The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1897-03-11
FARM AND GARDEN.
A PROFOUND MYSTERY.
No One Can Tell Why So Many Farm
ers Oppose Good Roads.

ers Oppose Good Roads.
Each season, an old hymn reminds us,
has its own disease. That is beyond all
question true of those rural neighbor-
hoods in which the movement for good
roads has not become potent and eff
fective. The old happy-go-lucky high
ways are always bad, but with diff
ferent kind of badness for each sea-
son. At what time they are worst is
question to be decided by individual
.aste. Last spring, when the frost was
coming out of the ground and sticky
mud was more than half hub-deep,
some thought they were at their worst
estate. Others reckoned them worse
IN midsummer when they were beds
If impalpable red or yellow dust from
one to several inches deep, interspersed
With big pebbles and cobblestones.
Again there are those who reckon the
fall or the winter the worst time of all,
| and, indeed not without much cause.
Many weeks ago the trouble began.
Autumnal rains soaked the soil and
made the roads pasty, with deep, stir
mud that was hard to drag wheels
| through, and that became and remained
eut and crosscut into all manner of
tuts. Then a cold snap" came, and
the mud was frozen almost as hare
as stone, and the roads presented sur
| faces which for roughness were I'M
paralleled and indescribable. Driving
over them, even at walking pace, was
a torture compared with which travel
On a corduroy road is pleasure and on
cobble-paved street a sybaritic lux
ury. After days of such agony for
| horses and drivers, and inestimable
wear and tear on vehicles, the most
Travelled roads began to be worn down
fairly smooth. Then came thaw, and
mud again, and ruts, and the roads
were soon as rough as before, and SO re-
NAMED until the qeXt freeze hardened
them into the likeness of volcanic
scoriae. And when at last the snow
| came the roads beneath it were so
! rough that sleighing was well-nigh i'm
POSSIBLE. The runners cut through to
the ruts and hubs" and hummocks,
and the sleigh joited worse than ever
did springless car on rocky road u
Dublin" So it will go on all winter,
until the vernal thaw comes, and the
frost breaks up, and the very bottom
seems to fall out of the wretched
sloughs which men in grim irony call
highways.
Really, one would think that with
such varied yet incessant object les
sons before them, men would learn to
serve their own best interests by con-
structing decent roads. Yet too gen
orally they do not. One says it would
cost too much, ignoring the patent fact
that it would really reduce taxes and
save money. Another wants THE
state" to do it, unmindful that he and
his neighbors and his village are in
| tegral parts of the state" A third
wants to postpone the undertaking I'M
til the village is incorporated, though
as a matter of fact this very neglect Of
| the roads is one of the strongest reasons
why the place is unfit for and unworthy
| of incorporation. Still another is un.
willing to spend money for the benefit
| of bicycle riders and the city folks who
come out for just little while in sum-
mer with their fancy turnouts, the fact
| being, of course, that the farmers and
permanent residents of the villages
| themselves use the roads, and suffer
| from their badness, and would be bene,
fitted by their improvement, ten times
more than all others put together. The
| bicycllsts can make their runs in Other
directions where the roads are good,
The city folks" with light pleasure
carriages and little-worked horses, car
endure poor roads with comparative in.
difference. But the people who live
right there, and have to use the roads
not merely for pleasure but for work
and business, every day the year round.
they are those who suffer most from
bad roads, and who would get most
| good from good roads. That any one OF
| them should for moment fail to per,
ceiye that fact and to act upon it is one
of the incomprehensibie mysteries Of
the age.-N. y. Tribune.