324 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



when the only differences between town and country will be in the 

 closeness of the houses and the kind of work the people do — when 

 there will be sympathy and understanding and unity of purpose 

 between the citizens of our towns and the citizens of our farms. 



Just now there is a new movement in Missouri for better roads 

 — and I may say in passing that the country-life problem in Mis- 

 souri will not be solved until the principal highways in every coun- 

 ty of the State are graded and macadamized. This new movement 

 for better roads owes its origin to the knowledge on the part of 

 some of the people that bad roads are doing more than everything 

 else to impede the progress of Missouri. Do you realize that that 

 knowledge was brought to the people through the medium of the 

 country press? Do you know, too, that but for the country news- 

 papers' knowledge of the King road drag would never have reached 

 the people who should know about it? Do you know, in fact, that 

 practically every country newspaper in Missouri is a year-in-and- 

 year-out advocate of better country roads, and that in. many of 

 the newspaper offices of the State clippings, news articles and 

 editorials on the subject of good roads are kept ready for use in 

 dull weeks? I do not know how long this has been going on, but 

 it began before I went into a country printing office as an appren- 

 tice nearly twenty-six years ago. Do you wonder that sentiment 

 for good roads in Missouri is growing; that cross-state highways 

 are being planned, and that special road districts are voting the 

 maximum amount of bonds they can issue for the purpose of 

 building permanent roads ? I tell you that the country newspapers 

 of Missouri did practically all of the pioneer work in the good- 

 roads movement, and today are carrying the greater part of the 

 burden of the movement. I verily believe, too, if they should sud- 

 denly agree not to mention the subject again, the movement would 

 die in sixty days. 



I ask you now, what thanks have the country newspapers re- 

 ceived for this work? And I will answer my own question — prac- 

 tically none. Why, do you know that less than a dozen years ago 

 farmers in. a Central Missouri county organized a boycott against 

 a newspaper which proposed that the county should issue bonds 

 and build roads? In my own experience I have been roundly 

 abused by farmers living a long distance from town because my 

 newspaper urged them to drag the roads. I was doing something, 

 too, that meant nothing to me, except the indirect benefit which 

 would come through having the community benefited, while I was 



