The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1910-07-29
The cnux Of The Problem.


Koads are vital to the develop
ment of northern Minnesota. The
writer has recently tramped over
some of the trails now bearing the
name of roads, aud knows whereof
he speaks. Over a large section of
the state there are no roads save in
winter time. Men living two; or
three, or five miles from town have
no way to market their produce save
by packing it on their backs. In
this manner men carry their pro-
visions as high as thirty and even
forty miles to their claims. Under
these conditions they cannot farm,
for they cannot market their pro-
duce. Because of no roads they are
leaving the country for the Canad.
ian Northwest and not because, az
has been stated, they are squatters
and stool-pigeons for the lumber
companies and paper mill interests.
Properly built roads will solve
the drainage problem in most local.
tiles. Men are fighting for bitches
because the dirt excavated from the
ditch will build a road. But the
road is the real thing they are after.
Little of the total area of this land
is swamp. Build roads to let the
settlers in and their products out,
and on the cutting of the timber
and the clearing of the land the
bulk of the so.called "swamp lands''
will disappear. The country has a
better natural drainage than south
ern Minnesota or either of the d.
kotas.
1t costs from $500 to $1,000 a mile
to open up roads through this Sec
ton of the state. At the present
time the settler is doing this work,
IN part by taxation, largely by graf
uitoCs labor. One man cut four
mile road through state land in
order to get an outlet to market.
Others have done all they could,
and many, having done all in their
power, still found themselves shut
"tf from market and neighbors, and
have LETT in despair. And what these
have done others will do unless the
state wakes up to the situation and
stops twindling its thumbs over the
enhancing value otthe swamp lands
values enhanced only by the pres
ence of the settler.
Here in Minnesota we say to the
settler: take your land, skinned of
it's timber and plastered with a
mineral reserve. Build your own
roads or 20 without them. Clear this
land; build these roads; enhance
the value of the state lands these
roads must cross-lands that do not
pay taxes and are not swamp, save
in legal fiction, and if you don't like
it the presumption is you are a
stool pigeon; go to Canada, where a
road department (that OF Ontario)
lays down in absolute gift two dol
lars for every one you provide, and
where roads are built ahead of the
settler in the faith that he will fol.
low them and make permanent
home, which he does"
On the north side of Rainy river
these Provincial roads are leading
settlement across muskeg and eo-
called swamp" exactly similar to
that on the American side. They
cost about ST 900 per mile too much,
by the way), but they are built and
maintained, and the settler comes
and finds way to MAKE a home.
On the American side the state con-
graduates itself on the appreciat-
ing value of lands it possesses
lands that can appreciate in value
only as the settler carries this tre-
mendous burden of direct and con.
cealed taxation. If the present sit
uation be considered an equitable
one for the settler, who with his
family is walled about, not alone
by the forest, but much more effect
ually by the Minnesota land owner,
who shifts upon him this crushing
burden of taxation, then this state
needs to interpret anew the mean.
ing of the "square deal."-Farm
Stock and Home.