The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-06-04
CONSTRUCT ROADS BY CONTRACT.

Mississippi Station, has prepared a
valuable paper on "Good Dirt Roads
for Mississippi" wherein he urges
the Importance of good roads, and
sets forth what he regards as the
best methods of securing their per-
manent betterment in the South.
He says:
"The people of the State may have
good dirt roads in comparatively
short time, provided they adopt the
best business methods in making
them. There probably is no good
reason why the county supervisors
should deal with this important mat
ter with less business ability and
less system than they do with other
public matters that come before
them. The roads may be first prop
erly shaped and drained and then
graded, but such improvement may
be made with the expectation that
they will be finally surfaced with
gravel or other material. To shape,
drain and grade our dirt roads will
improve them materially, and the
cost will not be burdensome. Sur
facing roads, however, is expensive,
and it takes years for any people to
accomplish it.
"Good roads cannot be made nor
maintained by doing a little work on
them once or twice a year This is
not business-like way to deal with
the matter, and no further comment
is necessary on the expensive and
wasteful methods of warming out
hands for road duty at the very
time, perhaps, when the least eff
cient work can be done. To have
good roads it must be the regular
business of some one to make and
maintain them, and this can only be
done by contract, specifying what is
required.
''Many of our roads should be
located differently, 80 as to lessen
the cost of grading, as roads should
go around steep hills or through
them. Locate the roads properly,
and grading them will be a simple
and easy matter. The people of this
State ought to appreciate the com.
parative ease with which they can
have good dirt roads, for surely our
difficulties are not nearly so great as
those that have to be overcome in
many sections.
'The three most glaring defects of
the system now in vogue are, first,
the labor tax is not honestly paid,
being either avoided or sighted in
various ways by majority of the
hands. A few do honest work and
take an interest in it, but as a gen
eral rule the object seems to be to
either get over the section of road in
any style and thus get disagreea BILE
job done, or else make the few days
of road work time for recreation in
which to laugh and joke with their
neigh bors. In the second place, the
labor given to road work is not in
tolligently directed. There are about
as many plans of working the roads
as there are overseers, and as a rule
all of these plans are more or less de
fective, resulting in a partial waste
of such labor as is applied. The
labOrers bring such tools as they
happen to have regardless of their
adapta bility to road work. The rule
is to work the roads once year,
usually after the crops are laid by
but our heavy spring rains damage
the roads greatly and such damage
should be repaired promptly"
!
When the boys on the farm becon q
impressed with the BILE
fact that the art of tilling the soil
ia the highest, most noble and most
healthful vocation in which men can
engage; that farm pursuits and life
bring creature and Creator into
closer communion and fellowship,
resulting in more exalted conceptions
of origin and destiny than any other,
then and not until then, will the
farm Cffer promise for young men to
enter the field to cultivate the soil
[ rejoice in the belief that the sun
is rising in that direction. Our agri.
cultural colleges have demonstrated
that scientific, intelligently-con.
, Quoted farming renders surer, more
satisfactory and more remunerative
returns than almost any other voca
ton. In time educated labor will
: forge it's way to the fore, and for the