The Mena weekly star., 1917-11-08
Good Roads-Cost and Benefit

boy and nine
 
 Good R0ads-COSt and Benefit.
 Government statistics prove that the people of lockwood counties ofter waste, in a few years, in ex- cessive hauling costs, money enough Co build a big system of modern roads. 1t is so in Polk county, Ar kansas.
 4 haul of six hundred feet of flooring lumber six miles from Wickes on the Kansas City south ern to The Bird Farm costs $500. A passenger with hand baggage, a dis tance of five miles over a rural post road costs Sl50. Good roads are like oil in machinery, they preserve, and reduce friction and resistance, and so multiply the earning power and value of remote farms that by fair figures it is shown that if the land is taxed for it's full value and the owner is given twenty years in which to pay this tax he will make 200 per cent by paying it. and have the road and farm in the end. This POO per cent comes from a flood of produce to the nearest freight sta- ton.
 The most American thing in America is the production of food stuffs. Bad roads add to the cost of every ton that drags it's weary way over them i5 per cent. Right now the factories are unable to get more than 90 per cent of the nor maj amount of wagon material There is crying need for conser- vation of vehicles. A good road gives horses perfect traction and the item of horsepower and vehicles alone amounts in ten years to IFS per cent of the total cost of con- structing good hard surface roads in mountainous communities where building material is on the ground as it is in Polk county.
 Good roads used to be expensive to construct and keep up; today they are not There is five miles of good, hard-surfaced road in Craw- ford county that cost only Sl000 and if is mountain road and the con- tractor is willing to bet his time against Si,000 that he can make money on building a similar road nom Hatton to Bog Springs for Si 1000 and be paid well for his time.
 Facts are facts and statistics prove that a community's buying power increases g per cent with a good road to the nearest railway station. In this state only one third of the value of the land can be taxed for road improvement and in a remote rural section the land values are very low and they will be lower still in a few years Twelve years ago the Bog Springs community was at tracting two or three hundred sum- mer residents. Good roads about Shreveport. La, have kept hun dreds of their people al home. who used to summer at these Springs, while bad roads has caused this for merly popular place to rust, stick stagnate, and the people realize that they have lost more than the cost of the construction of a good road, by not keeping up with the wheels of progress that the motor ear ush- cred in.
 Over a period of years good, hard-surfaeed road is less costly than any other form of road and a special crop or crops may be grown in every community that may be marketed to meet the extra cost. The good roads reduce the cost of living and give delight 10 the farm dwellers that cause them to stay on the land
 A good road is not luxury that community can not afford; it is a necessity that a community can not get along without if it is to pro- gress and prosper.
 It is like paying the premium on your life insurance, only you do not have to die to beat it, and no sec tioneis too poor to form a road dis trict and if you want to sell West Texas people Arkansas land you had better take them out to your farms over the best road you can find in Polk county.
 The Government offers 90 per cent of the cost of road over which the U s. mail is carried and is no re- specter of persons or places. It is the effort of a commonwealth that wins. IL is no more of an idle dream for one community than another. The neighborhood that wants it is the section that is going to get it. The tenderfoot did not blaze the first trail thru the Ouachita Noun tains, and a quiter never gets any where.
 Miss Chloe Matteson.
 Bog Springs. Ark
 TO THE PUBLIC.