Semi-weekly herald., 1913-09-04
THE WAY TO GET GOOD ROADS.

Fifty thousand embattled Missouri
ans, under the command of their
governor, have just ended a two-day
warfare on bad roads. There were
corps of infantry, armed with picks
and shovels, and many companies of
light and heavy artillery, serving
scrapers and graders. Literally the
dirt was made to fly, and that it was
wholly triumphant campaign one
may be well assured by the enthus-
iasm which animated every soldier.
lmpassable roads were made good,
and roads were even made to appear
where there had been none. Separ-
ate and isolated communities were
grouped into neighborhoods by the
simple magic of roadmaking. Of
course one can not, yielding due re-
spect to his intelligence, imagine that
the roads thus created will long en-
dure. Work so important as road
making is not accomplished of en-
thusiasm alone, nor in a day, nor two
nor year. Good roads are the con-
sequence of patient, plodding perse-
verence, rather than of two-day
merrymaking. Yet let it not be in
ferred and we have any desire to
disparages the value of this demon
stration. 1t is not worthless. On the
contrary, as the cause of things, it
is worth much, how much will de-
pend on what follows. The cause of
good roads has been argued and
preached to degree that no other
subject has been in this country in
| a generation. In that way little more
is to be done in behalf of good roads.
But such exhibition as Missouri has
pulled off may well be expected to
| create state of mind which, if prop
erly taken advantage of, will lead to
systematic and persistent undertake
ings which will result in the good
roads desired. 1t was an appeal to
the imagination that these Missouri
ans made, and more is to be expected
from this from the roads which they
actually brought into existence dur
ing the two days of their mingled
merry-making and work.
The best argument for good roads
that has not been exhausted, worn
threadbare, is a good road. 1t has a
power of conviction greater than
may be generated of all the sciences
and PHILOSOPHERS. One may, and cas-
lily can, prove uncountestably that
bad roads entail a tremendous tax
on productive energy; one may show
irrefutably that some of the econom-
ic evils we complain of so eloquently
| can be much mitigated by improving
the means of vehicular transporta-
ton; one may, ascending into some-
what more ethereal atmosphere,
conclude that social conditions and
even moral conditions are percept-
| IDLY and momentously affected by the
state of the highways. All these
things may be proved, and have been
proved, as conclusively as any Euclid
ian proposition. Still such proofs are
less moving than a single good road
of five-mile length.
The way to resume is to resume,
said some one while doctrinaries
were puzzling themselves and the
country with discussion of methods of
substituting money for the country's
promises to pay. With much more
reason it may be said that the way
to get good roads is to build them.
One good road will compel another.
For the town that builds one good
/ road derives an advantage over a
| rival town that rival town can not
afford nor tolerate. 1t must, in COM
mercial self-defense, open as easy a
highway to itself. Elsewise it will
lose some of the trade territory which
natusally belongs to it. In the early
days the success of one town in get
ting a railroad excited jealousy, envy
and apprehension in every competi-
tive town. The apprehension at least
was well founded. The town with
the railrad grew at the expense of
those not thus favored. Highways
have now very nearly if not quite
as much power to disturb the COM
mercial balance as among rival
towns; for whereas in the days when
the country was sparsely settled on
ly means of communication which
reached out over long distances like
the railroad does had the power to
affect the commercial condition of a |
community, vehicular highways are
now given the same potence by the
greater density of opulation.-Dallas
Herald