The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1916-01-05


gone together. What has been done
in bodybuilding amounts to very
little in respect of distance but where
drainage and roads have gone to-
Gether there has been a very notable
increase in the volume and ease of
traffic with corresponding benefits
to the farmers served in getting their
stuff to market. Thousands of acres
of the most productive land laying
idle five and ten years ago have been
brought under cultivation and are
now yielding enormous crops. Great
sections where men could not live be-
cause of malarious conditions have
been opened to settlement and the
building of good roads has made it
possible for the farmers to market
their crops without paying out all
the profits for transportation.
No farm can do it's best without
drainage and no road can be built
or maintained without drainage. Mr..
Marsden, engineer of the Office of
Experiment Stations of the Depart
ment of Agriculture, says that from
one hundred to one hundred fifty mil
lions of acres, not including the
eighty million acres of swamp and
overflowed land, in the United States
could be drained with profit under
present conditions of market facili-
ties and cultural methods. In North
Carolina there are six million such
acres, of which only about six thous-
and acres have been drained. In
Alabama only about one thousand
acres out of 100000 needing drain
age, have been cared for. In the
West the same condition largely OBJ
tains. The cost is inconsiderable
compared with the profits derived
from the proper drainage of the
lands. 1t is not Q matter of guess
work. Farmers who have drained
their lands testify that its value has
been increased from fifty to three
hundred per cent. Mr.. Marsden
cites the Ease of a farmer in the
coast country of North Carolina, who
drained twenty-five acres at a cost
of $3.50 which now yields a bale of
cotton to the acre, which at $50
the bale would amount to $3.50.
But what would it profit the far
mer to drain his land without good
roads over which to haul his cotton
and other farm products to market?
The two things 60 together. The
cost of hauling over the ordinary
roads Of the country is reckoned at
% cents per. ton per mile, or for the
immense tonnage thus transported
about $650,000,0 900 annually. The
cost of hauling over hard-surfaced
public roads would be about 13 cents
per ton per mile and the saving
would be immense, something over
S400, 10000 the year; or about the
value of all the apples, beans, rice,
sweet. potatoes, Irish potatoes and
honey produced annually in the
United States. The waste of the
United States would support in Chi
nese comfort all the tecming. mil
lions of the Flowery Kingdom
waste on account of undrained lands,
RECONSTRUCTED highways, exorbitant
cost of transportation on the com
mon roads of the country, all of
which would be escaped if the peo-
pie could be impressed with the in
sanity of the methods generally pre-
vailing in dealing with these matters.
Just as the improvement of the
waterways and fair dealing with the
railroads are essential to the pros
perity of all the people, so also are
the drainage of productive land and
the building of substantial highways,
which are, as it has been said so
we'll, "the primary means of trans
portation for all agricultural pro-
ducts-the only of trans
p%ortation leading from the point of
production to the point of consump-
ton or rail shipment" There is in
all this, or ought to be, a confeder-
acy of interest, and with the New
Year it is the hope of the American
Highway Association to , mobilize
these economic forces for the public
welfare.