The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1910-07-01
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The Good Roads Question.

There are so many reasons for
good roads in the South that the SUBJ
ject could be discussed from now on.
The sole cause of bad roads, how
ever, is the indifference of individ-
uals. Men meet and blow off lot
of steam and resolute only to go
back home and wait for the other
fellow to start the work.
The only hope is in perfect organi-
cation with definite end in view
an organization that has some finan-
cial resource, and that is made up
entirely of people free from politics.
So far as possible, the board or men,
bers at the head of such an organi-
zation should be made up of men
scattered in all directions, and as far
apart as possible in the territory to
be improved. This will prevent any
clique or faction getting together
and scheming to improve certain Sec
tons of the territory to be improved,
and incidentally securing options and
gobbling up real estate along the
line of improvement. This form of
graft is what brings about much of
the protest usually heard from small
property owners who feel that they
are already tax-ridden. And their
complaint is not without just cause
often.
The people who should take the
most interest in good roads are the
farmers. 1t means to them:
Highways over which to haul their
crops to markets.
Smooth, good roads that will save
their time, and preserve their hard
worked and high-priced live stock
Better facilities for sending their
children to school.
Enhancement of their farms
values (for every man covets a we'll
kept, profitable farm facing a good
road)
In Davidson County, Tenn, in the
wonderful bluegrass section around
Nashville, the highways are dotted
with profitable dairy farms. The
great roads stretch for miles like
white sheets ("pikes" they are called
up there), and in that section there
is no cry of back to the farm" The
greatest trouble seems to be to build
up cities.
What sight it is to visit that Sec
ton and notice the things you don't
see. No farms without live stock, no
idle fields. winter or summer, no I'M
painted farm homes, no isolated
rural school houses, no big planta-
lions rented to ignorant whites and
negroes while the owner lives in a
city mansion.
Those folks live and die within
their own domain and hand their
! lands down to the next generation.
| They are content with their lot and
live on the fat of the land. Their
homes face the beautiful pixies and
are surrounded by great groves and
rolling, well-kept lawns. They do
not call themselves farmers. They
simply own a place where they raise
everything they need. Fast horses
carry them to and from town miles
away. Automobiles carry them to
the theatres and bring them home at
night.
Those folks are good roads cranks.
Invariably the man who takes the
least interest in good roads is the
fellow who owns vast amount of
property. He is too greedy to sell
that part of his land that he cannot
till himself, and yet he is not willing
to enter in a movement that might
SO improve his land that the assessor
will raise his tax.
One of the greatest evils in the
cotton belt to-day is the owning and
controlling of vast plantations, and
the renting of these lands by the
owners who sap living from the
toll of poor white people and negroes
share troopers" The breaking
, up of these plantations will make our
country the richest in the world.
Good roads will break these up.
The owners will groan under the tax
and they will be compelled to relin-
quish their holdings TO people who
are farmers and who want to farm.
Memphis News-Scimitar.