Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1907-05-19
|ALUE OF GOOD ROADS
low They Increase Home Trsas Ickthe Bad Weather Season.
|nvlcE FROM A NEW DRUMMER

TWICE FROM A NEW DRUMMER
 Tells the Local Merchant Why
 a.s;ness is Dull During the Winter
 and sprins-Farmers' Wives Buy
 Through the Mail.
 The new drummer entered the office
 the Grand Central hotel with {,
 oov, on his face and several smother
 ;mprecations just inside his lips. He
 baA the appearance of q man who
 vanted to use extremely hot language.
 ,nt the sight of the Methodist church
 rst across the way and the Baptist ,hurch down the street restrained him.
 n other words, he was swearing mad
 He was really an old drummer, though new to this particular town. This was the first time he had made" the place. The drummer had come i'll 6yerland from the county seat, twenty miles away, in spring wagon hired from the livery stable. His two sample Trunks were in the back part of the wagon. They were splashed with mud There was mud even on the seat cusl- ion. and the drummers clothes were yellow with mud. The drivers ap- parel was simply caked with it, but he did not appear to mind little thing 1 like that. He was used to 1t. The horses also were caked with mud, and i the( M heels of the vehicle carried sev- eial pounds each of the yellow sticki- ness.
 "Well, neverw calculated the drum mer as he wiped the mud from his fingers before taking up the pen to reg ister his name. 'This is the worst I ever struck. Why don't you folks around here build some decent roads? You've got plenty of material right at hand. There's rock enough along the roadside to make the finest roads in the land if you would only put it where 1t will do the most good''
 "Oh, we don't worry" said the hotel clerk, marking room No. 23 opposite the new guests name. "We've put up with muddy roads from the beginning and got along fairly we'll, and reckon we can continue to navigate"
 Navigation - that's the row, all right" said the drummer. "You ought to hire boats instead of wagons in this section. Why, some of the places we came through today would float skiff.''
 The local newspaper editor was standing by the desk. He smiled grimly.
 "T've been preaching good roads to the people of this neighborhood for years," he said, "but they don't seem to take to the idea. They are pretty U Pd people, too, but they've formed MsS habit of putting up with mud ill he muddy season and don't kick much. They say their fathers were content to drive through the mud when necessary or stay at home till the roads dried out, and they think they ought to be content to do the same"
 "Huh"' the drummer grunted. Flows business here in the winter and spring?"
 Mighty poor" replied the dry goods mighty poor, for a fact. People out in the country don't seem to do any trading except in summer"
 ''When the roads are good" contin- ued the drummer. 'I thought as much that is, they don't do much trading with you here in town. But country people are always buying somethine somewhere when times are as good as they are now. That you may put down as fact. Where do they buy from?'
 "Well, certainly not from me-" said the merchant.
 'Of course not, because the women who do most of the buying. You know that. The farmers wives come to town only once month or so during the winter, owing to your miserable roads, They do buy things, though and l can give you little tip. They buy them by mail. They read these large and luscious catalogues sent to them by the big city mail order firms. and they order through the catalogues. Did it ever occur to you that if you had decent roads you would get a much larger winter trade from the country? No? We'll, think it over. l have just been reading some figures. The state of Iowa, for instance, has z,23O,OO0 population. It has 1OO,43O miles of public roads--what they call roads-but only 15O miles are of mac adam and passable every month in the year. What do you think of that? Then take Missouri. That state. ac- cord1ng to these figures, has more than 3,OO0,000 people, with 90,OO0 miles of public roads. It has only about thou sand miles of we'll built highways. Illinois is still worse eff for good roads. Most of the states line up just about the same. What eau you expect?"
 "It's q new idea" said the merchant meekly. "and I'm going to think it over and talk it over with some of the other town people. We've been think mg our editor here is a good roads crank, but I'm inclined to the opinion