The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1915-09-08

But the railroad people had as
well decide now that the railroads
and the trolleys will haul a constant
ly decreasing percentage of passen-
gers between the nearby towns and
cities. The automobile has come to
stay. The time when a man will
wait all day in Abbeville to catch the
afternoon train to the up .country
has passed. The travelling man no
longer comes to Abbeville and spends
a day here because he cannot get a
train, out of Abbeville to the point of
his next destination. He travels
through the country in an automobile.
You may leave here twice during the
day for Greenville or Anderson on
the Southern; but you may leave at
any hour of the day or night for
either of these points in an automo-
bile. And this means that the peo-
pie will travel more and more in
their own conveyances, and they will
not depend on the unsatisfactory
schedules of railroads.
And there will be no use for street
cars and interurban ars as the auto
mobile comes more and more into
use. The passengers will be car
ried from point to point in the cities
by the jitney bus, and freight will be
hauled to nearby towns in motor
driven trucks. 1t will be a waste of
money to build a railroad to Antre-
Vile to haul freight, when a truck
costing two thousand dollars, which
one man can operate, will haul all
the freight which goes into that COM
munity. And it will not be neces-
sary to run a trolley between Ander-
son and Abbeville to handle passen-
gers, when a motor driven vehicle
will carry these same passengers over
the dirt roads, without the expense
of building and maintaining a rail-
road track.
But it will take good roads to, bring
all this about. The towns which help
construct these roads and which con-
meet themselves with other towns of
Importance, the. counties which build
bridges necessary to make possible
these highways will reap the benefits
Of the new system.
If there is a town in the State that
needs an outlet, it is Abbeville; if
there is a county which is in a manner
cut off from the world by natural
boundaries it is this county. The
railroads are building around US, but
none of them seek this point. We
are off the map SO to speak, and we
will continue to get more and more
off the map. If there is anything we
should welcome, it is a closer connec-
ton with our neighbors across the
river. We need to come in contact
with these people, and we need to put
ourselves on one of the great high
ways constantly being established in
this part of the country, or make up
our minds to dry up.
For this reason, we believe that
the suggestion made by Mr.. Booth to
Congressman Aiken, in his letter pub
lished in this issue, should receive
attention. We would favor a reas-
enable expenditure on the part of the
people of this county, in order to con-
meet us with the people on the other
side of the Savannah. We are as
widely separated from these people
now as if the Atlantic Ocean were
between us. We can have no hope
of getting or any Of the proposed
highways which follow the ridge to
the country, but if a highway is to be
built through Elberton to Northern
points, we have as good opportunity
as any other place on this side of the
river to get this highway, especially
IF we are wi11ino to do corpafbipo