396 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



MR. DETKICH: Now as it appears to me, automobiles are bene- 

 tlcial and are strongly influential toward promoting good roads, and I 

 do not think we ought to discriminate against these things. If you 

 want the city people to be discriminated against and so set them 

 at odds with the country people, you know how it works. 



What the country needs is more capital on the farms. It will 

 bring farms up to a higher state of cultivation, and to a larger pro- 

 duction, and every person doing business to-day and every business 

 man in the State is interested in the best methods that can be ap- 

 plied to the work of the farm. One of the most necessary things 

 is to have rapid means of traveling from one point to another, and 

 this facility is furnished by automobiles better than by any other 

 means. Automobiles have wide tires and they are also made of rub- 

 ber, and I do not see why this discrimination should come up against 

 an automobile traveling on a public road. It is a cheap way to 

 ride and a saving of horse-flesh. I am sorry that these discrimina- 

 ting allusions came up in reference to the road law. I know that 

 the owners of automobiles are among our most earnest workers 

 for good roads, and I have been surprised to find that there is a 

 feeling against these men. The automobile has come to stay, and 

 we may as well recognize the fact, and it appears to me that the 

 best thing we can do is to heartily co-operate with those men for the 

 improvement of our public roads. 



MR. MARTIN: There is possibly no question that may come be- 

 fore the Legislature of more importance than the one now under 

 consideration; a question which alfects very directly the farmers 

 of the State, living, quite possibly many of them, in the more 

 remote portions and rural districts of Pennsylvania. It be- 

 hooves the farmers to look well into the conditions of legislation, 

 relative to public highways and into the law which is now in force, 

 which looks to the construction of permanent highways. I have 

 consulted just recently with the Road Commissioner relative to the 

 workings of that law. It is not only his judgment, but the judg 

 ment of most of the farmers to-dav in Pennsvlvania, that the one 

 provision in this act which relates to the part which the townships 

 bear to this law in petitioning for a road through the supervisors 

 and in the paying of one-sixth of the cost of the construction of a 

 road, is possibly the lamest point in that law and one which causes 

 more trouble and delay than any other portion of the act, and I am 

 fully satisfied, as I understand the question, that we ought to take 

 up that proposition, and through your Legislative Committee, make 

 such recommmendations to the Legislature, now in session, as will 

 bring about a modification of the law, such as will give us good prac- 

 tical work throughout the State. I would possibly go just a little 

 further than some of the gentlemen whose remarks preceded mine, 

 and that is, that we will possibly soon approach the time in which 

 the State will construct these highways irrespective of the amount 

 received from the county and the township. The main road or 

 roads in the different counties will be, according to the number of 

 miles in the various counties, placed in the hands of the Road Com- 

 missioner to make use of the State funds as far as they will go to- 

 ward the permanent construction of these roads; and in my judgment, 

 my friends, then, and not until then, will you arrive at a system of 



