The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-10-20
III Hope for Better Roads.

AS nation of intelligent and industri-
Gus people, leading the world in the
march of progress, we are compelled to
admit that We are many years behind
the ancients in that particular branch of
our internal improvements which is gen.
orally conceded to be a very important
FACTOR in the advancement of any nat-o
prosperity, namely, our public highways
The evidences of our commercial pros
perity are on all sides, but the very
agencies which have contributed most
largely to the development of our coun-
try have been most detrimental to the
Improvement of our Travelled thorough
fares. In the early part of the last CEN
fury when the primitive stage coach was
almost the sole means of transportation,
good public highways in all the more
thickly settled portions of OUT coun-
try were by no means a remote posi-
bility.
But the question of improved roads re-
ceived its first serious setback when
Fulton solved the problem of steam
driven boats and, few years later, when
Cooper built the first American locomo-
tive good roads were indefinitely rele-
gated to The rear.
The need for better transportation IA
Cilities was met in the constant develop
ment of our steamship lines and rail-
WAY y UQl INC COill1liOll 1OeiUS, lIlC ASSN-
ers of. these great systems of transport
tation and travel, over which every
pound of our agricultural productions
must pass before they can be marketed,
have been neglected so that in the begin
mig of this or the closing decade of the
last century, the greatest century in
commercial prosperity the world has
ever known, we find ourselves with
system of highways inferior to that of
4
But the work of American road-makinS
is passing through a transition period.
The constant agitation of the question
in recent years by the press and through
other channels is arousing all classes of
the community to the fact that there
Is something radically wrong with our
present system of matchmaking.
From their point of view the farmers
are becoming keenly alive to the situa-
ton. They know the roads are not by
any means in a satisfactory condition
and that the system of management now
prevailing is largely responsible for this,
The betterment of the country roads,
while of as universal Importance as rail-
ways, must be looked at in the main
from the farmers standpoint He feels
the influence of bad roads most directly,
interfering as they do with all his social
and business relations The indirect use
of the roads by the cities arises from the
fact that while the farmer uses the
road to haul his produce to the
market town, ne goes there quite as
much for the purpose of taking back
with him goods which he purchases from
the merchants. Consequently, the cities
are interested in having the roads i'm
proved and their commercial bodies are
cooperating with the Office of public
road inquiries, United States department
of agriculture, and with the National
Good Roads association, which, in turn
have co-operated in one instance with
the Illinois Central railroad, and they
have just completed a thoroughly sue
cessful good roads campaign in the
states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennes-
see, Kentucky and Illinois, with a good
roads train equipped with all the i'm
proved modern road-making machinery.
Besides distributing quantities of good
roads literature, a desirable object lesson
was presented to the people of which
they " re eager and willing to avail
themselves. 1t was the beginning of a
practical system under which the various
town road expenditures could be work
ed out to advantage. In our own state
conditions are changing very materially
and the authorities in charge are usually
earnest and sincere in their endeavors
to secure the best results and to a certain
extent Improvement has been very mark
ed, due in a large measure to road grad
ers, which are possessed now by nearly
every town in the state, but the way
farer passing over the roads can easily
see the i'll effects of the statute labor
system.