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Elgin Echo
Elgin,
Iowa
December 7,
1905
CORN CONTEST
The awarding of premiums in Berg's corn contest
came off Monday afternoon and drew quite a bunch of farmers to town.
In all there were fifty-three exhibits and they were all good ones.
It would be hard to get a better bunch of seed corn together than
this lot of corn makes.
The judges, Hon. J. D. Shaffer, J.I. Phillips
and H. S. Groth, went over all the corn and picked out what they
considered the three best lots of twelve ears each. When the tag
number on the corn was announced and the name looked up it was found
that Chester Peake had been awarded 1st and 3rd and that R. H.
[Robert Henry] Peters was winner of 2nd place. Strange as it may
seem all three of these lots of corn came out of the same field. Mr.
Peake works for Mr. Peters and the corn was selected while they were
husking. The seed from which the corn came that was awarded the
prizes in our contest has a history and nobody should feel badly
because they could not win against it. During the year of the
World's Fair in Chicago Mr. Peters was working a farm near Elkader,
and had a field of excellent corn. One day a gentleman came to him
and proposed that they send some to the exhibit at Chicago, Mr.
Peters agreed, the corn was selected, sent to Chicago and placed in
the World's Fair contest where it was awarded the gold medal. Year
after year Mr. Peters has continued to raise this same corn and he
claims it is much better now than when it was awarded the gold medal
at Chicago.
After the prizes had been awarded Hon. J. D.
Shaffer gave an interesting and instructive talk regarding the
raising of good corn, how to tell good seed corn and what
constituted the best grades. His listeners were benefitted and
enjoyed his talk.
Mr. Berg deserves credit for getting up this
contest and it is hoped that many more of a like character may be
held here.
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