Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1891-10-14
The Gospel Of Good Roads.

OF IMPORTANT THINGS.
A pamphlet has recently been issued
from New York which in it's sixty-four
pages gives the farmers of the United
States more good advice than they ever
received through go small a medium before
1t is titled 'The Gospel of Good Roads, !"
and Isaac B. Potter is the author of it. In
1t Mr.. Potter shows in clear and conciu-
sive way, with the use of very few Stats
tics and without once becoming prosy or
nninteresting, that in the improvement of
country roads lies the key to the "agricul-
tural problem"-the key that will open the
vault in which is hid prosperity for the
farmer.
One plan which Mr.. Potter has used to
make his arguments convincing is very eff
fective. 1t consists of series of engravings
reproduced directly from photographs and
showing the vast contrast between our
American roads with their mudholes and
ruts and the smooth, hard, broken stone
highways of European countries. He has
had the camera snapped on American
farmers at times when their teams have
been stuck in the mud with but small
loads, and has then, by way of an offset,
procured pictures of European farmers
hauling enormous cargoes over their good
roads while their horses are apparently
putting forth scarcely any effort.
Perhaps the best way to show what Mr..
Potter's arguments are is to quote from
them. In one place he talks to the farmers
like this
sYou will agree with me that your roads
are bad. You may not know that they are
the very worst in the world, but you have
never seen or heard of worse ones; nor,
alas, perhaps of better. You live on the
main road in an important county. I saw
you one day last spring trying to drive
your best horse through the pasty depths
of that mysterious streak of public terri
tory, and while the patient beast was pull
ing the harness in two in his efforts to lift
you and your scant load onto the little
bridge near the mill, your photograph was
taken. There were 10000 farm
horses in your county on the day when this
photograph was taken, and for about four
weeks all the county roads had been in just
this condition. Teaming was out of the
question, to haul load to town was i'm
possible and the 10000 farm horses stood
what cost to the farmers? Assume that
the cost of keeping each horse Is twenty
five cents per day, including labor, food
and all other items, and in half a minute
we compute that it costs $4,000 day,
$I7,500 per week and exactly 10000 for
the four weeks that these horses..have been
standing practically idle. A bad road you
see is an expensive thing.
sit is expensive not alone to the farmers
of your county, but to the farmers of the
entire country. The average rainfall in
the United States is something over forty
inches per year. The dirt road absorbs
these forty-odd inches of water, freezes
and thaws, dries, pulverizes, changes from
b olr
powder to paste, and for weeks at a time is
practically impossible. Farm traffic is
tied up. You have produce to sell, pur-
chases to make, grain to grind, timber to
haul, bills to collect and obligations to
meet but all these must wait because your
only avenue OF travel is taking its annual
soak"
Mr.. Potter writes: 81 do not intend to
overdraw the picture, and 80 l have
travelled many miles and gone to much
trouble in order that my letter to you 1.-THE
farmers] might contain only the truth, and
find the country roads to be even worse
than I had supposed them to be; worse
than you think them to be. They are dis
gracefully bad almost without exception. !"
The deductions which Mr.. Potter draws
are sound and of paramount Importance
He shows that bad roads in America de-
stroy the American farmers horses, his
wagons, his harnesses and his temper, and
increase by an appeoiable length the DIS
lance between him and his market.
He also shows that good roads would not
only save him from too rapid consumption
of horsefiesh, rolling stock harness, leather
and temper, and put him much nearer to
his market or railroad station, but by
making easier the work each horse is re-
quired to do, they would increase that
NIL 60 af,1,,
make it possible for the farmer to get
along with fewer horses and save the ex-
pense Of buying, caring for and feeding the
extra animals. Good roads, too, would
bring about change in the social life of
country people. Families now cut off from
neighbors and the nearest village by miles
OF impossible mire would, if that mire
we're changed into hard, smooth road, be
able to visit and exchange ideas and
courtesies with their neighbors and reap
whatever benefit might be found in taking
part in the social life of the nearest village.
Moreover, Mr.. Potter shows that wherever
roads nave been improved land values have
increased in an astonishing ratio, and that
is certainly result worth bringing about
in this country of mortgaged farms.
Near the conclusion of his book, Mr..
Potter writes: 81 think you will agree with
me that pour wagon roads should be much
better than they are, and the main diff.
Guilty that troubles you I believe can
understand. You are wondering how you
are to get the better ROADS which will give
you the same advantages that are given to
the farmers of England, France, Italy and
other European countries.
"The answer is not difficult. You are
simply to insist that the main roads in your
country shall be reconstructed and kept in
repair at the expense of the State at large
instead of by tax directed against the
farmers alone, and then you are to send a
man to the Legislature who believes in the
same doctrine and will stand up for it,
Don't start at the prospect of more taxes;
you are not to pay more, but less. Did you
ever take the trouble to fad out what a
ridiculously small portion Of the State
taxes you pay? 1t will do you no harm to
look it Ep."