The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1916-02-02

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.
BILE life OF the country. II is too often
the most lonesome existence on earth.
III you wish to live in the country and
bring up your family around you, II
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 will
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 been
deprived of your country home or any
thing that makes ii desirable or love-
ly. You will never solve the question
of back to the country" until you
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 will 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 poitics-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 to
employ whom they please with the
money they raise themselves, and 1t
is vexed question to what extent,
where the state can force the convict
labor upon the county, coming as it
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 waterproofing a thousand times
more indestructible than oil; a sub.
stance, hard, yet elastic, that is as
enduring as marble. And yet this vast
and priceless deposit today is reached
only by dirt roads that are almost
impossible. This is disgrace to Ken.
lucky. / would see, and | hope to
see, the labor of convicts, as well as
others, employed in the development
OF these great quarries, | hope to see
this, the greatest roadmaking ma
terial ever known, spread over five
thousand miles of boulevard all over
Kentucky from the mountains to Mills
Point.
l could talk to you for week upon
this subject. Oh, it means so much
to Kentucky as a state. There is
much to expect from the development
OF good roads. No other state in this
union has such variety and a wealth
of undeveloped resources; more coal
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 a
greater variety of products than any
other on this earth. Why is it that
the wealth of the mountain and the
wealth of the plain are not developed?
1t is because the people of the noun.
tains cannot reach the wealth of the
plains, and the people of the plains
cannot avail themselves of the wealth
of the mountains because of the cost
of getting from one to the other.
This is eliminated by connecting
them by great highways. 1t will in
crease the fertility of the soil and the
richness of the mines and the vast
wealth of the forests.
Upon this great movement rests the
happiness and the prosperity of the
greatest people on earth, the people
who live and expect to die in old Ken
lucky. God bless her.
ron rdr1S MI