36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jail., 



upon highway improvement. I know of no other system 

 than that of which I have spoken that will so immediately 

 give to the people of the State pleasant and safe conduct to 

 and from, not only each particular section or district of the 

 town, but also the market place. 



If you have a bad stretch of road in your town it should 

 be fixed first, and the State is only too happy to help you 

 do it. I believe it is wise if your roof leaks to repair it. If 

 it rains in in forty or fifty places and you haven't the 

 money to buy the shingles necessary to put on a new roof, 

 and can only buy one bundle of shingles, buy that bundle and 

 put it on as far as it will go, or buy enough to stop the rain 

 coming in, and then when you get the money, buy enough 

 shingles to fix the whole roof. This system of improving 

 sections in isolated districts gives a ready and quick access 

 not only to the centers but also to the market places, so that 

 the back-lying farms may be put in easy communication with 

 those places as speedily as possible. It is certainly for the 

 benefit of the town that this should be done. A town that 

 has this in mind will speedily grow in riches by the develop- 

 ment and opening up of these isolated districts, and will 

 gradually grow into that condition whereby it can finally 

 obtain the money it wants to improve all the highways. I 

 believe that this policy is wise and sound. 



We are at work in the State now in 159 towns under the 

 old appropriation. I do not know a single section in this 

 State, and if I did I should be frank and truthful enough to 

 say so, in which one single dollau of that money has been 

 unwisely spent. (Applause.) Indeed, I do know, in fact 

 have in my possession in my office as a curiosity, a petition 

 signed by forty residents of a town asking me to come into 

 that town and take the material that had been taken off a 

 hill and put it back again. I resurrected it the other day, and 

 I am happy to say that I have lived long enough to see that 

 town, which had under its first appropriation $600 or $700, 

 come in with a new petition asking the State to extend to the 

 town the full appropriation of $9,000, and that was done last 

 August. They have evidently changed their minds, as we 

 find the minds of the people all over the State have been 

 changed in regard to the former attitude of the State. 



When 1 started to tell about that picture, I dwelt only 



