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Show Our Country Roads. .. ' If the farmers can be convinced that it will pay them, in dollars and cents, to improve their roads, and 4f they aro ' shown how the roads can be improved, v the improvement will begin and not until un-til then.' .Meanwhile all appeals to the farmer founded on the fact that bad roads are disgraceful are entirely thrown away. ' ' The circle described by a radius of a mile or two from the market town bears evidence of thrift and comfort and plenty. plen-ty. The next circle outside, shows a deterioration de-terioration in the look of the houses and the fences, and begins to wear a poverty stricken aspect, "while the further progress prog-ress of your journey will introduce you in due time and with tolerable certainty to a region of hovels and abandoned farms." This is a faithful picture, as uobody who knows much about the agricultural districts of the eastern sttites will dispute. r As Mr. Potter points out, the value of nearness to the market cannot be abolished abol-ished by any device. What can be done by the improvement of the roads is to bring farms that are seven or eight miles from the market practically as near it as farms two miles off -are now, taking the average of weather through the year. Moreover, another great economy that would be effected by the improvement of the roads is that a very much larger , load could be moved with the same teams than can be moved now, and at a very much better rate of speed. Mr. Potter points out forcibly that "we are hauling over our common roads enough produce in one form or another to supply a freighting business for 150,-000 150,-000 miles of railroads, using more than 1,000,000 horses and earqiug a traffic income in-come in 1890 of nearly $1,000,000,000." Let us suppose that the traffic over these common roads were carried on in the same way as that over the railroads; that is to say, that great corporations operated op-erated over them lines of wagons, which collected the produce of the farm3 and earned it to the nearest market towns. Our country roads would be subjected to a revolutionary improvement within a year. New York Times. |