50 Missouri Agricultural lleport. 



ties the road affairs are nothing more than a political machine. More 

 than one instance can be pointed out where the roads have been made 

 to suffer in order to reward a political henchman. This can never be 

 entirely eliminated from the business, but a healthy public sentiment 

 for the selection and the retention of men for their fitness for the work 

 rather than for their political affiliations, will be helpful. 



THE EARTH ROAD. 



Road dragging last year was not, on the whole, kept ui) to the stand- 

 ard of former years. The season was discouraging, but our attempt to 

 place road dragging under supervision and upon a cash contract basis, 

 checked the work. Our plan is to grade a continuous piece of road, then 

 to contract with paities living along the road, to drag it. This has met 

 with a surprising number of obstacles in one way or another. In some 

 cases, the engineer or overseer was not pennitted to pay a sufficient price 

 to cover the expense of dragging. Others oppose it because they do not 

 believe in the efficiency of the drag. Numerous instances have come to 

 my notice where a long stretch of road was being dragged with one or 

 more undragged sections in it. When the engineer would contract to 

 have these poor sections dragged, many quit who were dragging volun- 

 tarily, and then would not contract for the work. The greatest diffi- 

 culty in contracting the dragging has been to get citizens who will do 

 the work. It has been impossible to make contracts — neither will the 

 citizens keep it up properly as volimteer work. Volunteer dragging can 

 never be more thf^n temporary, and it must be solved, either by contract 

 (or payment for the work), or else by a law, compelling every property 

 holder to drag his road a required number of times raider the direction 

 of the road officials. 



I shall here reiterate my oft-repeated assertion that we should 

 give closer attention to the earth road. The largest road mileage of the 

 State will be earth roads for a long time to come, even at a very rapid 

 progress in road building, and in the meantime the best possible should 

 be made of the earth roads. AVell-maintained roads, with good bridges 

 and culverts, will solve the greatest problem in our road difficulties. 



RAILROAD RATES. 



I desire to mention a recent action upon freight rates for Missouri 

 on road materials and machinery by the Chicago & Alton and the Chi- 

 cago, Burlington & Quincy railroads. About the middle of October, the 

 Chicago & Alton announced that that road would put into effect a tariff 

 of one-half cent per ton per mile, car load lots, on road material and ma- 



