326 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



shrunk more than 6 per cent, or $70,000,000 in ten years. They found the 

 same shrinkage in other northeastern states, except in Massachusetts, 

 where an increase of over 20 per cent was traced to the fact that the 

 state had liberally improved its roads. Further study "showed that in 

 New York 12,000,000 tons of farm products were hauled to market every 

 year over wagon roads at a cost of not less than 16 cent per ton per mile, 

 while over roads properly graded and graveled or macadamized the cost 

 would be from 6 to 8 cents per ton per mile. 



The natural roads in New York are better than the average natural 

 roads in Iowa. We pay for our vastly richer soil with dirt roads that 

 are mud when wet. No statistics are at hand to show what the cost of 

 transporting freight per ton per highway mile in Iowa may be, but if it 

 be true, as the experience of Massachusetts is said to make reasonbly 

 sure, that improved roads in New York will enable her farmers to get 

 their products to market 50 per cent cheaper, a like improvement in this 

 state should enable our farmers to make a much larger saving in the 

 same process. 



New York has just passed a constitutional amendment which pro- 

 vides for an appropriation of five million dollars annually to be used in 

 improving roads. That there may be an equitable distribution of this 

 money, and to encourage counties and townships to take an interest in 

 .good road building, the law specifies that any township that will expend 

 $1,500 "in a county that will furnish $3,500 the state will aid it to the 

 amount of $5,000. The plan is the outgrowth of careful study, based on 

 experience, and it seems worthy of the closest study by the people of Iowa. 



And if our representatives in Congress would appropriate a few mil- 

 lion dollars a year for the improvement of the highways it would do the 

 people more good than the hundreds of million that have been expended 

 or squandered on some "Rivers and Harbors." Congress could help us 

 in a way that would count for good. In New York the autorization of 

 the work is expected to add at least $10 per acre to the value of the farm 

 lands affected. 



I believe that for every dollar judiciously invested in making good 

 roads, enhanced values would be counted in scores of dollars within a 

 single lifetime. 



There are great possibilities for good on "Our Country Roads," for 

 those who want to do something which will be appreciated by all the 

 people, and for which posterity will call them blessed. We ought to see 

 more permanent good accomplished with the money expended. But we 

 are not going to give up hope. 



Let up hope that some patriot will come forward who has planned 

 and worked out a method which, with the money now raised by taxes, 

 will make all our country roads as good, or better, than the best roads 

 are now — a method of working the roads so that they will be good 365 

 (lays in every year. Such a man would be a promoter of human good. 



