The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-12-04
THE ROAD QUESTION.
A Reply to Mr. Averitt---Mr. Smith OPP
posed to Bouds, but Thinks we
Ought to Build Better Roads

In your paper of Oct. Esd is an article
on this subject with the sentiments or
which I find myself quite unable to
agree, because I think its statements
are not quite fair to the farmers inter
.ested ia improving the country roads;
and unless I am misinformed about the
matter a good many farmers have at
tended these road meetings in this
State and in other States, too, during
this year. In New Jersey the move
menG for improving the public roads
has been managed by the farmers dur
ing the past two years; and I know tn 1t
in Mecklenburg county, which has
done far more than any other county
in this State in improving the public
roads, the farmers have managed the
whole business from the beginning
down TO the present time; and this is
jusU what they ought to do all over this
State, and they ought to keep working
at il until we have roads that we can
haul good loads over throughout the
entire year.
IL must be admitted that we farmers
havn'G sho wn as much interest in this
movement as we ought to show, and If
we showed a little more interest and a
little more judgment in the matter we
would see to it that a great many PEG
pie helped US work the roads who now
do not do anything at all to them. We
sometimes stand very much in u
own light. The farmers in New York
State have for the past hundred years
been working their roads or pretending
to work them somewhat like we have
been doing it here in North Carolina
The cities in New York State pay
about four ffths of all the taxes, but
the people in those cities, while they
drive over the country roads, they do
not help work them. A few years ago
the New York State Senate passed q
bill a~ppropriating a large sum of
money for putting all the main country
roads in the State in good condition,
but the farmers in the lower house of
the Legislature voted the bill down, in
spite of the fact that all of the work
was TO be done in the country, all the
money spent in the country, employ
ing the country people to do the work,
and ia spite of the fact that the larger
part of all the money for this purpose
was TO come from the cities. If l had
been a farmer in New York State and
q member of the Legislature, I would
have told them to appropriate their
five millions or ten millions or any
other sum they wanted to for this pur
pose on the above conditions; and 1 be-
lirve that some of the farmers who
were in the New York Legislature have
since that time regretted that they did
not take the same view of it.
Now. Mr.. Editor, the farmers, more
than any other class of people, need
good public roads; we need better roads
in the summer time as well as in the
winter time; and whenever we come to
look at it from a business standpoint
we will see that we lose more money
using these poor roads which we have
now than it would cost us to build good
roads. Indeed it Seems to me that this
fact is so plain thatft ought not to need
an argument to prove it TO anybody.
The people who live in the towns and
cities use their paved streets, the street
cars. the railroads, the telegrapbs and
and the telephones, their families and
children go to school and to church
aud to Sunday school without any
trouble, but We farmers, who live in
the country, have to use the poor
country roads for everything that we
do while we are living, and sometimes
when we die the road is so very rough
or 90 muddy that our families can
hardly get to the graveyard to see us
buried properly.
Ny friend, Mr.. Averitt, says that at
the season of getting crops to market
there is always a superabundauce of
mules and horses on the farm for doing
that work. That may be so in his
community, but ia connection with
what [ have seen of farming in North
Carolina, the fall season of the year
when the roads are "a good or better
than at any other time, while it is true
that many people do carry their crops
to market at that time, many of them
do so because they know that later the
roads will be so bad that they cannot
haul a decent load to market. And
when those roads are good that is just
the time when the industrious farmer
a do a great deal of plo wing and
Othor ho,,Ii00 ohO1t biS form Oot+irr