Expense Of Poor Roads

The question of good and bad roads is more than pereimial. Ifc is ever with ! us, eays tho Omaha World-Horald. It always wiJl be until the people are j aroused to the necessity of building aud maiiitaining good thoroughfares between the towu, the city and the farm. In this matter the American people are not up to the standard of the Swiss and the Frenoh. It is amazing that the authorities do not arouse the people to the cost of bad roads. One of the gJories of Napoleon's empire was the construction of good roads in France and tho promotion of agriculture during his reign. The probable cause of this indif ference on our part is the existence o: the railroad, but the evil still exists in the condition of the roads tiet-ween the station and the farm, and here is where the greatest burden falls - upon the farmer, of course. Some time ago a paper was read before the Engineers' Association of Western Pennsylvania containing calculations showing the cost of bad roads to the farmer and the ruerchant as well as all of the other branches of industry. It estimated the average distanoe for hauling farm producís at flve miles, and assuming that one-half the product of the farm is consumed on the farm it ■was shown that the cost of clay or rmid roads annually amounted to many millions for transportation above that of turnpikes. It stated that this would keep 30,000 miles of frurnpike road in repair or would build between 600 to 1,000 miles of pike annually. In other words, the extra time lost in marketing the agricultural products of that state over clay or mud roads amounted in all to 831,000 days' work for a man and two norse team more than turnpikes ■would require, or that the work of 2,400 men for a whole year is lost. At a rough estímate these engineers place the loss by bad roads to the farmers of Pennsylvania at $4,000,000 for transportation, exclusive of losses by changes in the markets, of which the farmer is unable to avail himself by reason of the mud. Another competent engineer has figured the cost of transportation between the farm and the railroad at 30 cents per ton per mile over bad roads. The corn erop of 1895 is estimated at 62,300,000 tons, of which one-half remains on the farm. At the average haul of flve miles, at 30 cents per mile, the cost to the farmers would be $46, 725, 000 annually on one-half the corn erop alone by reason of bad roads. ïhe question of good roads is to be one of the important problems of the future.