ROYAL SHOW'S SUCCESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23182, 31 October 1938, Page 10

ROYAL SHOW'S SUCCESS

The present system of holding the Royal Show in leading farming centres by turn was completely vindicated by the outstanding success of the latest fixture held last week at Hamilton. Credit for the efficient organisation and administration of the show belongs to the Waikato Agricultural and Pastoral Association, which received strong support from town and country culminating in the great popular concourse at Claudelands on Friday I and Saturday. Visitors were drawn j from all parts of the province, most iof them rio doubt for practical reasons, and so was fulfilled one of the chief purposes of the peripatetic show, that of education in livestock standards. Farmers gathered around the judging rings obtained new light on breeding problems by direct observation as well as by the exchange of ideas with breeders from other provinces. The lessons might be given a deceptively high value if it were wholly true, as Sir William Perry averred, that the present Royal Shows were nothing more or less than "glorified local shows." In some classes, certainly, stock below the highest standards were exhibited, but these, no less than the champions, would offer object lessons —negative against positive. Sir William is, of course, a leading -advocate of centralising the fixture at Wellington and it is worth noting that his depreciatory remarks were not borne out by several prominent judges, nor by Mr. L. J. Wild, the president of the Royal Agricultural Society. Mr. Wild strongly disagreed with Sir William's suggestion of the "glorified iocal show," stating it had been refuted by the magnificent exhibition at Claudelands, where there had been on display livestock "representative of the best in the country," with unimportant exceptions. Particularly gratifying was his intimation that the centralisation idea had been turned down for a period of years and the present peripatetic system would bo continued, a system that diffuses the beneficial influence of "the Royal" over the whole country and builds up the strength of local associations and national society at one and the name time.