Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1884-07-09
NO. SO

SHe VI IHo many DOleS ana stones
on the roads | travel and I seemed to
know by sort of instinct Just where
each one was. Just then milk wagon
passed loaded with six cans bruised if
not bleedlDg-lashed to the wagon az
securely as the master of vessel lasbes
every spar before storm. A half mile
further on lay wagon beside the road
with broken axletree. had seen f
there before, but now it awakened new
interest. The round faced stone in the
wagon track, upon which it was wrecked
was FAMILIAR to me. had lodged it
more than thousand times, and thus
my present theme materialized. A
wheelbarrow full of dirt would have
filled the hole and saved my neck-fiye
minutes with a crowbar would have
sayedsthe broken axletree. But whose
business was it? Had not each GOOD
citizen worked bis highway tex in June?
But why should the work be done in
June and at no other time? Most of ma
have occasion to take medicine from
time to time during the year but who
would think of taking all this medicine
for the year just after planting his corn
ana IN the month of June? Every good
housewife finds it necessary to make
needy repairs of torn and threadbare
garments but none are insane enough to
undertake te do it all in the last half of
June and Leave it untouched the balance
of the year
during the present century the genius,
OF man has made steam and lightning do,
his bidding. Eyen his breath of the air.
Is heard thousand miles. The reaner
mower and harvester, the rectangular
churn and the gang press are his servants
even the stove we cook on and the car.
riages we ride in but symbolic modern
progress. But the roads, the roads, the
execrable roads.
Roads were repaired by levy,ng ad
valorem taxes paid in labor under Henry
VIII of England. as early as 1916. Under
the fuedel system the highways were
improved upon the labor plan. and the
same system was transplapted to the
colonies OF America without modifica
ton or Improvement, and found its iusti
fcation only in the scarcity of money
and the inability of the colonists to paw
only as they paid other bills by changing
products or labor itself. That the system
has continued till the present time is an
anomaly in the history of our civiliza-
tion.
Under the present system the general
policy is to see how little can be accom-
plIshed IN given time. Occasionally
an effort IS made to do some honest work
but with no knowledge upon the subject.
oft times those who attempt the most
accomplish the least. They work two or
three days, tear the road bed to pieces
from one end of the district to the other.
and leave it as billowy as the ocean in a.
storm. Others again work diligently to-
make roadway of clay-too dull even
to learn a lesson from the mud wasp or
mud swallow, who use that material for
building purposes only under shelter.
len thousand years is too short time to
teach some men that clay mud will not
make good road, shat nothing but sand
and gravel ever accomplish that result.
Of such material are the Roman high
ways, whose 6rmness has not entirely
yielded to the efforts of fifteen centur.
les.
The roads in Jefferson county will
average but little more than thirty seven
years age, yet there has been expended
Iii highway taxes in that time probably
not less than $1,89O,OO0. In the town of
Lake Mills there are A miles of highway.
The past year the highway and poll-tax
levy was $2,723.70, which would give
$6O.lO for each mile of road. yet I ven
ture the assertion that had $50 per mile
been judiciously and honestly lai9 out,
the roads would be fifty per cent. better
than they are now. With gravel or
stone 81, ,OOC will make perfect road
bed, needing but slight repairs thereafter
Estimating upon this basis, the town of
Lake Mills could have macadamized
every mile of road in it twice and had
$l2,775,99 as starter for the next
course.
Now what is the remedy for this shift
less, thriftless, artiquated barbarous
way of not doing thing answer, the
same good sense we bring to every voca>
ton in life First the payment of the
taxes i'll money. Second, the adoption
of the township system, wherein the
money is entrusted to competent man
or men, who will see that it is judiciously
laid out, not in the month of June just
after planting, but throughout the year,
who, when any road has bad hole or
projecting stone, will have it repaired at
once, and the balance of the money be
expended in making some road perma.
nently good with stone or gravel, or both.
This system has been adopted in some
New England towns with astonishing
results.
Let the Wisconsin dairymen, who
have now an enyiable reputation in their
high calling, inaugurate this much
needed reform, and in ten years you will
find our main thoroughfares we'll macad-
amized, smooth as a floor, where the
dairyman and the daughter can ride to
and from the factory or the town as
unconcernedly as in a Pullman palace
car and ambitious scribblers will not get
'tumbled' to their theme as uncermoni-
ously as was your humble servant.