FARMEKS' STATE CONGRESS. 403 



sees a railroad train or an interurbau car, nor reads a daily paper. It 

 has been said that the heaviest tax imposed upon the farmer to-day is 

 that of bad roads. Bad roads are expensive when we take into account 

 the cost of transportation of the products from the farm to the railroad 

 station. The difference in the cost of the haul on the railroad, which is 

 but an improved highway, compared with that on the common roads is 

 very great. 



Oftentimes it costs more to haul a ton a mile over an unimproved 

 highway than to haul it one hundred and fifty times as far on the rail- 

 road. But this is not all. Oftentimes it is not possible to liaul any load 

 for any price for part of the year over our common roads. It makes no 

 difference what the market price of farm products may be, unless the 

 market can be reached. Time would fall me to enumerate the items that 

 go to make up the total loss occasioned by bad roads. This is not always 

 to be estimated by dollars and cents, for much of this loss is of those 

 things that go to make the JIarmer's life worth living, and many of these 

 are of too great a value to put a price upon, as these may include life 

 itself. 



But the farmer is not the only one to be benefited by good roads, nor 

 the only one interested in their construction and maintainance; all occu- 

 pations and all industries of whatever kind, are the beneficiaries. 



Road-building is to-day a question of importance; one for climatic 

 conditions and other reasons hard to solve. It is said that the only way 

 to an improved system of highways lies in the direction of legiglation. 

 I do not think so; but that public sentiment in favor of good roads must 

 precede legislation; and when the public is properly aroused upon this 

 subject, as it should be, we will have improved roads, legislation or no 

 legislation. That legislation is needed, it is true, as our highway laws 

 have become so fragmentary and disconnected by repeal and construction 

 that it is next to impossible to tell what the law at present is. In this 

 connection it might be well to state that the commission created by the 

 last Legislature is now at work on the codification of the highway laws 

 of Indiana; and all farmers or others interested in or desiring any changes 

 or amendments in the laws from what they now are ought to be x'eady 

 Avith their suggestions wlien the report of this commission is made to the 

 next General Assembly. 



Public sentiment is hard to awaken against established customs. 

 Few people have seen the faintest conception of tlie enormity of the waste 

 of public funds through the so-called road system that prevails in our own 

 and many other States, a custom inherited from the old world more than 

 a century ago, and long since discarded by it as unsatisfactory and un- 

 worthy to have a place in the civilization and progress of to-day. I be- 

 lieve that with better methods of road construction and maintainance, 

 that without any increase of the burden of taxation, within a few years 

 many, if not all. of our roads could be improved. In all other lines the 



