402 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



datory upon counties. The introduction of mounted state 

 police, as militia for the protection of open country populations, 

 having given demonstration of usefulness in a few states is being 

 encouraged in legislatures of other states. Electrification of 

 township units seems likely to raise up a rural utility under 

 municipal control. Village and city rest rooms for country 

 people coming in to trade have become compulsory in one state. 

 This plan has its angles of interest and suggestiveness ; the 

 village or city must appropriate a certain amount of money 

 for rest-room maintenance, whereupon the state adds a like 

 amount. 



Road legislation, frequent and even startling, is recognizing 

 more and more rural population groups. The trunk line idea, 

 however, good and fundamental as it is, needs to be linked up 

 with the community roads plan, whereby the retail trade popu- 

 lation of villages, towns, and small cities are integrated and 

 their institutional purposes are facilitated. It is not too late 

 in the newer sections of the United States for legislation to 

 encourage the establishment of " residence roads," that is, the 

 selection of certain favorably situated roads pertaining to a par- 

 ticular trading center, upon which most of the farm residences 

 of settlers shall be located. Residence roads would save much 

 mileage of highly surfaced roadway, bring farming people into 

 closer neighborhood contact, and facilitate school transporta- 

 tion, and other institutional development. 



Redistribution of rural routes. The farmer appreciates his 

 postal service ; in fact he appreciates this daily delivery of mail 

 so much that he is slow to complain of any flaws in the present 

 system. One defect, however, sooner or later he will point out. 

 Just because he is becoming a business man along with a partic- 

 ular group of business men located in and around a particular 

 business center, he is going finally to object to having for his 

 mailing address, a little town or hamlet to which perhaps he 

 seldom or never goes. A closer application of the principle of 

 integrating the farmer with his own natural population group 

 will be requested of the government in distributing the rural 

 routes. 



