66 BOARD OF AGKICULTUKE. 



former being cheapened to a degree that will enable all products of the 

 country to reach their proper raarliet. 



During the past year transportation was often overtaxed by the supply 

 of material, and in nearly all departments of trade there were con- 

 gestions of their thoroughfares, vexatious delays and losses, besides other 

 ills that are obvious. We should begin here and now to agitate until a 

 remedy is found for present hindrances. 



Why should our wealth of produce all be poured through a compara- 

 tively few channels to a few distributing centers until they are glutted 

 into a state of torpor, out of which they must be prodded, by other parts 

 that actually suffer from scarcity? Is it not possible to make the me- 

 tropolis of every State the distributing center for that State, and so 

 greatly facilitate the work of distribution, while at the same time the 

 commercial interests of the State and its metropolis will be enhanced? 



Take, for instance, our capital city, the metropolis of our State, one 

 of the gi'eatest railroad centers in the world; with its daily hundreds of 

 arriving and departing trains, and its abundant facilities for handling 

 them. Would it not be the part of wisdom to make use of the advantages 

 which it offers in these respects, rather than turn our fertilizing streams 

 to the northwest, the southwest and the southeast, and there cause to 

 bloom gardens that are not ours? ^ 



With the creation of more distributing centers should come the enact- 

 ment of laws requiring all trunk lines of railroads traversing our State 

 to provide double tracks to the State lines, in order that a more rapid 

 and easy transit may be had. 



As the necessary complement of these, w^e should have a system of 

 highways leading from all points of importance in the State to our 

 capital, even as it was said in ancient times "All the roads of the world 

 lead to Rome." These should be built of macadam, broad, smooth and 

 level, as are the thoiisands of miles of I'oad in France and Germany, as 

 fit for travel and heavy loads at one season of the year as another and 

 fit for all sorts of vehicles, including the flying automobile. 



In the construction of these roads, convicts, inmates of the county 

 jails, vagrants, and the manageable, able-bodied of all our eleemosynary 

 institutions, should be employed, as it might be to their own advantage 

 and that of the State. The reproach that now attaches to the State for 

 bringing convict labor in competition Avith free labor would then be taken 

 away. In the pai-ticular of vagrants, laws should be enacted whereby 

 persons showing no visible means of subsistence might be convicted of 

 vagrancy and compelled to serve the State. 



These roads, once constructed, should be maintained in permanency 

 by sections in charge of which should be placed regular minders of roads, 

 properly equipped and so constructed and maintained that they should 

 be made accessible to every farmer in the State. 



Those of us who remember what our roads were years ago, and how 

 they were kept, also know how wretchedly inadequate they would prove 



