The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-11-29
SAYS UNCLE CIV

Pull that pianissimo stop, you pes
simist. We insist that the world Is
getting better and that plain John
Henry gets little bigger chance
every day for his white alley. The
standard of public honor is gradually
improving and it is no longer Gus
tomary for the gang to get more than
25 per cent of the public improve
ment money. Formerly the husky.
two-fisted boss who got less than 70
per cent was considered too clumsy
to live without work. Nowadays he
takes a quarter out of every dollar
and considers himself and his high
binders lucky. Which shows that in
one respect we are twice as well off as
before.
You may not have noticed it, but
one of the gratis that have been quiz
city shuff1ed into the discard is the
road fund" plum. Old Mother Earth
must have felt a little tremor of joy
when the United States lifted the road
building industry in her several COM
ponent parts out of the plane of plum
der and made it a legitimate public
business. 1t was well worth a little
CULVER of joy on the old lady's part,
but it is just possible that she over
looked the significance of the dawning
epoch, as did the rest of US.
AS a matter of fact, the develop
ment of every nation is gagged by
it's means of transportation, and If
there had been as much graft and in
competence in the building of rail-
roads as in the construction of wagon
highways the man from Broadway
would be able to find Indians in st.
Louis just as he expected to. We've
been building highways for a little
matter of a century, and a third and
pretty nearly all that we've got to
show for it is a record of easy money
for a few million grafters. And don't
know Of any single development of our
civic life that points more clearly to
an intent to be as honest and as great
as we think we are, than this general
determination to build permanent roads
with road money. Neither do 1 know
anything that is closer to human ma
ture than a wagon road, nor any better
evidence of the awakening of public
conscience than the resolution to give
the public the worth of it's highway
taxes.
Yesterday public road was the pet
graft of the politician, the plaything
of a "one-gallused' overseer with a
pull, the abomination of the farmer
and the despair of the man with an
automobile. The only person besides
the boss and the overseer who really
got any satisfaction out of 1t was the
INDECENT jokesmith, who could tell the
horrible truth about it and sell the
same for a dollar to comic weekly.
Usually a good road was the shortest
distance between two pieces of pro-
perty owned by a gentleman who car
ried his district to the polls in his vest
pocket. More profanity has been
was-ed on bad roads than upon any
other subject since the fall of man,
and he who hasn't nursed a low-hung,
30-horse power automobile across rut-
plagued and puddle-marked Iowa land
scape doesn't know what trouble is.
But we are getting the good roads
roads so good as to be monuments
of civic honor as well as highways of
civic progress. Good roads make big
crops, and the two make good men.
If you don't believe it, get road man
of the United States and read some
of the sociological surveys. Our own
particular part of the world is getting
better, and highway Improvement is
at once a cause and a symptom. Pull
that pianissimo stop. you pessimist!-
Copyright. 1912, by the Mcclure News
paper Syndicate.)