The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1892-02-16
HINTS TO THE POSTMASTER
GENERAL.

1t is all right, this talk of mail de-
livery at the farmers door, but the
government wants to remember one
~thing-really it should be able to re-
member two or three things, but it
won't do to overburden the government
it wants to remember that the daily
delivery of mail in the rural districts
will have to be preceded by the con
%structiOn of roads in those district.
If that is not done the mail carrier will
have to learn to fly before he can re-
ceive an appointment. A mail carrier
who could only walk or ride would be
of no earthly account delivering mail
In the country during bad weather.
Why, there are millions and millions,
maybe more than half az many as that,
of places in the country, in this greatest
and most progressive and prosperous
land in all the universe, where people
never dream Of going to the corner
grocer's during wet weather of long
continuance. Men have pinned away
and died longing for the healthful
excitement Of a game Of checkers
with ST. Bentley and couldn't get
down to the store, four miles, or rather
four mild, away, to have the debauch.
The road to perdition is a bad one, as
it is often described have never
travelled it myself, although I have
been told they have the best pave
ments in the world, if it is in the world
when you get there-but it really can't
be much awfuller than the average
country road in America during the
fall rains and the spring thaws.
Why, it isn't so bad, not nearly
can't be, or else nobody would ever
travel it. They wouldn't, just because
about nine tenths of the year they just
couldn't. Daily mail delivery in the
country! Why, it's the c~raziest notion
yet. When it is an old established
fact that the people in the country
can't get it to the p~ostofice days at a
time, how is the ~postofice going to get
out to the farm7
One good thing might come of this
idea, however; the government might
establish the rural delivery where
there are roads that + passable nine
months of the year. Then would the
rural supervisors get onto some new
method of road making other than the
time honored custom of dumping fresh
loads of new mud into old mudholes to
fill them up. And another good thing
for the Congressman would grow out
of it. We have dredged and damned
all the creeks and dry runs in the
country, and are at a loss to know
what can be devised to take the place
of the good old river and harbor i'm
provement grab. Here we have it
government appropriation for mail
roads!
Uunder the old grab some localities
were forced to go to the expense Of a
steam pump, and in some very des-
titute towns they had to haul water in
barrels in order to make a creek big
enough to get a slack water %appropria
ton on; there was no end of hard work
and both ends of much harder ly ing in
order to ecure an appropriation for
slack water Improvement. But every
county, every township in the land,
has a road, or at least a trail through
the dust and bottomless mud that
passes under that name and is entered
on the map as a road. Oh, country
men, know that Opportunity with a
big o and q surplus knocks at our
doorsl In the language of the gentle
man from Calaveras, "Mr, Speaker, I
novel to rake er."-BobBurdette.
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