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Cost Of Poor Roads

Cost Of Poor Roads image
Parent Issue
Day
4
Month
December
Year
1896
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Goed roads are a most important factor in the prosperity of auy country, writes E. VV. Perry in Bearings. Tliey are at the very foundation of its pregress. Softness, steepness or roughness in a road arlds to the cost of living and gives nocompensatiug benefit. This loss falls on every consumer aud on every preducer. Everybody is in one or the other of those classes; most people are in both, and so are doubly taxed by our errors in road management. No human being can escape wholly from payiug part of this great and ui terly useless tax. Ioiprovement of our higbvvays can harm no one. All will benefit by such improveraent properly carried out. Therefofe the efforts made by the United States department of agriculture and by several state institutions for the purpose of creating wide and deep interest in tbe subject of road ment meet no opposition f rom peoplg of intelligence. It is unfortuuate that information gathered with exceediug pains by state and by uational institutions usually reaches the public only slowly and often in a form which does not move the people. The aid of the popular press is necessary if a stroug and widespread interest is to be aroused and legislation is to be obtained that will insnre ,a general improvement of the highways of this country. Thauks to a press wbich is quick to help any movement intended for the general good, many truths about the evils of our past and present metbods of mauaging our highways have become familiar to millions of intelligent peo pie. Bat there are other millions to whora the truth that every human being in the land is compelJed to pay needlessly heavy tolla for the use of bad roads, the fact that a general and thorough betterment of our roads -would be directly and immediately profitable to all and the other fact that a fair share of the "burelen of such improvenient shouJd be borne by every one who may be benefited thereby are abstruse conceptions, unfaniiliar and difficult to m aster. The losses caused by lack of good roads fall most heavily on the farmer, but the manufacturing, mining, lumbering, the railway and other interests suffer euormously, and each consumer of the products of the others suffei-3 with them. The losses fall most heavily on those who are at the extremes of the line - on the original producer and on the final consumer andno one can avoid being in one or the other of those classes. Ifc is time that our people should awake to the fact that the crude, ; less, cheap ways to wbioh they are accustomed, and which they have learned to believe "wil] do well enough for the present," have ever been, as such ways raust al ways be, wasteful and ruiuous. ; Our past and our present methods, or lack of method, in the management of publio higlnvays have imposed upon the people excessively heavy and altogether unnecessary burdens. Much better ways have been in use in other lands for generations. Tbere is uo need for delays or for eostly experiments to determine what will be the best way to cure the evils of our highways. No argument should beneeded to convinoñ auy one that every man, womau and child in this country, and millions of inhabitants of other lands also, are directly and indirectly affected to a serious degree bythe condición of ourowu higbways. Each is taxed to pay the needlessly heavy cost of dragging the food from American farms through dust and sand and mud over rough and steep roads. All these people could therefore well afford to contribute to reduce that tax to the lowest possible quantity. The draft which is levied on the purse by every effort to move a vehicle over a road - that direct road tax which ia not recognized by the statutes, but must be at once paid for each expendíture of euergy for that purpose - is increased by every inorease in steepness of the ascents up which the vehicle is moved, by every roughness of the surface of the highway, by every fracción of an inch of mud, by every layer of sand, and even by the dust in the track beforo the wheels. This direct money losa is a tangible nieasure of the he:ivy road tax which bears hard on our people. lts results are seen in the desertion of the country by our aturdy and ambitious youth. l!r is a polent cause of evils which come from crowding the towus, for "we now live in the city and go to the country, but we ?hould live in the country and go to the city. " Tbis can never come before good roads sh;ill connect cities and villages with the pure life, the healthful air and euuobliiig scenery of the country.

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Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat