250 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ards and fields, with pleasant hills, beautiful groves, brooks and 

 streams, and everything to make home happy. Yet that portion 

 of the town once populated by twentj^ families, and now within 

 four miles of a railroad depot, is wholly abandoned, while other 

 portions of the town, less fertile, less desirable, to which a con- 

 venient thoroughfare was constructed, are now the flourishing 

 portions of the town ; lands which looked forbidding twenty years 

 ago have been reclaimed, and are prosperous neighborhoods ; 

 whereas the northern and central portions of the town have been 

 abandoned, simpl}'- because of the want of suitable roads in that 

 locality. The roads were originally over the most severe hills in 

 the town, and down thi'ough the deepest valleys, making some of 

 the steepest grades to be found anywhere, those who originally 

 located the roads supposing that they must follow the town lines. 

 Then the road was not continued so as to make it a thoroughfare ; 

 and from the very necessity of the case, for want of means of access 

 to the place, that region has been abandoned ; and now, with its 

 large orchards and its fences partly gone to decay, it is devoted 

 to pasturage, and is returning to forest. That is the effect of hard 

 roads, within four miles of where I stand, in one of the best reg- 

 ions of the town of Foxcroffc. I can see no other reason for the 

 change. 



These things can be remedied. In the first place the roads 

 should have been located in a zigzag or semi-circular manner, so 

 as to escape those hills, and then they should have been made by 

 men who could hire the labor to be performed. No matter how 

 good a gang of men you have, unless you have power to discharge 

 those men, you cannot control this matter. So I say, every dol- 

 lar that is to be raised should be raised in money. I do not know 

 how it is to be done, but let Mr. Stetson continue to agitate the 

 subject. 



Another thing. I have for twenty years voted for the largest 

 sum of money needed for the making and repairing of highways. 

 I have always voted to carry that money into the rural districts, 

 saying that a village without a country to sustain it, was no more 

 than a head without a body to support it. I have always taken 

 that ground. I have not always succeeded in getting the largest 

 sum, but I have always voted for it, I have always thought the 

 system of allowing persons to work out their road tax was a dis- 

 advantageous and unprofitable one. A number of men get to- 

 gether, with half a dozen oxen and a scraggy horse, and pretend 



