind of astronom- ical parody on the planets, but they are thinner dnd do not hurt 80 hard when they hit anybody as a planet does. The comet was so called because it had hair on it, I believe, but of late years the bald-headed comet is giving just as good satisfaction everywhere. The characteristic features of the comet are: A nucleus, a nebulous light or coma, and usually a luminous train or tail worn high. Sometimes several tails are observed on one comet, but this only in flush times. When I was young | used to think I would like to be a tomet in the sky, up above the world so high, with nothing to do but loat around and play with the little new-laid planets and have a good time, but now I can see where 1 was wrong. their troubles, their perihelions, their hyper- bolas and the parabolas. A little over 300 years ago Tyco Brahe discovered that comets were extraneous to our atmosphere and since then times have improved. I can see that trade is steadler, and potatoes run less to tops thau they did before, Soon after that they discovered th comets all had more or less periodicity. No- body knows how they get it. All the astron- omers had been watching them day and night and dido’t know when they were exposed, Comets also have' but there was no time to talk and argue over the question. There were 200 or 300 com- ets all down wjith it at once. It was an ex- citing time: Comets sometimes live to a great age This shows that the right air is not so injuri- ous to the health as many people would have us believe. The great comet of 1680 is sup- posed to have been the one that was noticed about the time of Caesar’'s death, 44 B. C.; and still, when it appeared in Newton's time, 1,700 years after its first grand farewell tour, Ike said that it was very well preserved indeed, and seemed to have retained all its faculties in good shape. A late writer on astronomy said that the substance of the nebulosity and the tail is of almost inconceivable tenuity. He said this, and then death came to his relief. Another writer says of the comet and its tail that “the curvature of the latter and the acceleration of the periodic time in the case of Encke's comet indicate their being af- fected by a resisting medium which has never been observed to have the slightest in- fluence on the planetary periods.” 1 do not fully agree with, the eminent au- thority, though he may be right. Much fear has _been the result of the comet's appear- ance ever since the world began, and it is as good & thing to worry about as anything I know of. If we could get civse to a comet without frightening it away we would find that we could walk through it anywhere as we could through the glare of a torchlight procession. We should so live that we will not be ashamed to look a comet in the eye, however, Let us pay up our newspaper sub- scription and lead such lives that when the comet strikes we will be ready. Some worry a good deal about the chances for a big comet to plow into the sun some dark, rainy night and thus bust up the whole universe. 1 wish that ‘was all 1 had to worry about. If any responsible man will agree to pay my taxes and funeral expenses I will agree to do his worrying about the comet’s crashing into the bosom of the sun and knocking its daylights out. There i{s much in the great field of as- tronomy that is ¢iscouraging to the savant who hasn't the time or means to rummage around through the heavens. At times I am almost hopeless and feel like saying to the great, yearnful, hungry world: “‘Grope on forever. De not ask me for another scien- tific fact. Find it out yourself. Hunt up your own new-laid planets and let me have a rest. Never ask me again. to sit up all night and take care of the new-born world, while you lle in bed and think not."—8an Fran- clsco Argonant, June, 1885, Making the Great Enterprise of Interest to the Casual Visitor §’outh Dakota..s’ Fine Show™" shown best by a device whereby the amount of water required in the formation of plants was shown. A big container filled with earth stood off a scale beam where all summer long the single stalk of corn grew. Comparison of weight from the beginning and the end of the growing season leave the result. Just one barrel of water was required to grow that stalk of corn from the little sprouting seed to the lofty tasseled shaft. Fiom such experiments these the dry farmer must learn the adapfion of crops to the condi- tions which he has to meet. E. C. Montgomery, connected with the Nebraska experiment station, makes a specialty of the work. “They ought to have tramsplanted that corn to the field and given it a chance,” exclaimed an enthusiastic woman sightseer as she paused to look at this display through a handsome lorgnette. Mr. Montgémery tried to explain, but it was no use, Importance to Government The importance which the goyernment placed on the part that the exposition bears to the agriculture of the west was shown by the large expenditure made in putting up an exhibit more extensive and exhaustive than another on the grounds. Half a dozen officials, speclalists from the branches of work represented were placed in charge and frequently delivered lectures on their work. Th educational force of the government exhibit was the mdst strongly emphasized. The display was there first to tell the how and why, secondly, to entertain. There was a great deal told that the farmer would stop to look at that would never have gained his attention if presented in dry for- mal treatises, There, for instance, the government spent some hundreds of dollars in putting up a model dairy barn. One constructed just as experts have decided that it ought to be, was shown in actual ma- terials before the spectator, constructed on a reduced scale. Hundreds of Nebraska farmers took coples of the plans of this barn and another season will probably find it duplicated out on the farms where the government intended that it should go. One suspicious farmer from Kansas, however, supplied the of- ficials with fun for a whole day. He was interested in the barn and wanted to duplicate it on his own broad acres. One morning during the show, Joseph Abel, the representative of the bureau of animal industry in charge of this exhibit, foun the Kansan measuring the tiny parts of the toy barn with a pocket rule. “You don't need fo go to all that trouble friend. you are sent a set of the plans. I'll see that Just sign the register here.” “You fellers don't get me on any gold brick scheme,” answered the farmer still keeping at his work. “Iv'e tried some of them signing games before.” So he measured the whole barn and it took him a day to db it. A great educator was the display of meats thrown out by gov- - ernment inspectors at the South Omaha'abattoirs. Hundreds of vis- itors saw in this display something that they had read of, but never understood, nor fully believed. What tuberculosls does to the food animals was most vividly exemplified. Teaching Practical Lessons The government’s part in the ‘‘two weeks’ course” of the expo- sition was most exactingly carried out. The work of many patient hours was consumed in the preparation of the “horrible examples of animal and plant parasites. Tiny bugs veproduced in models often a thousand times as big as the size of the actual past were shown in wonderfully exact detail of form and color, Not content with simply pointing out the evils that assail the farmers growing crops and stock the government advances its bost methods of cure. In this connection a striking model of a sheep-dipping tank and yarding system reproduced in miniature, even to the workmen, was exhibited. Everything was real but the cheruble faces of the dolls in blue jumpers, who drove the plaster sheep into the dip tank. How to make good rodd§ Was the subject of another of the gov- ernment’s lessons for the public. Reduced models again figured in this department to good effect. Even the steam roller, with its manakin englueer aboard, with all machinery in motion, was shown at work on the macadam highway. Ward King, the Inventor of the famous King split-log drag, the one primitive implement that cannot be improved, was at the show to tell the story of good roads. How well the National Corn exposition has beap accomplishing its purposes can be shown in material results. Of the $7,600,000,000 worth of agricultural products which government statistics credit as the annual fruitage of the farms of the United States, it is claimed that $1,600,000,000 i to be taken as the increased value of crops produced because of the influence of the show. A testimonial to the wide scope of influence of the exposition is the wide territory from which it has drawn its attendance and the attention that it has claimed.