132 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



I told him I wanted him to meet me at the State meeting at Fayette. Mr, 

 Blank is a conscientious man and he went to St. Louis and spent at the 

 public library in that city, a whole week studying the road laws of the dif- 

 ferent states of the Union. He came from St. Louis directly to Fayette, 

 and said to Mr. Reed, the president of the Lnproved Roads Association : 

 "I have investigated this law, gentlemen, and I must confess I find no 

 fault in it. I mean to say, no fault in the general principled of it." Now 

 what was he to do? He was, to use a very uncouth expression, between 

 the Devil and the deep sea. His constituency were behind him looking to 

 him to wipe out of existence and forever obliterate every sentiment in 

 favor of this law and if possible expugn it. There was his constituency 

 on the one side opposed to it and his conscience in favor of it. But he 

 acted honorably, he got up before this Association and before the people" 

 and said: ''Gentlemen, I have investigated this question as thoroughly 

 as I can, up-to-date, and I am prepared to say that there is nothing wrong 

 in the principles underlying it." 



Let us look again and discover some of the things wherein this com- 

 missioner system is distinguished from the road overseer system. Take 

 the question that was very carefully discussed by Mr. King a moment ago, 

 that of the wasting of the revenues. Why a waste? I do not know that 

 he explained just why. We have two classes of revenues, a cash revenue 

 and a labor revenue, and if there is any one thing that we have been striv- 

 ing harder to do than any other, it has been to forever wipe out of ex- 

 istence the barbarous system of paying poll tax in labor. We made an 

 investigation of that question and wrote to every county in the State of 

 Missouri some years ago — that was in 1898 — and asked the men who 

 had knowledge of road matters to estimate the value of poll tax paid in 

 labor as applied upon the roads, and as a rule they put it below fifty 

 cents on the dollar, some, in fact, as low as twenty-five cents. Striking a 

 general average, it fell below forty cents on the dollar, Mr. King has told 

 us why the labor for poll tax is of so little value and we need not argue 

 this question any further. We have sought all these years to establish a 

 law that would require that all the road tax, both poll and property, be 

 paid in money. This principle of paying poll tax in money goes further 

 than Mr. King outlined. He went far enough to show the utter waste- 

 fulness of it, but it goes further. By the use of this kind of revenue it 

 is impossible to adopt some other principles that ought to be adopted. 

 It is in the way, a barrier, a bar which you cannot get over. Why ? In 

 trying to adopt the contract system, a large percentage of the revenue 

 would be payable in poll tax labor, consequently the adoption of that 

 method becomes impossible. It is also almost an absolute bar to another 

 proposition, that a continuous application upon the road the year round is 



