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Show Hie Lost Art of Roadinaklug. Ill the United States intelligent road-making road-making in the country is, as a general thing, almost wholly unknown. The ridiculous misapplication of rustic labor and foolishness known as "road working" work-ing" is the gravest farce an ordinarily intelligent people ever took part in year after year. It is too well known to need description, and the fact that it has long been tolerated suggests a doubt as to whether as a people we are ngt, destitute of humor. The spectacle of all the able-bodied able-bodied men of the "district" turning out under that master of roadmaking farce, the supervisor, as he is called, and spending two days each year in making mak-ing the roads almost impassable for the rest of the year, and thus imprisoning themselves in the country during the late autumn and early spring, is one that would have delighted, the heart of (Jervantes and perhaps furnished. a companion com-panion volume to the adventures of the Knight of La Mancha. But the farce goes gravely on year after year. If here and there a city begins be-gins to agitate the cause of good roads into the country in the interest of both country and city residents, it is opposed with much the same arguments and ob-' stinacy that good roads were opposed in England a century ago. The fact that it has been proved in other countries that good country roads have benefited the country on the whole far more than the cities is a fact country dwellers, as a rule, are ignorant of and apparently cannot understand or appreciate. Railroads can never supply the place of good wagon roads, and the develop- i ment of a system of good roads in any. j state will demonstrate that fact so clearly clear-ly that the example would soon be fol- 1 lowed by other states. Chicago Herald. |