Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1888-05-30
The Value of Good Roads.

The following extract is taken from pa
per read before the Connecticut State Agri-
cultural Society by Prof. w. II. Brewer on
"The Carrying of Farm Products" and pub
ished in the annual report of the State
Board. Good roads are QUE of the first es-
sentials for high civilization. 1t has been
so in all ages, it is Sc now. There can be no
great nation unless it has means Of inter-
course between its parts, and the very fact
that railroads now offer easy meanso of travel
and transportation for great distances, gives
new importance to the local highways that
lie between the farm and the railway, or the
farm and the town.
The Romans built great ronds as they
extended their empire and their dominion.
They were military necessity, but they
had their other uses and were great factor
in civilizing the peoples they conquered.
And when Rome fell the roads became
poorer, and this was one of the causes as
we'll as one of tho effects of the dark ages
which followed. 1t made the gloom deeper
and increased the difficulties of the new
civilization which followed. Macaulay and
other historians have told us how bad the
roads were in Great Britain in the last and
in previous centuries How that farm pro.
duets lad to be carried on the backs of pack
horses, except cattle which might be driven
on foot, and how slow travel was generally
When the Highland Agricultural Society
came into existence in 1884, it found the
great obstacle to Improvement on farms to
be the want of means of internal com.
munication' The defects of the pub
lie roads then in existence operated
most prejudicially to the farmers who sent
their produce to market 1t limited the
production and prevented the replacing, by
manure, of the elements of fertility which
were abstracted. The turnpike act went
into effect about 176O or 1765, but i. was not
until we'll into tina present century that
good roads became common enough TO al
low English and Scotch agriculture to take
the high stand the middle of this century
found it. A prize essay, on the changes in
agriculture during the previous fifty years,
published in 1910, in the farmers Magazine,
brings this out most strikingly, how.the i'm
provements in roads led to progress in agri-
culture.
"Most countries of Continental Europe
have built roads for military purposes which
became great factors in the development
and progress of the countries in times Of
peace. Napoleon had the FIRST wagon road
build over the Alps, that cannon and armies
might move the easier. Now that four tun-
nels pierce the Alps for railroads, for peace
ful traffic, the country finds greater need
than ever for good local roads.
military roads have been built by every
civilized nation on earth, think, and in the
end the roads proved of more Importance to
the arts of peace than they did even to war.
The great National Road built by our gen.
eral government from Baltimore westward
across the mountains to Wheeling, thence
to Cincinnati and St. Louis was great aid
in building up the West, and was for long
time great route of travel and inland
traffic. So long as western outposts were
| disconnected with each other and with the
outer world by roads, they could not grow