The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-06-21

storage system hetis bearing an un- just burden too heavy for him. And If 1t is cannot it be charged directly to the system of bad roads? This is problem. You now realize that 1t is no longer the problem of the coun- of people. It is the problem as much of the city as of the country.
 Touching the Consumer.
 ''The cost of production is not the only thing; the cost of transportation we recognize as vital factor. could show you beyond a reasonable doubt, by comparison with foreign countries, that the carrying cost to England, Germany, and Switzerland is it costs us more than $300,00o,0 900 a year to carry the produce of farms to the towns is, the expense over the foreign expense. Suppose we could save the $500, 0,O0o-who bears that? If it is the cost of trans portation it is added to the cost of produce, and who bears it? The consumer of the city-and it comes back to the consumer after all; he bears the cost of transportation, and by the improvements of the roads we could save $300,OO0, 900 a year. It would leave the producer reasonable amount of profit and save the city consumer the burden of an unjust taxation.
 CT have an abiding confidence that the people of the United States would never consider the cost of this. They would believe that it would be far better to spend millions for perpetual impfovements than to expend the mil, |, lions they now spend for mud taxes"
 Again, it is argued, that States and municipalities should help county road building, as a rule, on the ground that the mass of- people of the city actually use the country roads more than the scattered population of the county. Then when there's ques- ton raised about that, the good roads advocates, who are now form ed into National association, com posed of automatic owners, farmers, country store keepers, city men who like to drive out, and members of both Houses of Congress, come back be disputed, and that is that the bad roads increase the cost to the city consumer of everything that comes from the farm. When the farmer can't haul his stuff to market he must send it by rail, and the buyer must pay the freight and when, he has to haul 1t over bad roads the consumer of freighting. too.
 Judge J. T. Ronald of Seattle has prepared the exact figures of cost of bad roads per ton to the farmer, this cost being passed along to the con sumer, with little more added at every handling, until it more than doubles up. csf
 Judge Ronald finds that the far mers deliver more than 25O.O00,00 tons>of freight year in this country over. dirt roads. He finds that the cost to them is twenty-three cents mile for the haul and that an average haul is nine miles. so that for each ton the cost of the haul is SPOT, whereas over an improved road he finds the. cost of the haul is only eight cents per ton a mile, so the average haul on an inn proved road would be seventy-two cents, or saving at the start of the farmers delivery df $1.35 ton,i equaling the grand total of $337.5Oo,- o0O. which Is tie tax oar farners pas E to muddy reads in a s1ngle year for produce shipped by railroad alone. s'Tfis total loss to American farmers" !" he says, s'amounts in five years to a sum sufficient to pay the interest bearing debt of the Government. the expense of digging and fortifying the Panama Canal and of improving three highways across the United States from East to Vest and from North to SOuth"