DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. l6l 



schemes for government and local bond issues of enormous 

 amounts without any real regard as to how those bonds will 

 ever be paid, and without a carefully worked out financial sys- 

 tem. No less a man than James J. Hill in a recent address 

 delivered before the Bankers' Association, while he did not 

 mention the good roads movement in particular, did foresee 

 the dangers ahead in the constantly growing increase of munici- 

 pal indebtedness. Many states and counties throughout the 

 Union are borrowing money right and left to build highways 

 without any adequate arrangement either for sinking the bonds 

 or for maintaining the highways after they are built. They are 

 going headlong into this matter without regard and care as to 

 the form of construction, and without regard to the great gen- 

 eral principle that bonded indebtedness should be for perma- 

 nent results. 



AMORTIZATION. 



The idea that in these great ventures we are doing things not 

 only for our own good but for posterity — this idea, this princi- 

 ple of mortgaging the future is, in my judgment, being de- 

 cidedly overworked. Most of us today are paying taxes in our 

 own communities because of the errors of judgment of a pre- 

 ceding generation in loaning our credit for the development 

 of railways and other enterprises, and for doing all sorts of 

 things which have proved a failure and placed a burden upon 

 us, which is not pleasant or agreeable for us to bear. I con- 

 sider that there is a great moral question involved whenever 

 any community considers the matter of issuing bonds for pub- 

 lic improvement, and I believe that the principle of amortiza- 

 tion, so-called, which means in brief, that the life of a plant 

 like a waterworks or a gas plant or even highways shall be 

 accurately measured in order to spread the burden of such in- 

 vestment over all the people who are likely to be alive during 

 the life of such investments — I believe that this principle of 

 amortization is wrong, that is, morally wrong, because it should 

 be our purpose if possible to make life easier for the rising 

 generation and to bear a little more than perhaps our just pro- 

 portion of such debt, rather than to heap it upon those coming 

 llater, who for many reasons may be decidedly unwilling to 

 bear the burden. 

 II 



