The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1896-10-02
OUR STATE HIGHWAYS
ADDRESS DELIVERED BIZ JAMES Ii.
M4CDONALD LAST EYENING


| Owing to Wrong Methods.
| AT a regular meeting of the Social
Science club held in the Young Mems
Institute library last evening the sub
ject for discussion was the improve
nent of the highways of Connecticut.
| Dean Wayland of the Yale Law school
opened the discussion by stating some
interesting facts in regard to highway
improvements. reading the statutes re-
lating to the matter and giving statis-
tics in regard to it,
The chief address of the evening was
that by Chairman James I'll. Macdon-
aid of the state highway commission.
than whom there is probably no one in
the state better qualified, both from ex-
perience and careful study, to speak on
the subject. Mr.. Macdonald's interest
ing address was, in part, as follows:
Never has a movement been of such
far-reaching good to the general public
as that for good roads, and one of the
good things that comes from the state
commission is that it gives to the peo-
pie at town meetings knowledge on the
| subject. The lack Of knowledge of the
matter found in towns Of the state is
surprising.
/ Il attended a meeting in Branford
a short time ago, held to discuss the
matter and to gather information so
that the citizens might vote intelligent
ly on the question at the town meeting
| to be held soon after In Branford the
| interest on $250000 at per cent. has
been spent yearly on the roads of the
town, and the highways there are yet
in bad condition. This is not sur
| prising, since the town has the largest
number of miles of road in the state.
On the way over to the meeting l found
that there had been an attempt made
to repair the road by throwing on the
surface irregular stones and letting it
wear down. 1 took the ditch to get a
fairly good place to drive. The same
state of affairs prevails all over the
state. At the town meetings, however,
much is being done to educate the peo
pie on the proper methods of highway
repairing. / have attended dozens of
these meetings-noisy ones, too-and
have found that after the state law on
the matter of roads has been explained
a desire to have roads made under that
law has been generally expressed.
'"The bureau in Washington in charge
of good roads has sent out 10000 letters
of inquiry and has received 1900 an
| swers from as many counties. The
inquiry asked for the average haul at
load, how many horses draw the load,
fIa 4py1 ronr TO
average value of the load The aver
age answers were that the haul was
twelve miles, weight of load 2,002
pounds, cost to haul per ton rs cents,
value of load 49,
From these figures the bureau has
found that we paid for transportation
on the roads of the country in the year
1894, 5000, ,000,000 and that the deplorable
condition of the roads is such that
there has been a loss of 60 per cent. of
this amount, or $500, 100000 in round
numbers, in 1894, nearly as much gold
as we have to-day and five times the
sinking fund. Figure up how many
times $4,000 is contained in this $780,
600, 600, and we see how many miles of
good road could have been built with
that sum, and, taking the number or
miles of road in the country, we can
see how long 1t would take to make
every road in the United States a good
road This estimate of a cost OF $5,000
a mile to place a mile of road in good
condition is for cases in which only one
mile is improved If more miles are
improved the cost per mile would be
less than for fixing only single mile.
4t,;c, tafa ana a
Improvement cost $1.35 per linear foot,
while to construct piece OF road con-
siderably more than mile in extent
the cost was only ninety-nine cents per
linear foot
"The people in Connecticut are con-
servative, they move slowly and 1t IS
hard to interest them in a new IDEA,
but once interest them and they are all
right. We can hardly blame them for
their conservatism when we think now
hard the farmers of the state have
worked for what they have.
I'm one case a. gentleman in South
port offered to sell a farm of sixty
five acres for $500, offering it at that
low figure because of the bad condition
of the road by which it was reached.
Inc TCSsu was lnlplONVo Ny PtOPoA
methods and the same gentleman then
sold five acres of his sixty y-five-acre
farm for $500 per acre, thus receiving
for these few acres $500 more than he
had previously offered the whole farm
for In New Jersey where roads have
been improved farms have been cut up
and sold in single lots, which brought
more than a whole acre would formerly
have been sold for; and now the in
creased valuation of property along
those roads is six times what it costs
to improve the roads
81 believe the government ought to
do something towards improving the
roads, 1 believe that it is a national
matter. When 1 hear the silver ques-
tion discussed I think it would be bet
ter if something for the farm were dis
cussed. Mr.. Morton, secretary of agri-
culture tells us that AZ per cent. of our
population live on farms and that this
percentage of the population produces
all our food supplies and furnishes So
per cent of our exports. School chill
dren in the country go to school in the
sIush and mud.
IF more attention were devoted to
maintaining good roads in the rural
dfstricts-those highways which are so
essential to the prosperity of our
smaller communities-there would be
fewer young men and women deserting
6.