Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/560

 meritorious. But the gentleman put in charge of the agricultural exhibit at the outset bought in St. Louis two lots of seeds, one costing $17.60, and the other about $5.00, and put upon plates, without names, some breakfast foods manufactured in various states, the various products of corn wherever made, and added them to his display. He had been selected, overlooking political affiliations, because of his connection with the Pennsylvania State College, where agriculture is taught and his previous experience in a similar charge at Chicago. His explanation is that seeds are a marketable commodity, which, wherever bought, may have been grown in any other locality, that it was an important education for farmers to see all the ways in which corn could be utilized even if they had to step over state lines, and that no one could tell where the corn was grown from which its products were made. However forceful this reasoning may be, the management differed with him in judgment, his connection with the exhibit terminated May 31, 1904, and these articles were removed. If there had been any mistake, it had long been corrected. These few simple facts, at most of uncertain significance, this newspaper by the addition of falsehoods, innuendoes and extravagancies elaborated into nine columns and illustrated with seventeen pictures. The publication, saved up until August 19th, was adroitly timed so as to have it do what could be done by scattering it over the country to soil the celebration and thwart the object of the state. It talked of “unparalleled fraud” and “graft,” although such a suggestion in connection with the sum of $22.60 was a manifest absurdity. It gave what purported to be an interview with a member of the commission. The written denial by the commissioner of the facts alleged in the interview is on file among the papers of the commission. He was made to say about tobacco that “I understand that not a leaf of this most important part of Pennsylvania's agricultural product is on exhibition.” The tobacco then on display subsequently received in competition with the whole world the very highest prize. It said the sum expended upon the exhibit was $15,000. The sum actually expended was $8,999.26. It told the people over the country that this exhibit was “a fraud, a hypocritical sham, an insult to the farming interests and a disgrace.” As a matter of fact, the exhibit was so creditable that the officials of the exposition awarded to it three grand prizes, the highest possible award, twenty gold medals, twenty-one silver medals and thirty-two medals in bronze.

All of the people, proprietor and peasant, churchman and 540