The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1935-01-21
NEWSPAPERS OPINION
ROAD CRAZY

Il hasn't been so many years since North Caro-
lima had no roads, but when we decloed 10 Oiliu
roads If didn't take US long to go crazy on the
subject and the mental attitude OF many HASH
improved We are about to overdo the thlhg' ana
the time has arrived to call a halt The GaStor'a
Gazette puts it this way;
"The State of North Carolina does not need 10
spend S1O,OO00OO more on its highways now as
has been recommended by the new chairman "a
pus Waynck.
"There are other things which are far more
pressing and urgent. We need to call halt IN the
road building program for while, until we have
regulated a few other things, paid some other 90
legations raised the salaries of teachers and re-
duced taxes.
"The roads we now have good enough to
last while longer, if it means spending SlO,OOo-
900 year for the next two years. If that much
money is available from the highway funds, let 1t
be used to supplement other curtailed funds or to
reduce the tax on automobiles or gasoline.
at would have been good thing for North
Carolina if we had stopped our bond-lssung pro-
gram of road building several years before we o"'
Virginia and South Carolina are showing how 1t can
be done on the pay-as-you-go plan and their roads
are more modern than ours, their engineers pelnG
enabled to take advantage of more advanced meth-
DDS and types of construction, not to mention the
cheaper types of roads which are serving the same
purpose as our high-priced $4,000 mile btu
lithic."
And then, as though to finish the job up nicely,
the Raleigh News and Observer handles the ques-
ton in the following manner:
IF the state highway system were as rich as
Croesus, it is an extremely doubtful proposition
whether so large should be spent on the
roads upon which North Carolinians are killing
themselves and each other while the state continues
niggardy in its provision for the education of its
children in order that they may automobiles
and roads and the other complex and dangerous
machines of our times with some understanding
and little more safety
To-day North Carolina has road system which
is more nearly adequate to all of the needs of the
State than is any other agency of government ade
uuate to the need. East and West, North and
South, fine highways, lacking only proper mainten-
ance are available to speeding, travelling people.
Perhaps if life consisted only in movement, up and
down. back and forth, purposeful and aimless, it
might be proper to spend such sums as Mr. Way
nick suggests, to increase year by year the States
vost investment in roads But life is not merely
movement There such things in civilization
as public education and public health and public
welfare. There are such problems crime and
injustice, unemployment and disease. There are
such destinations as enlightenment to which no
mere concrete roads will take Life is not mere
ly riding, and civilization is not merely road
"By all means let the State spend adequately and
wisely in maintaining the roads which it has, but
let it also halt in road building soon enough to
mailman those other essentials than roads in a
sound and enlightened state. 1t will not serve
North Carolina to build roads into an ignorant,
a diseased, criminal and pauper-rdden future"
-Marshville Home.