2S6 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



uiillious oi" days' labor and the millions of dollars that Lave been 

 spent in the rural districts of the United States might as well have 

 been thrown into the sea. Is not that an appalling fact? But jou all 

 realize it. I state a fact to show you the vast importance of this ques- 

 tion. It has a direct bearing upon jour public expenditure, upon 

 your material progress. 



Let me illustrate it in this way: This is a day of specialization as 

 well as of marvelous advancement. You are specializing in every- 

 thing; you are reducing every thiiig to a science. If you had con- 

 ducted the commercial enterprises of 3^our cities on the same 

 principles as the common roads of the country are conducted, 

 how long would the business houses of this city or any other 

 city stand? You put every industry, every business, itito the hands 

 of specialists, while you put the road making of the country into the 

 hands of the incompetent and those who know nothing whatever 

 about the principles of road making. Similarly handled, no new in- 

 dustry in this couiitry would have the least chance of success. Your 

 railways are managed by great men, by men of sldll and genius; 

 every department works with mechanical perfection. If the rail- 

 wa3"s were managed as the rural highways are managed, and the 

 streets in jnan}' of your cities, traffic would be paralyzed, and the 

 wealthiest of these corporations made bankrupt. I venture to say 

 that if the great Steel Trust of this country were to manage its busi- 

 ness as we do our road making, within three years every shareholder 

 in that corporation would be bankrupt. [Applause.] Surelj^, when 

 you have made such progress in the arts and sciences, in commerce, 

 industrj^ and invention, you are able to organize the forces of the 

 country in order to improve your streets and chief rural highways. 



It is sometimes thought that in agitating the making of good roads, 

 we are urging the expenditure of vabt sums of money. We are not 

 doing anything of the sort. It is not a question of any new expendi- 

 ture. The expenditure is being made now. It is a question of 

 economy. It is a question, not of throwing money away, but of sav- 

 ing the incalculable loss there now is in the industries of the country. 

 Let me illustrate it in this wav: I have been officiallv connected with 

 the cheese industry in Canada, where we make from |20,0()0,()()0 to 

 $25,00(),0()() worth of eheese a year. And, by the way, when we go 

 to your expositions we generally take from 90 to 100 per cent, of the 

 prizes. [Laughter and applause.] Now I believe that we are losing 

 in haulage in connection with the cheese industry of Canada, at least 

 $1,000,000 a year. Apply that to your incalcuhibly greater output 

 of grain and wheat and other products, and the wealth of Croesus is 

 a tritle in comparison to the loss that the people of the United States 

 arc sustaining every year by having bad roads where they could 

 easily have good ones. [Applause.] Our appeal to you is that after 



