The Newtown bee., 1908-06-05

Duchess county or the selectmen in sherman, they would express mild interest and tell us to forget it. But cannot forget 1t. We need 1t at home. The Irish farmers realize it's value. They willingly pay taxes to maintain steam rollers. stone erushers and to hire a sweeper for every two miles of road. They realize that their horses can draw two and four times the loads over good road as compared with bad ones. They elect and re-ele@t the pub. lie officials who rigidly insist on large expenditures for good roads.
 We drove thirty miles one day on a haunting car, with one horse drawing four people. and were never jolted once. Our horse trotted up hill and down and the motion of the car was as smooth as the flight of hawk. Every two miles we saw sweeper at work removing from the road the ma terial which in America is used to make the road, In Ireland they sweep into the ditch what in America We scrape out of the ditch into the roadbed.
 This was in towns three, five and eight miles from the railroads. Imagine stone roads in North Quaker Hill, on Bureh Hill. in Webatuck and in Havi- land Hollow? With cuts to level the high places and causeways over the marshes. Imagine stone bridges with parapets-say five such between Paw. ling station and Mizzentop Hotel. I'm agine the improvement in the values of land if maeadamized roads made oi crushed stone and rolled with a ten tor roller were laid all through the country between Quaker Hill and Sherman Cen. ter! This, however, is what exists ir parts of Ireland from which come the sons of farmers whose fathers are too poor to keep them at home. These | farmers, voluntarily, not of con straint, support these roads because they can send butter and eggs to mar. ket behind donkey, whereas a horse would be necessary, or two horses, tt haul them to market over bad roads
 On Quaker Hill in 1900 the store keepers paid a days wages to team ster to haul 1000 pounds to the river al Fishkill. The roads then were mere trails and the teamster could haul onl! half a ton. To-day the load for tean would be a ton. But in Ireland such team could haul four tons or better 1 for the poor man. One horse coult haul ton-four times the load for bat roads. It is a strange and humiliatint thing for me to see the Irish farmer so far ahead in this of the American
 I wonder what is the reason. Wh! are American farmers as a class s' dense and unprogressive? Why are se lectmen and supervisors so backward
 They are the very men who look dowl on the Irish. We see no country, O. the many visited, so pleasing, an' none so beautiful, indeed few s' inter esting historically. as Ireland. an not sure that even the Pyramids il Egypt are older than the sacred stone the Cromlechs-in Ireland, which ar on almost every high hill. The farm CTS tell you that "the giants bull them" and "the fairies made tn
 forths," but that means that they wer
 made in very ancient times. And tn
 beauty of the land is sweeter to tn eye, the villages quainter, the peopl more courteous than any. Only tn Arabs approach the Irish in unlversa good manners. ...~... &4 # My purpose in writing, however was to say word in the interest o good roads, the mark of every ciyilize country. | Warren Il. Wilson.