Show our country road if the farmers can bo be convinced that it will pay them in dollars and cents to improve their roads and if they aro are shown how tho the roads can bo be improved the improvement will begin and not until then meanwhile all appeals to tho farmer founded on the fact that bad baa roads are disgraceful are entirely thrown aws away y the circle described by a radius of a mile or two from tho the market town bears evidence of thrift and comfort and plenty the next circle outside shows a deterioration teri oration in the look of the houses and the fences and begins to wear a poverty stricken aspect while the further progress of your journey will introduce you in due time and with tolerable certainty certainty taint y to a region of hovels and abandoned farms this is a faithful picture as nobody who knows much about the agricultural districts of the eastern states will dispute As mr potter points out the value of nearness to the market cannot bo be abolished by any device what can be dono by the improvement of the roads is to bring farms that are seven or eight milea from the market practically as near it as farms two miles off are now taking tha 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 bo be moved with the samo same teams than can bo be moved now and at a very much better rate of 1 speed peed mr potter points out forvily borci bly that we aro are hauling over our common roads enough produce in one form or another to supply a freighting business f for or miles of railroads using more than horses and earning a traffic in come in 1890 1800 of nearly 11 let us suppose that the traffic oven over these commma common roads were carried on in tho the same way as tha tover tho the railroads that is to say that great corporations operated over them lines of wagons which collected the produce of the farms an and carried it to the nearest market towns our cotI country roads would be subjected to a revolutionary improvement within A a year NW now york times |