3o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the city of Rocliester, N. Y., to provide side paths along the 



country roads for bicyclists. 



I. 



In the early part of the present year the newspapers of the city 

 made the surprising announcement one morning that there had 

 just passed the State Legislature and been placed in the hands of 

 the Governor for approval a bill to tax all bicyclists in Monroe 

 County one dollar each, the fund thus raised to be devoted to 

 the construction of side paths. I say surprising advisedly. Al- 

 though it was afterward learned that seven or eight thousand 

 bicyclists out of the twenty thousand in the county had signed 

 petitions for the bill, scarcely any public mention of it had been 

 made, and no public discussion of it had taken place. The 

 newspapers went so far as to charge that it had been " sneaked " 

 through the Legislature. While the charge was false, it illus- 

 trates for the thousandth time how important legislation may be 

 had without the knowledge of the community it affects. 



Besides an indiscriminate imposition of the tax on all bicyclists, 

 whether living in the city or country, or whether they would have 

 occasion or not to use the paths, the bill called into existence the 

 customary political machinery to execute it. There were to be 

 five side-path commissioners, appointed by the Board of Super- 

 visors, and to serve five years. They were to determine the paths 

 to be built, to decide how they should be built, to let contracts, 

 and to issue orders on the county treasurer, the collector of the 

 tax, for the payment of work. The most odious feature of the 

 bill was the provision that the tax " should be a lien on the cycle 

 taxed " ; that in case of nonpayment the collector should " proceed 

 to enforce said tax by seizing the cycle" and " selling the same at 

 public auction to the highest bidder " ; that the proceeds of such 

 sale should be applied toward the payment of the tax and the 

 incidental expenses, including the two-dollar fee to the collector. 



In the heated discussion that followed the publication of these 

 provisions, the usual arguments in favor of such legislation were 

 brought forward. The most comprehensive as well as the most 

 familiar was the "general-welfare" argument. This was the 

 fine product of a clerical mind unable to appreciate the full sig- 

 nificance of the golden rule and the commandment against 

 covetousness. The argument of a distinguished physician, equally 

 destitute of a keen appreciation of the rights of those bicyclists 

 that might never have time to take an excursion into the country, 

 was that " this plan is the only feasible solution of an extremely 

 difficult problem." He said that it was " the outcome of careful 

 consideration by the older and conservative wheelmen of the city, 

 and not the scheme of the road riders, so called." He went to the 

 extent of claiming most erroneously that " the opponents of the 



