The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-09

creased the necessity for an Improvement
in the common roads Of the country. The
railroads reach the centers of population
and traffic, but there are thousands to
whom it Is matter of vast practical adj
vantage to be able to -each the railroads
in comfort, celebrity, economy and GER
tainty, which are only possible over good
road. The railroads have vastly multi
piled the number Of people who must
travel over the country roads to reach the
railroads. A good road means that the
farmer can reach the railroad station in
one-third of the time that he must spend
over poor road; it means that he can
transport two tons of farm products with
two horses more cheaply than one ton
with four horses.
An excellent reform would be the pay
ment of all taxes for road purposes in
money; working ont the road tax by the
taxpayer will always give a community
poor roads. With the road tax paid in
money it could all be expended in each
municipality by one man competent to
locate a road properly and to construct It
with a solid foundation. Good roads
mean the enhancement of the value Of
real estate, an influx of desirable popula-
ton. as good roads, thoroughly con-
structed as they have been in continental
Europe, will last thousand years with
ordinary repairs.
Among the practical reforms suggested
is the use Of wider tires, with the hind
wheels further apart than the front wheels,
which makes a heavily loaded wagon .
roller and packer of the highway rather
than destructive rut cutter. Wide tires
are the rule in Bavaria and France, coun-
tries famous for the excellence Of their
roads. The superior excellence Of the
highways on the continent of Europe over
those of America is due to the fact that
for thousand years of social and com.
mercial life Europe was entirely depend.
ent for rapid transportation during war
and peace upon the excellence of her roads.
She was forced to make good public high
ways in order to satisfy the necessities of
both peace and war.
When the railroads came, some seventy
years ago, Europe had system of magnifi-
cent roads that had been in existence
hundreds of years. and at comparatively
small cost, Europe can keep these solidly
built highways in repair, but when
the railways began to multiply In America,
some fifty years ago, we were q young
nation about fifty years old, country of
magnificent distances and sparse popula-
ton, without any great system of Irrational
highways. The advent of the railways
undoubtedly had the effect to divert pub
lie attention from the construction of q
permanent system of public highways.
Everybody suffers from bad roads
through the wear and tear of rolling stock,
the delays when roads are impossible.
The farmer pays for bad roads in decreased
sales and lessened profits from the sale of
his products, and the consumer pays for
bad roads in the aorm of the increased cost
of everything transported over stock-ex-
hausting, time-wasting roads.
Railroads need carriage roads for feed
ers; farmers need them to reach the rail-
roads and the cities; manufacturers and
merchants need them to cheaper the cost
of portage and transportation for their fin
ished products and wares. and the people
need them FOR the efficient distribution Of
their activities. The strongest popular
argument for improved roads is, of course,
that in the long run they are money in the
pocket of the community.
The towns of Brookline and Newton, in
Massachusetts, have doubled their popula-
ton in the last tive years, more because
Of their excellent roads than by reason of
anything else. the Oranges in New Jer-
sey afford another example. The small
interior town of Rock Hill. In South Caro-
lima, has found it profitable to macadamize
its main roads for ten miles in all direc-
tions, as an inducement 10 the farmers to
draw their cotton and other produce to
that town to exchange for supplies.
Bad roads force people to live in cities;
good roads tempt them out into the coun-
try. Colonel Albert Pope, a leading pub
lie highway reformer, would have the
state either own or control and maintain
some through highways, connecting the
principal towns IN the state, and connect
ing these with the principal towns of
neighboring states, where they are most
needed, either for great public exigencles
or for the greatest general use.
This would promote the equalization
and the general reduction Of expense of
construction and maintenance of these
main roads and would give profitable
example and strong incentive to the adj
jacent towns to construct better contribu.
tary roads as feeders to the main ones.
He would have the state divide the ex-
penses of this scheme of road betterment
in the tax levy, so that part of it should
be apportioned to the whole state, part to
the counties through which the roads ran,
and part to the towns. And, further, he
would have this tax levy kept small and
the investment adequate and quickly made
by the business mans method Of borrow.
ing the money on long loans. 1t would
thus be easily paid out of the profits by
those sharing them.
The last Tennessee legislature was in.
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