The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1915-02-12
Be Certain You Are Right.

-~-E9~~S'
One of the most harmonious meet
lngs ever held in the county was tn
good roads meeting at the court
house last Monday by citizens of tn
Thirteenth Civil District, and the,
lost no time and split no hairs il
proceeding right to the heart of tn
matter. But what we want to sug
gest is involved in the kind o
roads and the character of contrac
to be adopted after other matter
have been arranged. AS Mr.. Mos
said, time enough to settle upon thu
class of roads when all the prelimi
naries are arranged and the bill
passed empowering the district tt
issue bonds or to assess taxes fol
hard roads.
After all this is done, however, We
come to the most important part OF
the matter-what kind of roads we
shall build and how the contract to
build them shall be made. Upon the
solution of these two problems de-
pend the success of the whole enter
prise. The committee having the
matter in charge could make the
mistake of adopting the wrong ma
terial OF the wrong construction for
this country, and then should they
not fail in this they might make a
bad contract. There might creep in
a lot of graft. The contractor might
not be the right sort.
All these things should have the
same care and attention that is Civ
en- to our private affairs. We are
heartily in favor of hard roads and
taxation for such purposes, but have
heard enough about Doodle and graft
to warn our people that they must
proceed cautiously and understand
ingly. Now to be more specific, the
matter has suggested itself on more
than one occasion that if we had
anything to do with the direction or
management of streets or road build
ing, or for that matter, any other
public improvements the first thing
would be to go where the best
standard work is done and find out
exactly of what it consists, how con-
Structed and the cost of same. |
Doesn't make any difference how
many engineers we get and no pub
lie improvement of this kind should |
be attempted without competent |
civil engineer, the committee should |
not take as final the engineers opin-
ion, but should make a thorough in
of all the best standard |
work, and this should be done by a |
visit to the localities and inspection |
of the work. 1t may take a little
more time and incur little more
expense, but we positively would |
not attempt the job, for which the
public money is used, without such |
an investigation.
We have often thought of this
when the work of the city improve
ments were under way. There is no
criticism here for anyone, but sim
ply a suggestion as how to obtain
the best results, and NO way is the
best except to get in touch with the
BEST
We favored Mr.. Walkers theory
some years ago when the gravel
road along First street was made.
There was a difference then on the
subject of gravel and construction,
md the opposition to Mr. Walker
prevailed and Mr.. Troy got the con-
ract. Everybody knows the result.
Mr.. Walker favored going to Mr..
lancaster at Jackson because he
NEW Mr.. Lancaster to be a road
builder of national reputation, and
lie had confidence in Mr.. Lancaster's
work in Madison County. The re-
ult is that the First street road here
S all to pieces and the Madison
,ounty roads are as good as can be
ound anywhere.
Therefore BE certain you are
light and then go ahead"