The log cabin Democrat., 1915-03-17
DR. WATSON RAPS
 ROAD KNOCKERS"
POLITICS AND PREJUDICE
ARE BACK OF MUCH OF OPPOSE TON TO CONDRAY BILL,
 HE SAYS.
Editor Log Cabin Democrat:

l "oeii oiooS oi IHe Iodu question:. agree with you that it is the most i'm. portant question of public policy the voters of this county were ever called upon to decide, and we ought to study it without prejudice.
 l have read Mir. Princes article
 He boasts of his 40 years as lawve, and says, '1f you don't pay the tax by April 10 you will be delinouent and have to pay a penalty Now where is there a school boy in the county that does not know that? Anc he tries to make Init" by saying we cannot repeal it. What sense or jus. tice would there be in me borrowine I$l00 from you in four annual pay. ments of $25 each and giving me the power to cancel the last two pay. ments? He, in a roundabout way says the commissioners are a bunch of grafters and that the law was made for their special benefit, and that it IS class legislation. How about the common school tax? Does every man get exactly the same benefit from his money? Who would dare say he was opposed to the common school? The whole tenor of his article is not to lead people into the light but to con- fuse and prejudice them. It reads more like it was from the pen of Hash imura Toga, the Japanese schoolboy. than lawyer of 40 years experience.
 would like to say more about his article but 1 will leave it to abler pens. 1 understand there is a bunch of flame ducks" down there fighting 1t because they think 1t an unpopular measure. l am informed that they have some men whom they have given office for term after term and who now own considerable land out in the country who buttonhole every farmer, telling him it will ruin the farmer to vote for it; at the same time you will find their names on De- tition to build macadam street by their home. "Oh, consistency, thou art a jewel
 MT. Farmer, let me tell you some thing on the quiet: There are some people around the town that get very solcitous about your welfare when it going to cost them anything. They know that the towns and the railroads pay approximately 45 per cent of the taxes of this county and if they can prejudice you into voting against this measure they don't care if the mud Is hub deep. They know you must come to town occasionally. Part of them come to us every two years and then they go into the byways and hedges to hunt us up, as they know that is where they will find us, and they need our votes.
 Now if the able lawyers and the bi ennial country-savers (who need our votes) and leaders of the opposition forces loved us people so dearly, why have they not proposed us law, un- der the initiative and referendum act to get roads? And echo answers, Why?
 Now, everybodys says We need roads; well, if we do, we need the best we can get, and how many thous- ands of dollars worth of farm pro- ducts go to waste every year for the want of transportation facil- ities? You haul fruit, potatoes, etc, 20 to 30 miles over the kind of roads we have and be away from two days making the trip, you know it is not in a salable condition. Good macadam roads will bring the market to our community.
 As to the cost, I refer you to the editorial in this paper of March II, which l think is fair estimate.
 Now, to view the matter from an unprejudiced standpoint, if Arkansas, with the greatest natural resources of any state in the union, and Faulkner one of her leading counties, cannot build macadam roads, please tell me how other counties in the state and adjoining states and the foreign countriesbuild them?
 It is going to take optimistic, pa- triotic citizens of this county to build these roads, and we must face the is sue on it's merits and not listen to every "knocker" that comes along. have always found that if a man was against proposition of public policy he always objects to the pIoa CT the management of it.
 There are several more phases of this question I would like to discuss. but l leave it to others more able than myself, and in conclusion let me say that l have written this in all fair ness to those who oppose the plan and grant them the same right to use their ballot as they see fit, and I will do the same tn tha hast intnrnrtr nf