The Marietta journal and courier. (Marietta, Ga.) 1909-1918, 1913-04-11
FRED 4. MsCL[SEEY
ON ROAD QUESTION


have recently appeared in your pap
er on the subject of Good Roads.
AT least the caption always appears
as Good Roads, while the discus
sions seem to be wholly of BAD
Roads,
Perhaps a few observations by
one who has been out Of your state
for some time might be of interest
TO your readers. 1t often happens
that one who has lived continuously
in one place does not fully realize
the changes that have actually TAX
en- place in given period of time.
The writer was raised in Cobb
county, but left the county about
1901 and the state in 1903. He
returned to the county last year in
an effort to recuperate his health.
1t was very much of a surprise to
see a statement from one of your
contributors that the roads of Cobb
county are actually in worse condi-
ton today than they were years ago
when you had the road overseer and
he warned his hands to meet him
at certain place on a given day to
work out the roads.
Twelve years ago there were only
one or two short stretch of graded
road in Cobb county Today there
are miles and miles of graded roads.
How the farmers used to dread
those steep hills north of Marietta
out Cherokee street. Now most of
the hills have been cut down. 1t
used to give a team of mules apret-
ty good load to pull two bales of
cotton up those steep hills by the
farm of S. r. McCleskey. Now as
this road has been changed and
graded so that four bales of cotton
would not be as difficult to pull as
two formerly were. Only last week
the writer saw Mr.. Emmett Bur-
toms team of two fine mules pulling
wagon from Blackwells loaded
with fifteen 200 pound bags of fer
tilizer. Ten bags would have proved
good load for this team twelve
years ago. There is no question
about it, Cobb county has been do
inG 81 ne mighty good road building.
Your contributor who wants to
go back is not very clear about what
no Wantc IN 10 h,,t
seems to be his desire to go back to
the old system of warning hand to
be on hand on a certain morning
to work the roads. Now if Mr.. farm
er is willing to do all the road work
and build nice road to Mr.. Merch-
ants store it would probably be
fine thing for Mr.. Merchant and
suit him exactly. But Mr.. Farmer is
not going to do any such thing. He
never has done it and never will,
because he is no fool. Whatever
may be said of your present system
it is certainly far superior to what
you had fifteen years ago.
Now whether your present sys-
tenn is as efficient as it might be is
another question entirely. 1t is not
so much question of amount of
your tax, but are you getting value
received for your money. There
are great many complaints and /
there must be some deficiency some )
where. Your roads are unquestion- !
ably in bad state Of repair
1t would seem to an outsider that }
you have entirely too many non-pro- |
ducers on the pay roll. 1t seems !
absurd that you should be required |
to pay for IT Wardens and guards |
to handle - convicts. Most of you
have seen guard standing over !
two or three convicts while throw
ing rocks out of the roads. Also
lot of time apparently is lost in ,
jumping from one small job to an
other. Another big leak seems to be |
in the IS drivers. These men are
drawing a mans pay for doing boys !
work. Why they cannot be taught |
to use shovel is hard for an OBJ
server to understand. Or perhaps
much of this driving could be done
by TRUSTEES. Very likely it would |
be a different matter to reduce the
guards and wardens under the pres
emit system of scattering the work
Of the convicts. But more of this
a little later.
In view of the experience of other
places it would seem advisable to go
slow in the matter of issuing bonds
$500, 100000 is lot of money, and
in the past it has looked so attrac-
tive that not all of the bond money
has always gone for road building.
Besides the interest on $300,000.00
at 6 per cent. for thirty years is
z tJn O00 no uybi 10