COST OF BAD ROADS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5055, 22 November 1926, Page 4

COST OF BAD ROADS.

AN APT ILLUSTRATION.

A CONVINCING STORY.

A well-known American engineer

tells this story: He said one county was; in great need of better roads.

The mud all through the district was so deep that it was impossible to use waggons, all travelling being done either on foot or on horseback. In spite of the need, there was little enthusiasm for good roads when the Board of County Commissioners met. Everyone wajs afraid of the presumed high cost and increased taxes.

A farmer in the back of the room ros.Q. “Mr Chairman,” he said. “I ain’t fit to address a. dignified, meeting like this, but .that’s because I’ve had to travel ten miles over the kind of rolads you give us. I could’nt drive;; I had to ride on horseback. My boots are covered with mud ; my coat is covered with mud ; and, if I hajdn’t stopped to wash it, my face would have been covered with mud, too. I look as if I had crawled here on my hands and knees, and I’m only half through, because I’ve still got to go back with five dollars? worth of groceries that I bought at the store. If there had been a good, hard road that my old horse could climb up and down with a, load of lumber .that I’ve got ready I would have bought 25 dollars;’ worth, and there would have be*en that much more money in town tonight.” And the mud-covered farmer sat down. Other speakers took up his case. They pointed out that good roads were an asset instead of a liability; that they brought money into, a town and greatly increased the markets. The result was that the commissioners enthusiastically passed a resolution td issue bonds,, enough to give them several miles of good roads. Today that county is more prosperous than ever, school conditions are better, and the amount df traffic going in and out of the town has increased several hundred per cent. The oldtime hostility to good roads by taxpayers is fast passing away. Mudholes may look cheap, but they are the costliest things any community can have, in the view of the Americans.