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Show RAPID TRANSIT iN THE COUNTRY it Would Have as (.,;! aa I Heel li.ei,-as li.ei,-as II lias in I!,, Rapid trail- it It;: t ;.:t;:; Iv. n i-c;; -: . I wit a dr'i-'ht .,vry - avh.ij ..f a. mr.ni .- :. l.V or of llli-lllsriv.'s. li,r,i.-.;s 1,11'd iltn-1 near rapid transit Imcs are worth iluub! ..' the money that thus... situated far i mm them will bring Not so much as 1 wasting of a sc. ond will be tolerate I' h, the town. Why should there bo such a vast difference- between the town ami the suburb.;: sub-urb.;: b- the lime of a clerk worth mure per waicli tick than the time of a farmer': ' The id.-a ihat 11 Usoisab.-.md. Vet li.e clerk husbands his lime with the greatest great-est care, while uie farmer wastes his with the most complete indifference. Hours every day ho throws away with no benefit to him or any one else. lie is content to jog along through must and duct, quagmires and ruts, so slowly thai his hours for work' and recreation are materially curtailed. Ho .reads in the papers about rapid transit for theci'.ies but he doesn't realize that what is so very gootl for the towns must tie goo.l also for the country. The idea of rapid transit for the country never occurs to him. "doing' always has been bad most of the time on the roatls around his home, and he doesn't stop to thin); that it ever .can be better. It never will by if he doesn't help better it. If rapid transit is desirable in the city, w-h) isn't it also desirable in the country? coun-try? If rapid transit enables city sellers to make more money on their sales because be-cause they' can get them to market sooner and cheaper thereby, why shouldn't it do tho same for the country sellers? If rapid transit adds thousands to the value of city property, why shouldn't it havea similar effect on country acres? There is no reason whatever why all these results should not as surely come among t lie farms as they do among the factories. But how can the country have rapid transit? you ask. Surely elevated railroads rail-roads and electric cars and cable systems sys-tems and street car Hues would not l.' practicable in the country. No, nor would they meet the necessities of the case if they could be built and maintained. main-tained. What are required and -what are perfectly feasible are hard, smooth, broken stono wagon roads. Moreover, such roads would mean' not only rapid transit, but cheap transit; not only cheap transit, but comfortable transit. They would cost considerable money, but they would not cost as much money as the vile; mud stuck roadways that now keep the country from progress and keep it in poverty. Thequestion of highway high-way improvement litis as serious a bearing bear-ing on the future of American agriculture agricul-ture as has the question of free trade or 1 pfbtecliuh; "free coinage or "restricted coinage. There are many thoughtful men, in fact, whe consider road improvement improve-ment the most important issue that now confronts the farmer. A few very simple calculations will show wherein the importance of road improvement lies. It is easy to see how the farmer might save a vast amount of time every year if he and his men were not delayed by being forced to drive slowly over bad roads. It is equally easytoseo that if roads were smooth and hard he would be obliged to do less teaming to accomplish the same results he could get his produce to market in half the number of loads, because he could haul twice as much in each load To carry this line of reasoning a little farther it becomes evitlent t hut if the farmer's teaming were reduced one-half ho would need less horses I ban ho requires re-quires now, and would he enabled to save not only the purchase price of the superfluous animals, but the cost of feeding feed-ing them and of hiring men to care for them and drive them. In this connection Isaac B. Potter, in his "Gospel of Good Roads." figured that the farmers of the United States have upon their farms draft animals horses, mules and oxen numliering 0:),-:i9:5,ysS. 0:),-:i9:5,ysS. He says: "Making the most liberal allowance in favor of the farmer and granting the necessity for the liberal lib-eral use of horse power in the maintenance mainte-nance of agricultural traffic, it is easily certain that the farmers of this country are keeping at least 2,000,000 horses more than would be necessary to do all the hauling between farm and market if only the principal roads were brought to good condition. If you assume that each of these horses is fed the ordinary army ration of hay and oats, it requires 14.000 tons of hay or fodder and 700,000 bushels of oats per day to feed these unnecessary un-necessary animals, which themselves have a money value of $1 1,000,000. The value of hay and oats fed to these horses per day is about "O0.0GO (valuing hay at ten dollars per ton and oats at twenty-three cents per bushel), or something like 1H,000,000 a year." There, without taking into consideration considera-tion the unnecessary wear and tear on wagons, harnesses and animals which is entailed by bad roads, is a useless expenditure ex-penditure of $114,000,000 a year, aside from the interest on and each year's proportionate pro-portionate share of the purchase price 14,ooo,000. Is there any other reform which would save that amount to the fanners in the course of twelve months? But the paving of that sum is only one of the profits which would accrue to the farmer from good roads. Inquiry in communities where roads have been improved im-proved will develop the fact that land values have increased to a really amazing amaz-ing extent; that a change for the better has come over the ' whole social condition; condi-tion; that crops have yielded profits large out of all proportion to the increase in-crease of taxation; that every one is happier, hap-pier, better and richer because of the betterment of the thoroughfares. All these things and many' more will come into the country when, the farmers farm-ers demand rapid transit as earnestly as the city men have: EOWAItD MARSnAI.lj. |
