FOR 
HORTICULTURISTS AND GOOD ROADS. 325 
of life, liberty and property that wagon roads should be built by 
the general government, and in that period (when the government 
was limited to such matters only as were considered necessary for 
the proper enjoyment of life, liberty and property), the government 
did carry on internal improvements such as the constructing of 
canals, harbors and wagon roads. But corruption, extravagance 
and incompetence in carrying on these works of internal improve- 
ment created in the public mind a distrust of the wisdom of entrust- 
ing such work to either the general government or the state govern- 
ment, and so we find in the constitutions of some of the states an 
absolute prohibition of internal improvements by the state. The 
constitution of the state of Minnesota contains such a prohibition, 
and in a case which went to the supreme court, it was decided that 
the term “internal improvements” in our constitution meant the 
improvements of wagon roads. You will see then that public 
Opinion upon this subject has radically changed in United States 
from the idea that the building of public wagon roads was a legiti- 
mate governmental function becausé roads were necessary to the 
enjoyment of life, liberty and property, to the opposite extreme of 
prohibiting the state from having anything to do with the building 
of wagon roads. 
STATE AID FOR SCHOOLS. 
But while the state is prohibited from building wagon roads it has 
not been prohibited from applying the principle of state aid to the 
conduct of public schools. And in the state of Minnesota we havea 
large state school fund, at present about $10,000,000,the income from 
which is distributed together with an annual mill tax to all the 
school districts throughout the state which shall conduct a school 
of acertain character during each year. This system you areall 
familiar with. The state does not undertake to carry on any of these 
district schools but aids in sustaining them by paying part of the 
expense of running the schools. Now, it is upon the same principle 
and by a system very similar to the state aid for country schools 
that it is proposed that the state shall aid in the building of wagon 
roads. 
STATE AID IN NEW JERSEY. 
We have not only the early history of United States and the ex- 
perience in the conduct of our district schools as precedents for 
state aid, but in the state of New Jersey they have adopted this prin- 
ciple in the construction of country wagon roads, and Iam informed 
that farms lying along the roads improved through state aid have 
increased in value during the past few years as much as 100 per 
cent. One farm which went begging for a purchaser at $40 an acre 
before the roads were improved, has since been sold for $125 an acre, 
and this increase in value of farm property in New Jersey along 
these improved wagon roads has taken place during the recent 
years of panic when every other kind of property nearly has de- 
creased in value. The farmers haul four or five tons on these roads 
ata load,when a ton or less was formerly a heavy load,and so popu- 
lar and successful has state aid been in New Jersey that the farmers 
