Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-01-28
COUNTRY ROADS.

The meetings of numerous organizations OF
farmers in various parts of the country have
been productive of good in many ways. But we
doubt whether any more practical subject has
been discussed at these gatherings than that of
country roads. In the multiplication of rail-
roads during recent years and in the growing
Importance of the question of rapid transit in
large cities the matter of country roads has been
in measure forgotten even by those most inter
ested in them.
The prosperity of any country depends in large
measure upon its means of transporting COM
modities from one point to another, The rapid
Developments of the American continent, in itself
the wonder of the ages, has been due TO the
happy discovery of steam power and its use upon
the river and railroad. Without these the West
of forest, prairie and desert.
But what is true of the country at large is true
in lesser degree in every section, state, county
and township. There is the same pressing need
of good roads, over which the farmer may haul
his produce to the railroad station on its way to
market, that there is in having the railway and
steamboat line penetrate the vicinity of his farm.
Ready market depends upon rapid transit, and it
depends almost as much upon the plank road,
turnpike or cross-road as it does upon any of the
other means of communication.
The discussions of the present winter have been
confined principally to the means of defraying
the cost of building roads and the development
of some system under which their proper i'm
provement and repair may be secured. In Texas
the issue and sale of bonds by the different coun
ties has been advocated to provide funds for
roads. In other states direct taxa
ton is either in force or is advo-
Gated for the same purpose. In one or
two states it has been proposed to utilize the la
Dor of criminals in the state prisons in building
roads, while others still have only lamented the
existence of bad roads, with little hope of ever
having anything better.
But the usual trend of these discussions is
hopeful, and shows that the more intelligent
farmers are waking up to the need of good
roads, and it is TO be hoped that the question will
assume still greater prominence until some wise
and useful system can be devised for creating
and improving country roads.
Nothing so thoroughly demonstrates
the universal recognition of the necessity
for and benefit of permanent roadways as
the attention given to the subject by the
newspapers Of great cities. These big
journals, although located away from the
need of passable highways, recognize
the fact that no community can
progress beyond certain point
without permanent improved roads.
States old in settlement are confronted
with the same problem that troubles
Texas, and until each state does provide.
a permanent system, it will be compelled
to meet this same question periodically.
If Tarrant county were accorded the
right, it could make roads that would
equal the famous FFpikes'' of Missouri,
Kentucky and Tennessee and be here
TO bless the people when the present
generation and its posterity were gathered
to their fathers. Other counties could
probably do the same, and each county
should be permitted under the law to
adopt that system deemed best for them
selves by ITS people.
This poor privilege at least might be
granted by the legislature, since every
would decide for itself the ques-
ton of means to make good roadways.