Working Out The Road Tax

The waste of money and labor resulting from the system of working out road taxes is forcibly brought to inind by the recent report of the secretary of the Wisoonsin League For Good Roads. Through the efforts of the league last spring a special editiou of a leading Milwaukee paper was devoted to the road question. Amoug the subjects discussed were the advantages of machinery in roadbuilding, the wisdom of paying road taxes in cash, the waste of the o)d system of working out taxes and the cost of poor roads as compared with those which might be constructed by the adoption of better methods without an increase in taxes paid. An entire page in the paper was devoted to a coinpárison of a cash road tax with a road tax paid in labor, the subject being discussed in brief articles contributed by 35 leading agricnlturists and township offieers, including such men as President Hubbard of the State Agricultural society, es-President Everett of the Wisconsin Dairymen's association, H. A. Briggs of Elkhorn, C. P. Goodrich of Fort Atkinson, A. A. Arnold of Galesville, Allen P. Weid of River Falïs, Stephen Faville of Mafiison and others. It was shown how most of the towns in the state, which had contiimed to work out their rod taxes, had levied a second special tax, assessed against property holders, and paid in cash for the purchase of road machinery, while the other tax alone, if collected in rnouey, was sufficient to purchase the machinery wanted and leave a surplus large enough to accomplish more work, with the help of these machines, than had ever been accomplished by the old method.