54 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The President: We have a gentleman here tonight, Mr. 

 D. B. Lyons, president of the Commercial Exchange of Des 

 Moines, and secretary of the Iowa Good Roads Association, 

 who has done more for good roads than any other man in the 

 State, and will now address you on the subject. 



REMARKS BY MR. LYONS. 



I deem it a great pleasure to have even one lady present at this 

 meeting tonight, and I fully agree with what other speakers have said 

 about having the ladies and young men in attendance at these meetings; 

 the ladies, because they have such an influence upon the home and the 

 voters, the boys, because they finally have to help pay the bill for build- 

 ing these roads. 



An Iowa Good Roads Association was organized here last April. I 

 see before me several faces of those who have been in other meetings 

 and who are today members of this association. Your chairman here 

 tonight, Mr. Morrow, is one of the vice presidents of the congressional 

 districts. But I imagine that very few of you really know what has 

 been going on in this good roads movement in Iowa, because you have 

 not had a chance to know, unless you have been in one of the counties 

 where our conventions have been held. I want to assure you there is 

 a good deal going on, and I anticipate and predict with entire confidence 

 that it is only a matter of comparatively short time until a perfect tidal 

 wave will cover the entire State of Iowa on this subject, and that it 

 will result in legislation that is similar to that which is now being- 

 enjoyed in other states. 



Our friend, Moore, has been in the harness for so long, has seen so 

 much, and dreamed so much about it, until he has the idea of good roads 

 permanently fastened in his mind. I want to tell him that Iowa people 

 have not yet gotten directly to the point. We are not yet quite ready, 

 until we know more about it, to vote for the kind of a bill that he pro- 

 poses; but I anticipate that we may be ready sooner than some of you 

 think, because we are learning more about it every day. 



I want to challenge anybody here in this house, or in the State of 

 Iowa, to prove that he knows less about the subject of good roads than 

 I did six months ago; and I do not know much yet, but I have found 

 out that you can, by investigating and reading and by hearing other 

 people tell you things and by observing the experience of other people 

 on the subject, you can become pretty well posted. 



While America properly boasts of her supremacy in arts, sciences 

 and educational institutions, she must admit with shame that she is 

 many centuries behind European countries in the important matter of 

 improved public highways. 



Probably the chief reason for this lies in the fact that during the 

 past eighty years, during which our chief growth has occurred, the 



