From The Argus-Observer for Feb. 12, 1954
By Don Lynch
Are you a booster for Ontario? If you are you should get out to the fair grounds for a time Friday and again Saturday; and, if your schedule will permit, attend the cattlemen’s banquet Friday night.
Oregon’s cattlemen, the state organization representing this country’s most important industry, will be guests in Ontario this week end. They will be here for their spring bull sale, which is now in its fourth year as an annual event.
Malheur County earns virtually all its income either directly or indirectly from agriculture. Approximately one third of our total farm income each year comes from the sale of livestock, and most of that is from beef stock.
The relative importance of the beef industry would be ample reason in itself for us to take a lively interest in the annual range bull sale.
But there is a more important reason.
The range bull sale is a “natural” for Ontario. IT is the sort of event that chambers of commerce everywhere are always wishing for --- an occasion that precisely fits the economy and the community, an occasion that with a little encouragement might build itself into a well known and widely recognized attraction. This sort of specialized event which fits the nature of a community often helps greatly to build a city’s reputation.
The range bull sale here has been patterned to some extent after the Red Bluff, California sale, which as the nation’s largest range bull sale is something more than twice as big as Ontario’s sale.
We get 700 or 800 people here for our sale. Red Bluff gets perhaps 1,500. We sell 140 bulls to Red Bluff’s 300.
Yet this area provides a better natural market for the range sires than the Red Bluff area does.
The Red bluff show and sale is accompanied by considerable entertainment, which builds interest to a peak by sale time and tends to draw crowds because of the carnival air that goes with the show and sale.
The Ontario range bull show and sale thus caries the indications of a much bigger potential. The thing that just now might lend the Ontario show its greatest impetus would be greatly increased interest show by this Ontario community.
More public interest in the show indicated by persons other than the cattlemen themselves would greatly help to build the reputation of the show. Demonstrating such interest is a comparatively simple courtesy that Ontario could easily extend to the visiting cattlemen.
There is still another reason, perhaps the best reason, for pausing a few minutes to visit with the cattlemen who will be here Friday and Saturday. It is just the simple pleasure of playing host to gracious guests.
Although they are perhaps the is regions most successful business men, the cattlemen are “our kind” of people, friendly, unassuming, “just folks.”
Won’t you make it a point to meet as many of them as possible.
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