St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1909-05-15

/ it as the years roll round. You don't
build it by piecemeal,. but you CAPT
talize your funds and build it. If you
build a bridge you do the same thing.
Now you cannot build your public
roads by piecemeal any more than
you could build your courthouse or
schoolhouse or bridge or anything else.
You have to treat the public roads
question just as you have treated the
other importent questions that are
arising. Every department of public
improvements, public men and repre-
sentatives have grasped the true con-
ception of how to work and how to do
public works, saving the one thing,
to build public roads.
II my friend Mr.. Marks from AS
sumption will investigate he will find
that his parish spends each year SIS, :
900 on public roads. They will never
have permanent highways in the parish
of Assumption. For the next ten
years they will spend SIS, 600 on the
roads and instead of spending it year
by year to the end that when the ten
years shall have gone by and the
money shall shall have been spent you
shall have no better roads than you
have now. Lay aside $4,000 for ten
years and raise $780, 900. Put it in
permanent highways throughout the
length of Assumption Parish. You
will have the use of your public roads
for ten years and you have not spent
dollar more than it would have cost
you now. 1t is the simplest PROPOSE
ton in the world. A community is
entitled to have just what it wants.
If you prefer having bad roads there
is nobody in the world can do anything
to force you to have good ones, but if
you prefer good ones, you can have
good ones at the same identical cost
that you are presently paying for
bad ones and it is up to the people to
say what kind of roads they want.
Major Kerr and myself have worked
up a system. We have mapped out
in the State of Louisiana compre-
hensive system to build public high
ways that will link together every
county seat with every country seat
in the State with permanent highways,
giving to the people of this State some
twenty-eight or twenty-nine hundred
miles of permanent highways, good in
bad weather and good in good weather.
want it understood and state it in
all seriousness. I am quoted as bring
ing in this good roads question mere
ly to build q road to the United States
Senate. | have stated it publicly that
the two senators there now are
friends of mine. / have supported
them in the past. / intend to support
them in the future. | am not trying
by road building to build q road to the
United States Senate. t,:z
Now my friends years ago fused to
be an editor. It is said how some mer
can fall from greatness. I used to be
an editor, but I was elected to the
Legislature. Well that was ster
downward. I then became Lieutenant
Governor. Now am Governor. Nc
man can tell where he will go to. ]
am sorry. / would like to have 9
paper of my own so ! could cuss the
other fellow. - =,
/ again welcome you to Covington
and the Parish and apologize for the
length of time / have spoken, but my
only excuse for doing so is that / feel
and believe that the proper time and
occasion to bring this matter before
the Editorial Association of Louisiana
is now on hand. Give it square deal
Give it square; honest deal, and if YOU
come to the conclusion that there il
something in it for the benefit of the
people support it, and if there is moth,
ng in it, oppose it irrespective of who
is behind it.