Good Roads. 113 



believe that one dollar in money will purchase labor that will 

 do the roads double the amount of good that one day's work 

 accredited for road work under the labor system has done in the 

 past, and, besides, we have the 25 per cent, from the State in addi- 

 tion. In the convention at Albany, to which I referred, about 80 

 towns were reported as having adopted the money system and 

 everyone, without exception, found it a great improvement over 

 the labor system. 



I believe under the labor tax system the rule is, as generally 

 adopted, to assess one days labor for each $500 assessment, which 

 at commutation rates |2 on a thousand dollars assessment, in 

 round numbers |20,000 in the county of Cortland, dropping the 

 assessment of incorporated villages, would give us $5,000 

 from the State. Would not, think you, $25,000 a year faithfully 

 and properly expended on the roads of Cortland county 

 make a vast improvement on our roads in a few years? Let as 

 bring the figures down to the town of Marathon. You have an 

 assessment of about $725,000; under the labor system your tax 

 will be 1,450 days, or $1,450, and your poll tax added, would raise 

 the amount of tax to $1,600. Then you would draw from the 

 State $400, thus giving you $2,000, with which to buy highway 

 labor. Does anyone in the county believe that there has been 

 even $1,000 worth of work faithfully and properly performed 

 apon our highways in a year during the last 20 years? If so, 

 you have the banner town of the county, for if you have faith- 

 fully and properly expended $20,000 upon your roads in labor 

 within the last 20 years, you have, I will guarantee the best roads 

 of any town in the State that is still on the labor tax system. 

 Further, I assume, that the competent road commissioner would 

 aot, as many pathmasters have done, order the sods, stones and 

 muck scraped on to the roadbed, making it many times worse 

 than it was before, in which condition they allow it to remain 

 •jntil rain washes the muck back into the ditches and then order 

 the sods and stones thrown back upon the muck again. In the 

 fall a stranger could not tell whether there had been any work 

 done on the road that vear or not. 



