The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-03-23

Governor Clinton estimated, soon af-
ter the completion of the Erie canal
that western New York had been en-
riched by that great work to an
amount Of one hundred millions of dol
lars. What the entire benefit may be,
up to the present time, it is difficult to
say, when the increased value of farms
and of the cities it has created are all
taken into account We mention this
as a single example of the influence
which facilities for carriage to market
actually exert on the value of every
mans real estate. Yet the canal boat
conveys the single farmers product to
market only few times during the
whole twelve months while the com
mon highway is used by him almost ev-
cry day in the year. Spectators who
own lands deem it of high Importance
to secure railway in the neighbor-
hood, but they seem to forget that ex-
cellent roads exert an equal or greater
influence on the value of their property.
We have known single hundred-ac
farms increased in price more than
one thousand dollars each, in single
year, by the construction of a first-rate
road through them, where the public
way was before a collection of ruts and
puddles; and every one may observe
the difference in the market price of
land on a well-kept road and on a poor
and impossible one in the same imme-
diate neighborhood
Why is it, then that the great mass
of our farming population bestow so
little thought on the construction of
their roads-except it be, perhaps, to
contrive to work out their highway
taxes with as little labor as possible?
The answer must be, that it results
from an entire blindness to their own
interests total want of thought in
the right direction-for a 1.-THE of the
skill and labor that they hestow on a
crop Of potatoes would often accom-
plish a more valuable result in secur-
ing good roads.
One great loss arises from sacrificing
the whole public interest to the interest
of single landowner; in other words,
the road is made crooked or made to
pass over a hill, that it may not spoil
the shape of some particular cornfield
or calf pasture. We have known a
greatly travelled road to be changed
from a short diagonal, through a GER
tain politicians field. to a circuitous
route through mud and around stumps,
in order to leave the field entire; and
the public were compelled during every
hour of the day, and for three hundred
and sixty five days in each year, and,
so far as they know, through all COM
ing time, to travel a needless distance
in order that Squire pumpkin might
arrange his pig-lot to better advantage.
In another case, one of the main av-
enues to a populous village is made to
ascend hill and then pass down again,
in doing which it makes a hugh right
angle and traverses a distance of half a
mile more than would have been re-
CURED on a level, obliquely through a
valley. A little calculation has shown
that the yearly cost, in time and in
wear and tear of horses and carria ees.
would more than pay the interest on
the whole farm thus saved from a few
triangular fields.
There are numerous instances in all
parts of the country where the same
one-sided interest has sent the never
ceasing throng of travel and OF loaded
teams up over fatiguing hill in order
| that the road might lie on the line of
lots" and where a slight fleXure of a
few rods to the right or left, frequently
without any increase in distance, would
save a perpetually- Increasing amount
of hard scrabble, and jerk and over
strained muscle Not three miles from
the residence of the writer is just such
a hill, over which an important road
passed from a large village to a near
and thrOnged railway station; and over
this hill these villages will have to
climb necessarily, until Farmer Some
body. at the foot of the hill is willing
to have eleven yards of his cornffeld
encroached upon to make a level road
Within ten miles of this spot there are
more than ten similar Illustrations of
folly. Yet the community in which
these absurdities exist are reputed nm
USUALLY intelligent on general sl,biacto