The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1893-12-29
GOOD ROADS NEEDED.
THE HIGHWAYS OF THE COUNTRY
MUST BE IMPROVED.

why Some Senators Take a Narrow View
of IA Road Building Napoleon Need
ed-Bicycles and Draft Dogs In WASH
ington-Townsend's Opinion.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 81. = Especial. J.
| 7 hat was an interesting debate which we
had in the senate few days ago about the
petitions for congressional action looking
to an improvement of the highway system
of the country. Though some senators
choose to take the narrow view that the
movement should be discouraged because
the manufacturers of bicycles are pushing
it, the fact still remains that large num-
Der OF public men are at this very time
| giving much thought to the subject of the
! roads OF the country and the best means
of securing their improvement. George
Alfred Townsend, the famous newspaper
correspondent, has had good deal of in
| f1uence in favor of this reform. Mr.. Town
send was among the first men in this
country to perceive the necessity for road
improvement, and for a number of years
he has advocated the movement with his
voice and pen. Mr.. Townsend lives about
hundred miles from Washington, in
Maryland, and has had a splendid oppor-
tunity to observe the loss that falls upon
every farming community each year
| through the absence of proper highways
or avenues of communication away from
the railroads. Mr.. Townsend has very
good sermon, which he delivers to SEN
ators and representatives and any one
else who will listen to him.
Townsend's Sermon.
Improvement of the highway system
| of the country is the next great internal
| improvement which our people must take
| up" he says. eve have been living in
an era of railway construction. We have
been railroad mad. There has been such
| craze for railroads that we have sadly
overdone the thing. We have built rail-
roads where no railroads were needed and
where a good highway for wagons and
carts would have done infinitely more
service to the people. The people of many
counties throughout the country, especial
ly in the middle and western states, have
bonded themselves to induce railroads to
run through their neighborhoods. They
would have done much better to devote
| this money to an improvement of their
common roads. The railway craze has
saddled upon the country an enormous
debt in bonds and stocks. Some one has
to pay for the maintenance of these prop
critics, for their operation, for the interest
accounts. 1t comes out of the people,
We should let the railroads alone for 20 or
80 years and turn our attention to the
building of pixies and highways wherever
there is much travel. One cause of the
hard times is the suspension of railway
building Thousands upon thousands of
men who have found employment in the
construction of new lines of rails, in get
| oil Of ha in no
earth works, in rolling rails, in laying
track, as surveyors and engineers, as work
ers in tunnels and for all sorts of contract
ors, are now forced to seek work in other
directions. They do not find it, and hence
the land is filled with idle men.
Good Roads and Employment.
eff we can substitute for the railway
craze craze for good roads, !" continued
Mr.. Townsend, eve shall be able to find
employment for these men. There is work
enough in this country at road building
to employ every man now idle for the next
10 years. 1t will not be money thrown
away, as in the case of SO many of our iron
highways, but will contribute vastly to
the economy of the future. 1t will in
crease the earnings of farms, the pleasure
of life in the country. 1t will help to keep
the boys out of the large cities. No other
rich and prosperous country in the world
has such poor roads as the United States
Our highways, bitches of mud, rough and
dangerous, taking the life out of our horses,
| breaking up our vehicles, at certain sea-
sons of the year almost entirely preventing
communication between neighborhoods,
are the source of much amazement to Wis
itors from Europe. They cannot under
stand how a people so rich and energetic
as we people Eat are able in half CEN
fury to build nearly one-half of all the
railways in the world, should be content
to go along running our wagons and car
riages through the mud roads. would
like to see congress take hold of this ques-
ton.
ssThe old Jeffersonian idea may hold
some statesmen back, but it will be re-
membered that our forefathers, before the
days of the railroad craze, built national
highways. 1t was not too much paternal-
ism for them then. 1t is not too much
paternalism now. If the doctrine of linn
tied federal powers interferes, that can be
got over by extending the federal aided or
federal built roads from Ole state to an
other. 1t doesn't matter where the roads
are nor by whom built. The point is to
get them. Just at this time, when rail
| Way dliuOSu GU q
when there are hundreds of thousands of
unemployed men, when woodsmen stand
with their axes and laborers with their
shovels in hand ready to work and no work
for them to do, would be specially good
time to institute this grand system of
common road building. 1t would be ma
tional blessing in more ways than one. 1t
would benefit the present generation and
all succeeding generations. The greatest
works performed by Napoleon for France
were his roads. We need road building
Napoleon in America, and we need him
now"
Washington Motive Power.
The senate, which is becoming breezy
gossip center, has also had a discussion
about bicycles. When it comes to BIZ
cycles, this is the place to study them
and to use them as object lessons. If the
bicycle craze has a strong footing any
where in America, it is in the Capital City.
Even the street fakirs have taken to the
use of wheels. Yesterday your correspond
ent saw group of senators and represent
atives on Pennsylvania avenue standing
about a street fakir who had three
wheeled machine on which he carried his
wares and which served as his platform.
| upl-o ~, %he oil 6c ic