The Adair County news., 1915-12-29

Now We talk about this simple life,
it's high ideals. and its noble purposes,
and yet there is in Kentucky a coz
tinual exodus from the country to the
town. l make no warfare upon the
city. / have lived in towns the most
of my life, but what l mean to say,
that what we need is more good pee
pie on the farms in the country. 1t
will cheaper the costs of living il
town. 1t will bring more customers,
and new life and new capital to our
great cities.
1t Is an invincible instinct for men
to seek the society of their fellows, to
gather as we have gathered here to-
day in great multitudes. 1t is as ma
tural as for partridges to gather Ia
covies in the field, or birds in 1ocks
in the sky. 1t is essential to the hap
piness, the mental and moral welfare
of mankind, just so much as food or
clothing. The thing that has de-
stroyed rural life, the thing that has
depopulated fertile lands is the loneli-
ness and isolation of life in the couE-
try. Our girls and boys who live IN
rural districts are literally marooned
in the winter without access to the
postoffice, the church or the school
or to the doctor In time of sickness,
or to the store for the bare necessi-
ties of life in any other way than on
a mule, belly deep in the mire. Our
boys and girls simply will not be kept
in the rural districts ten miles from
any town under such conditions, how
ever much you may talk about the no
bic life Of the country. 1t is too often
the most lonesome existence on earth.
If you wish to live in the country and
bring up your family around you, il
you wish them blessed by the things
which are good and sweet in rural life,
then you must give them the pleasant
things of life in the city.
Build good roads to the city, you viii
lose none Of the seclusion and sweet.
ness of the country. The sunshine
and dew and the landscape are still
there, the fertile fields and the low
ing herds, and the scent of new mown
hay, and the silent benediction of the
evening are still yours. With good
roads and automobile-if you cannot
get an automobile, borrow a Ford
the wife and her boys and girls can
go to church, they can go to the fair,
they can go to places of amusement
they have the advantage of the pleas
ures of the city, and you have not beer
deprived of your country home or any
thing that makes it desirable or love
ly. You will never solve the question
of back to the country" until yoC
have made the country more attrac-
tive. You cannot keep your family in
the country with ten or twenty miles
of impossible dirt roads between
them and things they want for nine
month in the year.
Increase In Prosperity.
The country viii be happier, more
thickly inhabited if the roads were
improved, and the city will finally in
crease in prosperity whenever YOU
unite the two by macadam roads.
Both political parties-I am not here
to- talk politics-have condemned the
contract labor system; both parties
have told you that they are in favor
of employing convicts upon the road
Now the counties have the right tc
employ whom they please with the
money they raise themselves, and Il
is vexed question to what extent
where the state can force the convict
labor upon the county, coming as il
must, more or less, In competition
with free labor. In Edmondson coun
ty, especially, we have an unlimitable
deposit of rock asphalt, a material
that will cover your macadam roads
with Waterproohng a thousand times
more indestructible than oil; a sub
stance, hard, yet elastic, that is as
enduring as marble. And yet this vasi
and priceless deposit today is reached
only by dirt roads that are aImos.
impossible. This is disgrace to Ken
lucky. would see, and l hope to
see, the labor. of eonvicts, as we'll as
others, employed in the development
of these great quarries, hope to see
this, the greatest road-making ma
terial ever known, spread oYE five
thousand miles of boulevard all over
Kentucky from the mountains to Mills
Point.
/ could talk to you for week upon
this subject. Oh, it means so much
to Kentucky as a state There il
much to expect from the development
of good roads. No other state in this
union has SUCH a variety and a wealth
of undeveloped resources; more Goa
than Pennsylvania; more hardwood
than any other commonwealth be
tween the Mississippi and the Pacific.
and more acres of fertile soil than any
other state of like area between the
two oceans. Our soil produces 3
greater variety OF products than. am
/. other on this earth Why is 1t thai
the wealth of the mountain and the
wealth Of the pIain are not developeds