40 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



desire to do the best they can for their famiHes, and it is a 

 good deal of a sacrifice for many of them to devote the time 

 they do for so Httle money. Many of the towns have a large 

 mileage of roads to look after, and if they were to devote the 

 whole of their time in looking after the roads of their several 

 towns with the compensation offered them I am very much 

 afraid that their families would very soon become a town 

 charge. The selectmen of the State, I find, in the main, are 

 careful, hardworking, painstaking, and always poorly paid 

 oflficials, but they do remarkably well considering the many 

 disadvantages they have to work under. 



There are faults I find to exist in the country towns and 

 in the cities. I find as a rule that most of the improvements 

 are made in the centers of the large cities, just the same as 

 improvements have been made in the boroughs or villages 

 of our country towns. I do not hesitate to say right here 

 that, as a rule, the center of the city gets the best pavement 

 and outside they get very little. Now, I believe that if the 

 city is to grow it is to grow by the suburban parts of it, or 

 by the increase of manufacturing. And I know this, that if 

 you improve the outside portions of a city, pave the streets, 

 curb them, put down walks, put in sewers, and gas and water, 

 and all the modern conveniences, it invites people to settle 

 in the outskirts, and thus helps to build up the city. The 

 same thing holds good with the towns. If you improve the 

 highways you invite building, shorten the distance to market, 

 decrease the expense of repairs for the farmer, build up the 

 grand list, and the town will thus eventually have more money 

 with which to make improvements. 



There is another evil in the cities, and it has grown to 

 be quite a custom. I have seen city after city where mile 

 after mile of splendid pavements have been put down, and 

 very soon after, the next day or the next week, some corpo- 

 ration or artisan has entered upon the streets to make con- 

 nections, simply because someone in authority had been 

 thoughtless and had not seen that at the proper time con- 

 nections were made with the service pipes in the streets. In 

 many of our cities there is no inspector of sewer, water, and 

 gas pipes, and the surface is ripped up and the pavement 

 ruined. It is true that the little towns have had a sort of 

 affinity; whether it is by force of custom, lack of money, or 



