The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-01-31
FOR BETTER HIGHWAYS
WORK OF SPECIAL CoMM1TTks
 IN WASHINGTON.
National Aid in the Construction or Public Roads is Urged Be-
 fore < Committee. of Congress.
Advertiser Bureau,
 Colorado Building, s.washington, Jan. 30..

Annt osno o-on presented a resolution enoors- s.r that project, which was read anu ne sta5 The Chairman appointed Messrs. es..,a,,t If West Virginia, killebreW or TN,nassee and Cooley of Minnesota, a .necial committee to prepare prien Iol Submission to the House and senate |on- mittees on Agriculture: n,
 An invitation was extended 10 .he H fiona, Good Roads Association to hoio us annual meeting at Portland, oregon. ID 1oo5 which was laid over to be presented at the national meeting in St. LOUIS this x,ear committee of three was appoint sS Inv the Chairman to wait on Speaker Cannon and explain the mission or the Cool Roads Committee at this meetns George H. Maxwell. Chairman or the Executive Committee of the Nauonai .ho meeting. haar.
 At 10:30 the committee was given near ing before the Senate Committee on. AgIi- culture. Chairman. Harper :. opened the discussion and stated to the committee that he and his, colleagues appeared pe fore them, at this time by the directioh oi the National Good Roads Assoclation, 10 rresant rne the. resolutions unanimously adopted, by the Association at its las. meeting. He explained that neither the Committee.. nor the Association as d whole had any desire to promote or au- vocate either the Browniow. .LatiHer. GaIlinger or any other particular Dill now bending before Congress, but that snei. purpose was to impress upon the nIiiiuS o. tha Tommittee the growing demand for national aid for good roads as general nronosition. He said they were all Tn Ia, xyor of any bill that Congress might en- act which would afford to. the tolnns farmers of this country some relet rom the enormous burdens Of mud tax which they are now daily paying' lie closed with an earnest appeal to the sen a+ors that tbey give this matter their most careful consideration. and introduceo Mir. Winthrop B.. Scarritt. President or tha Automobile Club of America
 MT. Scarritt first called attention to the fact t6at the roads built by the Romans under Caesar Augustus still stand as tn" wonders of the world. He said' we have inc biggest rivers, the biggest noun +ains inc biggest trusts and the poorest roads of any nation on earth" He spoke of the roads of France and Switzerland wNoh were constructed by the govern ments of these countries, and were moue's of the art of good road making. He said he divided his argument in favor or na- tional aid for good roads into three prop ositions. The first was the public well fare and under this head he pointed out that. while he was not a lawyer. nor very rnnch of a student of our Constitution. he divined it's intention to be that Con- Rress should always provide for the well fare of the nation, and how could the public welfare be better provided for than by national aid to good roads," he askef, ''which benefits every citizen in the land
 His second proposition was that good roads pay. He argued that the statistics showed the average cost per ton per mile for wagon haulage in this country to be % cents. while in France it never exceed ed 12 1-2 cents, and he believed we soon could reduce 1t to 10 cents. which would save fifteen hundred thousand dollars ysyear over the present cost occasion ed by bad roads. He mentioned the fact that this government is about to spend two hundred millions or more on the Panama canal project. that the State of New York would soon expend a hundred and one million dollars for the improve ment, of the Erie canal. that four hun dredsand fifty million of dollars of the governments money had already gone into the improvement of the rivers and harbors of our country, and yet a thou sand times more people travel on land and thousand times as many tons of freight are hauled over the wagon roads of the land as upon the waters.
 His third reason was that national aid was but simple justice to the farmers. He said he was entirely familiar with the disagreeable phases of the life of the farmer in the "mire and mud" yet upon no other class of citizens did the prosper ity of the country so much depend. 'The last census shows that they raised $95O- 100000. worth of corn, $s5O,O'OO 900 worth of hay. $50O,000,000 worth of cotton and $450, 100000 worth of wheat, and our bad roads put a tax of F 1-2 cents on every ton of this enormous product that was hauled to market. How long," he asked, "can even such great and wealthy nation as the United States stand up in competition with the rest of the world under such an unfavorable handicap as that?" He beg ged that the members of the committee would leave as lasting heritage to their sons and daughters the enactment into law of this all important measure for the relief of the American people
 Samuel J. Hill of Seattle in advocating national aid for good roads, also called attention to the dependence of this coun- try upon its farmer-citizens, not alone on account of their commercial importance, but also as proposition of national self defense. He said that the greatest fight ing regiments in the civil war, both on the Union and Confederate sides. were a Minnesota and North Carolina Regi- ment, the first of which lost S3 per cent in forty minutes fighting at the Battle or Gettysburg. and out of seventy-seven men of Captain Tuttles company of the lall remained to tell the story. These were all farmers, and he argued that such fighting men were entitled to rece,\e from the Government aid for good roads or any other measure that would better their condition. He said our commerce m foreign products amounted to almost a billion dollars. and that if good roaCs would reduce the cost of hauling this i'm nense amount of tonnage but few cents a ton per mile, it would be the best ar- gument he could put forth in favor of the measure. Mir. Hill recounted the superior excellence of the American railroad ard traffic is handled at much less cost than by the railroads of any other country. Senator DolliTer asked if there wasn't a feeling in the West that this is a move ment on behalf of the automobile" and the Good Roads men responded in chorus ''No." Mir. Hill replied that there weren't ten automobiles in the whole State of Washington He said that Massachusetts had 5000 automobiles, which number was growing at the rate of thirty-five a day, but the spread of good roads did not be- gin there. It began in the West. He said he was satisfied that the real cost of wagon haulage in this country was four times as great as in any other coun- try, and he earnestly urged the passage of some such bill as the Latimer or Brownlow bill for relief.
 MT. Hiatt of South Carolina, spoke of the urgent need of good roads in the South and said that the natives there were too poor to build roads without Gov ernment aid. He said that his State prc-