FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 39 



The statute labor system needs a bolt and not the kind of a bolt that 

 colts sometimes take when you are breaking them, but one that will 

 bolt on an up-to-date attachment that will make it work much better 

 than it has worked until we can, if we want to, supplant it with a new 

 machine. 



And I hardly think it fair to find too much fault with the path-masters 

 either. If you should send twenty children to a schoolhouse in which 

 there was no teacher and no text books of any kind or description, and 

 tell those children to educate themselves, you would not expect they 

 would get a very fine education would you? You certainly would not 

 have a right to expect much, yet you have sent the path-master to the 

 road that is worth a hundred million dollars and you have told him 

 to educate himself and those under him how to build and improve roads, 

 and all without a teacher or a text-book. With all this to contend with, 

 you add a worse by turning him out and putting another man in by the 

 time he gets so he is any good. 



Well, I have a prescription to offer and I believe it will materially 

 aid. First, I would create in this State a highway bureau, and I would 

 put in a road builder as State Highway Commissioner; I would allow 

 him to hire a first-class civil engineer and such other help as the demands 

 upon such department made necessary, and this department should be 

 subject to the call of any township in the State for expert advice on 

 how to build and repair roads, or bridges, where a sufficient amount of 

 money was to be expended to warrant the expense. I would give that 

 department the power to create in every county what should be known 

 as the county board of road commissioners, made up of every township 

 highway commissioner in that county. It should be the duty of that 

 State Highway Commissioner to hold at least one day of road school in 

 each and every county in the State every year, and every commissioner 

 that attended should draw the same pay as though working on the 

 road, together with his legitimate traveling expenses from his town- 

 ship, and in my opinion this would be money well spent by his town- 

 ship. Further, I would make it obligatory upon every overseer of high- 

 ways, every township and county highway commissioner, and every 

 superintendent of streets in the State, to make an annual report to such 

 State department and under oath answer such questions as the State 

 Highway Commissioner might think proper to ask. This would be bene- 

 ficial in two ways, first, it would make the overseers and others do 

 their duty, for if they did not, the State commissioner would get right 

 after them with the sharp stick of the law, which they would tell their 

 neighbors, and you can readily see that a man would either pay his tax, 

 or work it out rather than have his neighbor overseer pay a fine for not 

 doing his duty, and it would be a great benefit in another way, which 

 would be that the State commissioner would get in each year about 

 1,500 reports 'and the last question asked by the State commissioner of 

 each would be, "What have you discovered in road or street building 

 or repairing this year that ought to be communicated to every other 

 builder and repairer in the State for the good of the State?" 



Do you doubt this being worth one-half cent to 'each citizen in Michi- 

 gan each year? 



Another thing would materially help us, and that is State aid, but we 

 cannot get any until we change our constitution. While we are getting 



