Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1892-11-03
SPECTATOR.
COMMUNICATED.
LAUREL GROVE,
October 24th. 1892.

Messrs. Editors of BEAcoN:-Will you
allow me space in your paper to say q few
words in reference to communication from
our Senator Mr. Washington Wilkinson,
which was published few weeks ago in
the st. Mary's Enterprise.
The Senator tries to vindicate his actions
in our last Legislature by telling US what
he did, and what he did not do, which was
altogether unnecessary, as the people of ST.
Mary's county were kept well informed of
the daily proceedings of that body by the
BEACON. So far as understand the mat
ter the only good done our people was
passing the act decreasing the salaries of
the Judges Of the Orphans Court, and the
perdiem of the County Commissioners aud
increasing the salaries ofour Circuit Judges.
suppose that will relieve the burden of
our much taxed people, for some say the
more tariff and taxes we have to pay the
richer we become. | fail to see il in that
light; others may judge for themselves.
The first vindication our Senator offers
is in the matter of the road law for our
county. He says he did not defeat it, but
only added a small amendment to it, so the
commissioners could be elected by the
people. Mr.. Wilkinson knew very we'll
that amendment would defeat the bill. for
as understood it, the road law was to take
the roads out Of politics as much as posi-
BILE by giving the appointment of road COM
missioners TO the governor, so that the road
commissioners would not hold their Office
directly from the people, and therefore
could act more independently. As for it
proving to be benefit to our county or
not, have nothing to say.
In the next place Mr.. Wilkinson comes
down on the County Commissioners, and
putting great blame on them for bad roads,
accuses them of levying five thousand dol
lars for road purposes, and up to the first
of October, only spending about i've hun
dred Of that amount lie says the roads
are in terrible condition and in his section
of country no work has been done on them
since the election last fall. From what /
have seen and learned the roads were never
in better condition than they are at
present.
There are several reasons why we have
not done much work on the roads and l
will try to mention few of them. In the
first place we did not expect to have any
thing to do with the public roads, and l
suppose we would not have had anything
to do with them except for Mr.. Wilkinson's
little amendment to the proposed law. The
next reason is we did not know how much
money we would have 10 use on the roads
until we could get all the amounts before
us and adjusted, 50 that we could tell how
much Of the five thousand dollars we would
have 70 spend. The next reason we have
not spent much money on the public roads
is, after we ascertained what we would
have left Of the five thousand dollars which
had been levied for the purpose, the weather
became so dry and the ground so hard
that il was almost impossible 70 do any
thing with them. The earth could hard
iy be entered with pick-axe and
would like TO know where the econ
omy would have been in putting men to
work on the roads, when they could not re-
turn benefit oftwenty-fiye cents per day.