The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-10-01
GOOD ROADS FOR FARMERS.

GOOD ROADS FOR FARMERS.
In his address before the American
road congress, Secretary Houston of
the federal department of agriculture
sounded a most important and SEN
sibIe note. He urged the construction
of good roads for the benefit of the
farmers, rather than the building of
transcontinental highways for the
benefit of the automo bilists. And If
the good roads movement is to be of
any real benefit to the nation that is
the direction it must take.
An enormous factor in the cost of
living is the expense of handling the
products from which food is made be-
tween the farms and the consumers.
There is a wide discrepancy between
the price the farmer receives for his
products and the price at which they
are sold by the retailer. The producer
gets nothing like his rightful share of
the ofttimes excessive price to the
public. And the smallness of the re-
turn to the producer is often due to
the initial expense of time and labor
that is required to transport his pro-
ducts from the farm to the nearby
city or to a railway station where it
is started on the second stage of its
journey to the markets. And this ex-
pense to the producer naturally forms
its share of the price to the people.
One of the pressing farm problems
of today is to make rural life more at
tractive and interesting to the people
who pursue it, so that they will be
content to stay on the farm and so
that others will be encouraged to par
ticipate in the back to the farm
movement" And it is generally
agreed that an aid to its solution is
to be found in bringing the farms, fig
uratively speaking, as close as possible
to the cities and towns in their inn
mediate vicinity. This will give the
children of the farm easy access to the
best that there is in the line of edu-
cation. 1t will provide the grown-ups
with needed and interesting recrea-
ton and the wide and agreeable social
intercourse that is now denied so
many of them.
Good roads are the agents, and the
only ones, that can. remedy the exist
ing evils in these particulars. Good
roads will materially increase the pro-
fits of farmers and make farm life
more attractive in every way. And
the prosperity and well-being of the
people of the entire nation are based
primarily on the prosperity of the
farmers, and an increased activity in
agricultural pursuits.
For these essentially important rea-
sons good roads for the especial BEN
eft of the farmers should come first.
Transcontinental highways, such as
two or three different associations are
now projecting on paper, would be
fine things. But their advantage to
the bulk of the agriculturists of the
country would be rather negligible
Only a relatively small number of far
mers would be benefited by them.
The automobiles have done a big
service in pushing the propaganda of
good roads to the front. They are en-
titled to due consideration. AS mat
ter of fact, though, the largest delights
in automobiling are to be found on
trips along good roads through the
rural districts. The bulk of the auto
mobilists care nothing about swift
dashes of a hundred miles or so on
transcontinenta1 highway between big
cities. And as far as using such
there are only a comparatively few
autoists who would have the time and
to make such a trip.
highways present
huge and magnificent picture to the
imagination, but the real utility in the
good roads line will come in the good
roads that will be of the largest bene-
fit to the farmers and also to the rest
of the people who are so dependent for
their daily bread on them.