Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1905-06-20
INTERESTING TO MANUFACTURE
Frs,

w. P. Brownlow, member of congress
from Tennessee, is the particular
champion of good roads and desires to
hear from manufacturers and business
men on the subject. He can furnish
anybody interested, or who ought to
be interested, vast amount of infor-
nation about roads.
Perhaps no class Of people. the
farmer not excepted, has a greater in
terest in highway improvement than
those engaged in industrial enterprise
If the common roads of the country
were brought to a condition that
would enable farmers to market their
cost Of living in town and city would
be greatly lessened, and discomfort
among laboring people and operatives
in industrial concerns would largely
decrease if it did not entirely disap-
pear. Why and how? Present road
conditions compel farmers to rush
their products to market as soon as
harvested, when the roads are at their
best, as by waiting for a convenient
time they may not get there at all. If
one farmer must do this, his neighbors
must do likewise. This naturally con-
gests the market, forcing low prices
to the great detriment of the producer
and without benefit to the consumer,
because the average family in town or
city buys only small quantity at one
time, say a days or weeks supply.
What is the result? The speculator,
finding prices low and knowing that in
little while the bad roads season will
be on when competing products will
be kept away from trade centers, buys
up the surplus and stores it away for
the day which he knows is surely COM
ing when he can demand and receive
his own price for his holdings-the
stuff for which men toll; which they
are compelled to have. And when the
citizen in town, the mechanic and oper-
alive in the shops and factories, is
forced in winter and spring to pay ex-
orbitant prices for those articles of
household necessity which went beg
ging for buyers at low prices the pre-
ceding fall, he figures the increased
cost Of living in comparison and grows
restless and disconnected and is easily
led into strikes and other labor dis
turbances. We all know what usually
follows. This, of course, is not all that
enters into strike causes, but it contrib
utes full share. 1t ought to be per-
fectly plain to American manufacture
ers that the continuous orderly opera
ton Of industrial business depends
on measureably contented operatives;
that men are never contented when
the cost Of living is above their earn
ing capacity; and that prices of food
stuffs from the farm would be always
at a decent living level to all con-
cerned if we had systematically i'm
proved highways over which farmers
could travel to market any day in the
year. These farmers would realize
better prices for their products than
they do and still be able to sell to all
classes of customers at lower prices
than is forced by spectators in the
bad roads season. If this position is
sound, then the duty of manufacturers
seems to be to lend their every infiu-
ence to the support Of the Brownlow-
Latimer bills which seek to bring
about systematic and scientific high
way construction and improvement in
cooperation with the states. 1t is no
less In their own interest than that of
the farmers, who are their best pa
irons after all. And it is no less the
interest of all consumers of farm pro-
ducts in every town and city in the
United States. and Of every railroad
and other corporation employing labor
of any kind, and Of every railroad and
building contractor and others having
men in their employ.