"BOOSTER'S DINNER."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10035, 4 May 1910, Page 4

"BOOSTER'S DINNER."

.Luncheons and dinners are meals of enlightenment in the Middle-West of J the United States, according to "Collier's Weekly." The Middle : Westerners are "booming" their towns ! and devising fresh methods of ac- J celerating progress. The "Boosters' Dinner" is the result:—"Des Moines was sleeping the sleep of lethargy and hopelessness three and a half years ago, wh: n a few of her busiest business men began to gee together

at noon luncheons once, twicy, ' and three times a week, and talk up a thriving town. They willed that Des Moines should awake. Out of their inspirational feasts grew the Greater Des Moines Committee. The Commercial Club breathed in new life. The life force of those banquetings expressed itself in various directions. To-day Des Moines has mure vitality and higher momentum than it had three years ago. The luncheon and dinner habit is still maintained;as the source and fount of much of the.good. You go to a luncheon of a hundred or so persons in Des Moines—business men, lawyers, journalists, and agricultural editors—and they talk while you eat. While the courses are being muDched, tho;jerhts of city charters, corn-growing, and factory inducement are casually spilled out by local talent. Late in January, Cedar Kapida, lowa, held a Boosters' Dinner, where four hundred good citizens applauded scnemes for getting the town ahead."