LIVE STOCK BREKDERS. 131 



Board of School Directors, then, have the management of the bushiess 

 of the district ; the building of the school houses and securing of the teach- 

 ers, etc., but when it comes to the third feature, the work of teaching, 

 another person entirely, is at the head of that. Don't you see? The 

 teacher has to be a man or woman qualified for that especial work. Tlie 

 Board of Directors may not be competent to teach school, it is not neces- 

 sary that they should be ; they may not be competent to manage the as- 

 sessment and collection of the taxes, it is not necessary that they should 

 be ; the distinctive feature of their work is the management of the business, 

 of the district. So likewise the Board of road commissioners manages 

 the business of the road district. As the Board of Directors of a school 

 district employs the teacher and, indicates in a general way what sort of 

 work he shall do, decides upon the length of the term, etc., so, in like 

 manner the Board of Road Commissioners employs the persons who do 

 the actual work on the roads, by contract or in any other way that seems 

 best to them. 



This is the central thought, the spirit of the law that we have upon 

 our statute books today, called the road commissioner law ; it conforms 

 to business principles. You may look, gentlemen — I speak now advised- 

 ly — yrv :r:iv :-rir?ack the laws upon the statute books of every state in the 

 Union, you may loJi. ■ the business principles in these laws and look 

 as you may you will not have a better set of principles than those I have 

 announced in any of them. As evidence of the truth of this, when this 

 law was enacted in 1899 there was a howl of disapproval went all over 

 the State, such a howl of disapproval as perhaps was never heard upon the 

 enactment of any other law. In one county — I am going to give you a 

 specific case — the antagonism to that road law was so severe that the mem- 

 ber of the legislature, who had been in the legislature of 1899 was thor- 

 oughly convinced that he would be defeated, and they relegated him to 

 the rear and a man by the name of Blank, a brainy man and an elegant 

 gentleman was elected. He was elected upon the proposition that he 

 was unalterably opposed to the road commissioner law. I knew him and 

 have known him all his life. He was a thoughtful and conscientious man 

 but had not studied this law very much. He used it, of course, for cam- 

 paign purposes, as you know a politician will do. After his election I sent 

 him some very carefully selected road literature, giving some arguments 

 used in 1898 and used with the General Assembly in 1899 to get that law 

 upon the statute books. I sent him these and asked him as a friend to 

 read them and sent him a copy of the law — for he had not read it — and 

 asked him to make an investigation and I said "You cannot afiford not to 

 do it. All I ask of you is to make a careful investigation, and don't stop 

 at mere surface reading, but go down into the question." He did so and 



