The Mt. Sterling advocate. (Mt. Sterling, Ky.) 1890-current, 1914-11-04
GOOD ROADS

ing made BY the sixteen southern
States show that the South is now
annually putting out over $50, 000,-
600 in the building and maintenance
of roads without counting its ex-
penditure on street improvements in
towns and cities. The work that is
being done in every State is covered
by letters from the Governors OF
from the Highway Commissioners,
or other authorities who are han
road building materials, including
the road question in the var
ious States. Experts discuss various
sand clay, brick, cement, macadam
and all other phases Of road work.
In the opening editorial outlining
its reasons for the work which it
has been doing for years in behalf
of good the Manufacturers Record
says:
Reader! Are you a road engineer,
Il road builder, a road supervisor, or
are you county or town official
charged with responsibilities of road
and street building or maintenance?
Are YOU maker or seller of
road machinery equipment, or are
Won, as taxpayer, encouraging
the building or good roads?
If to any one of these questions
you can answer, ain, then rejoice
that you are numbered among those
whose work is more than material in
its scope. Perchance you think only
of the material side of it. If so,
look to the higher side and idealize
your work as part of a great cam
paign for human advancement; a
campaign for extending the highest
benefits of civilization, and the
moral, religious and educational life
of nation. Yours is more than a
business. 1t is a vocation, calling
that should in its wide scope include
in your thought the ideahsm of the
work as we'll as the routine of the
business.
1t is difficult to measure the good
accomplished by the building of good
roads or to catalogue their advan-
tages 1t is equally difficult to enum-
crate the disadvantages which nee
essarily inure to bad roads. The
good road opens TO the country and
to the city possibilities for larger
business and for larger profits on
the business done. 1t increases the
value of all adjacent land; but it
does this by increasing the net prof
its Of farming or of business carried
on these adjacent lands. The farm
er who lives on a mud road is ham
pered in summer and in winter. The
burden of hauling to and from the
farm costs him many times more
than all the freight rate that he
pays the railroads. If tenth of
the energy that has been expended
in the last ten years in trying to reg.
ulate railroads and reduce freight
rates had been given to the better
ment of the highways of the cOun-
try, infinitely larger results would
have been achieved for the good of
everybody.
The railroad freight rate is a
small item to the farmer as com
pared with that heavy burden he
bears when he hauls the product OF
his farm over a mud road, or brings
back to the farm the various things
whether they be dry-goods, OF
groceries, or lumber-that he buys
in the neighboring town or city. Not
only is his ability to do business t.
profit lessened by bad roads ano
broadened by good roads, but in tn,
former case his family is shut up fol
much of the year and deprived OF
the advantages of social and educa,
tional life; while the man who live:
on a good road gives to his family
the advantages of religious and ed,
vocational and social facilities moi
possible to those who live where
wheels are mired to the hub in win,
ter time, or where intolerable dust
| pYiStS i'm summer