The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1897-06-24
Depew's Good Roads Text.

An eastern orator, | think it was
Chauncey DepeW, in banquet speech,
made the broad assertion that bad
roads are a perpetual evil. The re-
mark was quoted by New York city
paper and commented on to consid-
cradle extent. 1t spoke OF suburban
village not far from Greater New York,
declaring that it was type of many
villages, as having roads that are liter
ally sloughs for weeks at time every
year. 1t said that these village and
country roads, are the kind where a
horse sinks at every step to the tet-
locks, frequently to the knees, and
sometimes so far down into the thick
mud that it is necessary to haul him
out with double teams.
That text is a suitable one from
which to talk on the good roads or bad
roads question in convention, IN a
newspaper, in business circles, any
where, for every one knows that it is
based on truth--every one knows that
bad roads are perpetual evil" NO
wonder that the brightest and best
young men of the eastern villages and
cities cursed with bad roads on their
main street and with equally bad roads
for miles around them, have packed
their trunks and gone west, to the
prairies, pineries and foothills.
I was talking with two old New
Workers, who had lived from their birth
to their young manhood in a village
similarly situated to the one about
which the New York paper speaks
One said to me: Probably | would
still be a resident of my native village
but for my utter disgust as boy and
young man at the bad roads, and the
indisposition of the people to improve
them. Working out the road tax was
always farce. / have seen twenty
men pretending to work out their road
tax, when, if you were to combine their
entire efforts it would not amount TO
one honest days work. can safely
say that I came west to get rid of mud.
I have found a good deal of it here, of
course. Continuing he said: " But l
guess they are improving their roads
there. The old village paper has
something on the subject of good roads
every week, and | see by quotations
from other papers that there is the
same vigorous agitation in behalf of
good roads that we see out west. This
plainly tells me that it is only ques-
ton of few years when there will be
such sentiment for good roads that
good roads will come. Public senti-
ment in this country does everything.
Law, without public sentiment to back
it, is nothing. A member of the legis
lature can help to enact a law. If it is
backed by public sentiment it will be
enforced. Every citizen has it in his
power to do what is better than enact
ing a law as member of the legisla-
ture, and that is to make the sentiment
that demands the law and will secure
it's enforcement. had not become an
ardent advocate of good roads until
my two boys and one girl, who are
members of the League Of American
Wheelmen, began to agitate. They
have been SO earnest and practical
that they have gotten all the farmers in
our community interested in the work.
The farmers no longer raise the cry
that the talk about good roads is all for
the benefit of the wheelmen. We have
Al. L \.
get very little benefit from good roads
compared with what the farmers will
derive. to say nothing about all other
classes"
This almost accidental interview will
prove very encouraging to the friends
of good roads. OTTo DoRNER.
Street Grades.
The one absorbing tonic in official