HORTICULTURISTS AND GOOD ROADS. i238 
The same is especially true of the dairy business. All the talk of 
all the reformers in the country has not done so much to impress 
the importance of good roads upon dairymen as has his personal 
experience going to market every day in the year with his milk, rain 
or shine, mud or no mud. So, while I have the impression that the 
average intelligence of horticulturists exceeds that of the average 
dairyman or farmer, the fact is, it does not require very much intel- 
ligence to see the need of better roads when a man is forced to use 
the roads in all kinds of weather. Horse sense is all that sucha 
man needs to appreciate the importance of good roads, and on the 
whole it is probable that horses appreciate the difference between 
good and bad roads better than their drivers generally do. 
There are two very good reasons then why you, as horticulturists, 
should be especially interested in the improvement of country 
wagon roads. Assuming, then, that argument is unnecessary to 
convince you of the importance of better roads, I will pass that 
phase of the question and briefly discuss that which bothers us all 
more than anything else, namely,—how shall we pay for better 
roads? An hour’s talk would not exhaust this question, and asI 
have but ten minutes more I will confine myself to one phase of the 
question only, namely,—state aid. 
UNEQUAL TAXATION. 
It seems strange that the farmers and the people from the country 
generally have not demanded a more systematic aid from the state 
for building country wagon roads. 
We have a provision in our state constitution which reads as 
follows: ‘All taxes to be raised in this state shall be as nearly 
equal as may be; and all property on which taxes are to be levied 
shall havea cash valuation, and be equalized and uniform through- 
out the state.” Now that provision of our constitution means that 
one man shall not pay any more tax in proportion to the value of his 
property than any other property owner in thestate. This principle 
of taxation has been so well impressed upon our minds that we 
apply it and insist upon it in the ordinary methods of taxation asa 
matter of course: for example,if you own a farm adjoining that of 
your neighbors, and his farm is worth just as much as yours is, you 
insist that his tax shall be just as mueh as yours. This is elemen- 
tary, and yet property owners in the country consent to a violation 
of that principal continually. We all know that the agitation for 
improvement of the country wagon roads originated in thecities and 
has been chiefly supported and kept alive by city men. The natural 
inference is that the cities will be benefitted by better country roads. 
You are not simple enough to suppose that these city men are 
agitating this question so much from purely benevolent motives. 
The fact is that it is admitted by the best informed people that the 
cities will be nearly, if not quite, as much benefitted by the im- 
provement of country wagon roads as the country people will be. 
The New York Chamber of Commerce says: “Weare handicapped 
in all the markets of the world by an enormous waste of labor in 
the primary transportation of our products and manufactures, 
