The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1899-08-05

poem: but there is neither beauty. poe
trr nor romance in being mud-bound.
The first step in civilization is the step
up and out of the mud. We know a
town that has furnished its full share
of inspiring agricultural literature for
press and platform in which some of
the families and neighbors even of
those who furnish such literature are
practically mud-bound n part of the
year-cut off from church. lectures, So
cial life. by very deep and very I'M
poetic mud.
At n certain farmers club. recently,
one member by previously assignment
discussed the influence of electric
roads upon the value OF the farm and its
products. After speaking of their intiu.
ence on the cash values, he said in sub
stance: "EUt there are other values
than the cash ones. The FARMS best
products are its human ones, and what.
ever makes these human products more
happy. intelligent and useful enhances
the value of the farm and-its products in
the highest and best of all ways. Even
ing lectures and entertainments? Yes,
but they close at ten or later and three
miles of mud roads and cleaning the
horses afterwards take all the fun out
of it. Church? Why, l actually lose
more religion going and coming than I
get while I'm there. The only time my
wife is disconnected with farm life is
when we're m~ud-bound. If we had an
electric road past Us farm life would be
ideal" Another member thought real
L. good gravel or stone pixies would
solve the difficulty even better.
We know a town from which several
hundred gallons of milk are shipped to
the city daily the year round. Some of
the milk is hauled three miles or more
TO the station. rain or shine, mud or
dust, and as much more goes to cheese
factories. There are beds of fairly good
gravel in three parts of the township or
lust across the line. 1t is sandstone,
quartz and granite gravel with very lit
tie sEale. 1t is not SO good or durable
as limestone gravel, but is better far
than CLAW. In the township there are
thousands of tons of "nigger-heads,
that is. granite powders brought by
glacial action. from the size of your fist
up to the size Of a large ~hay-cock. They
either obstruct farm work badly, or
have been gathered into huge piles in
fence corners and elsewhere, where
they are useless and a nuisance. A good
steam-power crUsher would make the
very best road metal" of them. Eight
feet wide and eight inches deep of such
broken granite on a properly graded
roadbed, and covered with four inches
of gravel well rounded up, and with
proper drainage, would make solid
roads the wear round. and the roads
would last for many years. provided
very heavy loads were forbidden on
them in wet times. Such roads would
actually cost the farmers less, if the
hauling of material were done by them
selves. than it now costs them to wal
low through the deep mud daily with
their milk to station and to factory,
several months each year, year after
wear, as they now do. And what al up
lift to the intellectual and social life
of the whole community. There are
hundreds of such OWL in Ohio and
neighboring states, outside of the parts
rnderlaid with limestone and in which
limestone gravel abounds and in which
the mud roads are already superseded
by hundreds of miles of splendid stone
and gravel pixies in each county. In
such regions the worst features OF the
isolation of farm life are n thing of the
past. They should be everywhere even
If road metal must be shipped in by
railway. Free rural mail delivery will
90 hand in hand with such roads in re-
iieving our farms of their isolation the
whole year round.-Ohio Farmer.