The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1915-05-19


year in road work, and this
work will help materially as 1t
has helped all winter, IN keep.
ing business moving in the
State. The activity is general
from one end of the State fo the
other. The work is done in a
VARIETY of ways. Some places
contractors have their own road
forces. Some counties. use con-
vict labor. Some places hire
the residents on the line to come
out with their teams and imple-
ments. Nearly all of the money
spent goes directly to the COM
munity where the road is built.
Very little goes out for material.
The results are surprising.
Possibly one of the most ap,
parent results is the automobile
travel. All over the good-roads
section of the State the automo-
bile has become perhaps the
most common vehicle. The farm
ers have found the benefits that
come from a buggy that will run
into town and back in hardly
more time than it would take to
hitch up a horse, and the mum.
Der of cars seen standing by the
farmhouses along the road is as.
tonisbing. At first the farmer
| was hostile toward the automo.
bile. Now he runs one of bis
own. A cotton planter can be
seen coming out to the farm with
his big seven passenger loaded
to the running boards with cot
ton pickers. He will come to
town with half a dozen bags OF
seed rye that he is sending out
to a neighbor. The milk man
runs in in the morning with the
back part of his car loaded with
milk bottles. At the tobacco
| warehouse in the fall cars came
every day with loads of tobaoc O
heaped up in the tenneau. An
| undertaken carries cofins out
from town several miles in his
big car. Occasionally you see a
car back up in front7of a loaded
wagon and help the horses pull
a big loaSaup the hill so they can
go ahead by themselves after
the heavy struggle is over. The
farmer has found that a good
road and an automobile is a com
| bination of unlimited value, al
though he had never suspected
lit.
The cost of good roads is now
understood to be Of small signifc
auce as compared with the ben
efts. The farmer who can haul
five tons of fertilizer in a day
where he hauled two on the old
roads sees that in day or two
or three his hauling saves him
more than his increased road
tax, and he has quit objecting.
He has become an advocate of
good roads. The man who is
looking for a farm objects to one
not on a good road, but stops to
figure on one that is on a good
road. Farms on good roads
have gone up in price at a sur
prlsing rate. improvement on
good roads is the order of the
day. Whether the good road is
the cause or merely, sign of
the, changing conditions. it is a
fact that in the good-roads coun.
ty everything takes on new air.
Better stock is visible on the
farms. Improved machinery is
everywhere. More pain on the
houses, new houses. new barns,
more school houses and better
ones. Along the good roads is
continual Indication of pro
gressive thrift.
Whatever 1t is, whether the
good road IS responsible for the
improvement or the improve
ment is the cause Of the good
roads. or both are merely the
same outcropping of a new spir:
it of progress, they are arriving.
In every section of the State it
is the same, all are struggling
for good roads and the harmon