The Press., 1892-12-15
HIGHWAYS AND CIVILIZATION.

OlCtUOI Ol bltO btuuO VI SAfAAAHoOAOh All " community. Where there is no highway, the country is barbarous. In Japan the great obstacle to the advance of civiliza- tion is the lack of highways For the present it is impossible to create them in many districts which are mountainous or filled with ravines and watercourses. h. to such districts civilization will penetrate only after the engineer has made fol it q highway Ancient history shows us that the highway was the mark of civilization. Phenicia was the great road-builder. Phenicia taught Carthage and Rome how to make the roads which are still the wonder of the world, and without which the Roman Empire would have been im- possible.
 In the United States we are just begin- ming to understand the value of the ordi- nary modes of communication. A curious result of the introduction of the bicycle is the discovery of so IL any bad roads. As the bicycler goes spinning over the face of the country, he soon discovers that the most civilized portions of the community have provided the best roads for his pur- pose. He demands a highway everywhere, and there are enough of his kind to make the demand heard. The commercial trav- eler has gone grumbling over all the west and south until he has raised the stand ard of cookery in every hotel in the land. In 8 similar way the bicycler performs his office. In all rural districts, as every body knows, although few stop to think about it, the loneliness and isolation are largely the result of bad roads. The summer boarder, the cottager, and the, rich man who owns the country residence, are uniting in their demands for better highways; and town governments begin to see that they have financial interest in providing better means of travel. The little republic of Switzerland spends it's millions upon the highways, and gets it's return in more millions given back by the American tourist.
 One reads with surprise that Hammer fest in Norway is breaking the gloom of the arctic night by the electric light in every house. Mountain streams furnish the motive power for the dynamo, which sends it's streams of electricity to every house in the village. In the back towns of the lumber districts in America the saw mills begin to provide also electricity, so that remote villages in Maine have cheap electric lights. It will not be long before every mountain stream in New England will give up something of the en- ergy with which it flows, and furnish a constant stream of electricity, which in the village and farmhouse will be trans lated into light, heat and motive power. The first step of progress will be taken in the improved highways in all our coun- try towns. Money enough is spent to give us good highways if it were spent wisely. A book has been published by the state department at Washington, for which Mayor Hart of Boston furnished the sug- gestion, in which the ancient and improv- ed methods of road-building are described and illustrated Think of the difference when across an Illinois prairie runs a straight, hard, dry road ready for travel at all seasons. This is easily within the reach of any community which gives it's attention to the subject When this is provided, it will not be long before rails are laid in an inexpensive way upon the road-bed, and electricity will furnish the motive power for transportation. A cheap car, run only once or twice day, with a storage battery such as soon will be pro- vided, would be an incalculable advantage in any rural district When the roads are good enough, it will not be long before the electric carriage will be run without the rails. Then the disadvantages of life in the country will be greatly reduced. Young men will again turn to the farm for occupation, and home in the country will be preferred to life in the city by many who now desert the country
 l In the United States highways of some sort are so common that they are taken for granted, as if produced by law of nature; but they represent, at least, three thousand years of human experience, and {, when their value is once understood, and the possibilities of improvement are made clear, civilization will take very long step forward.
 The possibilities of locomotion by elec- tlicity are scarcely yet known; but they make it certain that in the lifetime of this generation all the towns in a civilized community will be connected with each other by highways, from which the beasts of burden and travel will disappear to a considerable extent, driven out by the electric motor. The common people are coming into possession of the advantages
 which science now lays as a gift at the feet of every civilized nation. Great so- cial changes will take place. We shall
 lose some things that we like; some
 things will come in that seem to us undc-
 sirable, but the total result will be such
 advantages for all the people everywhere
 as we have now only in the more favored
 communities scattered here and there
 through the vast expanse of the country
 The difference between an English park
 and the toughest swamp in Pennsylvania
 is no greater than the difference which
 will soon appear on the face of the coun.
 try, as wildness and barbarism give place
 to cultivation of the soil and intelligence
 of the people. The study of the art oi
 road-building is as much concerned in the
 social and moral progress of our people as
 any question. Intelligence, thrift, happi ness, higher forms of social enjoyment
 and new opportunities for moral culture the good highway in the country. It is
 to be hoped that the road building exhibit to be made at the Chicago exposition vii , do as much for the intelligence and morals