The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1897-04-08
LOADS AND ROADS
The Relation Between the Two Both Here
and Abroad.

An American farmer visiting France
and Germany will certainly be inter-
ested, and perhaps somewhat amazed,
to see the average country highways as
there existing-b broad, smooth road
ways, spendidly surfaced with stone,
suitable for heavy traffic in all kinds of
weather, and generally lined on both
sides with tall, stately trees. shading
the highway like a park driveway. He
would wonder at the money which had
been spent upon them. With a solid
stone roadway, on which an ordinary
wagon tire would make no impression,
it is not to be wondered at that three
and four tons of produce should be
loaded upon an ordinary farm wagon,
which is there built with tires four or
six inches wide A French load of
hay, approaching our American farmer
from a distance, would bring to his
mind a vision as of a moving hay stack
such a great difference is there be
tween the ordinary load of hay as there
hauled to market and the load he is
accustomed to see among his American
neighbours
Contrast such system Of roads with
those of our country, with which all of
us dwelling in rural community are so
familiar. The law lays out a highway
sixty-six feet wide, but it is rare that
more than twenty feet of this ground
are appropriated for highway purposes
proper. The " highway" such as it is,
is rough and uneven, and the ordinary
wagon passing over it travels through |
an inch or two inches OF dust in dry |
weather and through three or four
inches of bog, very frequently, after a
rain of no unusual severity. This is
the road on the level. Where hill
exists conditions are even worse, for the
action of ram and snow washes away
the soil at the top of the hill, leaving |
the surface covered with the toughest
of gravel, and transforming the !" road
at the foot of the hill into what, after a
shower, is veritable quagmire.
What wonder, then, that the average
wagon load as we see it in the United |
States is so entirely different thing
from that seen abroad! Travel over
road of this kind is necessarily slow |
with any kind of a load and, as the
distance from the farm to the market is
greater by far than in France and Ger
many, the farmer reduces the weight |
of his load, that his team may make
some respectable progress without
being worn out during the first few
miles of the trip. Reducing his loads,
the farmers trips are multiplied IN
number, ard the result of it is that it |
requires three or four times as long to
market his crop as would be consumed
on European highways.
The movement for good roads is
continually and rapidly growing
Every thinking farmer, who has be-
come familiar with the publications of
the Department of Agriculture, be-
comes at once an advocate of better
highways and an advocate of better
methods in building them. The AM
erican people have brought their sys-
tenn of water transportation to high |
state Of perfection, and we are the |
possessors of q system Of railroads
which is unequaled by that of any other
nation in the world. It now looks as
if the American people were seriously /
turning their attention to the common
country roads, and it is safe to assume
that, once the movement for better
highways is led along definite lines, we
shall, before many years, have a sys-
TEN of country roads equal in every
way to our water and railway trans
portation facilities.
OTTO DoRNER. |