Arizona republican., 1922-04-26


hicles. and nearly 250.000 tractors are
now being used on the farms. There
are now 2.146,512 passenger automo-
biIes in use on 1,979s564 American
farms.
The time has come when the
American farmer is demanding, and
has a right to demand, the same
community advantages that the ur-
banites have. A farmer must have
good roads, good schools, running
water. electric lights and modern ap-
pliances if his boy or girl are to be
kept at their posts of duty. The
urban population now exceeds the
rural population by fifty-five to
forty-five per cent, which is dam
ger signal for the prosperity and
happiness of the country. The little
ditty the farmer boy brought back
from across the waters is familiar
to us all. "Once / have seen gay
Paree, no more farming life for me-"
Iowa and Kansas sent out 10000
boys from their farms to the war.
When the scrap was over, little
over 5000 returned to the farms, the
remainder seeking better opportuni-
ties in the cities. Rome fell when
her graneries were transferred from
the banks Of the Tiber to the banks
of the Nile. 1t becomes the impera-
tive duty fthe man living in the
city to see to 1t that the American
farmer and his children have equal
community advantages with the man
living in town.
Awake to Modern Transportation
The world is just awakening to the
advantages of modern rapid trans
portation facilities in lowering the
cost Of distribution. 1t has been au-
thentically stated that you can ship
by truck within a radius of one hum
dred miles for is cents per ton per
mile, by horse power "a cents per
ton per mile and by steam and raii-
way, 96 cents per ton per mile The
time is coming when we win no more
think of taxing a truck for hauling
over our highways than we would OF
taxing freight cars.
The department of commerce
states that the motor truck has
given every town an extended radius
of food supply by some fifty miles,
thereby protecting such vital mat
ters as milk and perishables against
the first shock" Rural motor ex-
press is greatly needed to encourage
and assist the American farmer in
products. Unless the farmer has
rapid TRANSPORTATION facilities to
market his crops they will rot before
he can receive the profit he should
obtain for his efforts, and the con-
Stunning markets in the cities are be-
ing deprived OF the farm products
which should have received. 1t is es-
timated that in 1918 so per cent of
the total farm products went to
waste on the side-stations. thus
causing the American farmer to sus-
tain loss OF about SO per cent Of
his profits and robbing the Nation
of its wealth.
Road building is no modern ques-
ton: it's Importance was recognized
by the Egyptians. as well as the
Babylonians. Good roads did more
to place the Eagle of Rome on the
farthest rannparts Of the world than
any other one factor, and it was the
good roads OF Rome that enable her
to dominate the world in a military,
commercial and intellectual way for
more than fifteen hundred years.
Roads Win Wars
We all recognize the fact. that it
vast the good roads Of France, built
by the Romans, which prevented the
kaiser from turning back the hand
of progress on the dial of civilization.
and denied the Crescent the ascend
ency over the Cross. The roads of
Napoleon gave us a victorious arrnis-
tice on November IL, 1913, instead of
a second Sedan.
1t is time the American people
were demanding that congress call
a halt on the giving away of our
money to the crumbling states of
Europe cease the extravaganza in
the building of palatial federal re-
serve bank buildings, until we have
provided ourselves with complete
national system of interstate modern
highways to inter connect every
capital of the forty-eight states with
every other capital and with the ma
tional capital. Eighty-fiye per cent
of our highways are yet to be hard
surfaced and made practical for mo-
tor traffic. Yet when we ask con-
gress for money it is doled out to US
as is we were mandicants instead of
taxpayers giving orders. We can
spend SIS, 100000 to build one fed
eral reserve bank building in New
York: we can waste money with the
pork barrel system, and be guilty
of all sorts of national extravagances
imaginable, and yet receive the pitt
full sum OF $75,000,000 per annum for
the purpose Of building roads cover
ing two and one-half million square
miles of territory. provide for the
needs of one hundred million people
and never raise protest, to say
nothing of providing for future mill
tary defense.
Roads Necessary to Progress.
The man who exerts the greatest
influence for the building OF high
ways, exerts the greatest influence in
shaping the destiny for the good of
unnumbered millions and molding the
spiritual, the educational and the
material life of the Nation.
Back of all the. forces that make
for the Nations veal or woe, are the
country churches. the country schools
and farm life. Back of the success
of all these are modern highways.
while the doom of these is written
deep in the mud of bad roads.
Modern highways lead upward to
high possibilities of national life. Bad
highways form the other road down
ward to ruin. If James j. Hill and
E. H. Hartman had not had the
vision and launched the great trans
continental railway system, which We
have today, interlocking and inter-
connecting the great West with the
great North, East and South, Amer
lea today would not be the potential
world factor that she is. What the
railroads OF Hill and Hartman have
done for the Great West, complete
system of communal, lateral and ma
tional highways. modernly built, con-