ANNUAL MEETING OHIO STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 35 



sign a petition for the construction of a good road. 



The value of a man's services to society is in proportion to his ability to 

 work with other men. Try it once on the roads and make better roads and 

 better men. 



Throw away your clubs, stop your knocking and get into the good roads 

 campaign in Ohio. 



Bad roads are the signs of backwardness, indolence and careless citizenship. 



Every day a road is bad the users of it and the purchasers of supplies 

 hauled over it loose money. 



Bad roads are responsible to a great degree for driving the young people 

 from the farm into the cities. 



Bad roads empty the benches in the school houses and are largely responsible 

 for four hundred abandoned church buildings in Ohio. 



Bad roads play an important part in what we eat and wear. 



Bad roads are an extravagance that no civilized people can afford. 



Bad roads keep the farmers at home to read the catalogues of mail order 

 houses. 



Bad roads prevent the farmer from delivering the corn from which he is 

 -expected to realize money with which to pay an account with his local mer- 

 chant and the note due in bank. 



Bad roads have been tried by the farmer, doctor, lawyer, merchant, preacher, 

 trader, teacher, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the high and the 

 low, the millionaire and the tramp, the drunk and the sober and the saint and 

 the sinner, who, although familiar with the history of bad roads of the past 

 and the waste of untold millions due to bad roads, have just commenced to 

 realize that the time is at hand for the people of Ohio to demand a change in 

 road conditions and to pull themselves out of the mud. 



Right now is the time to fix the roads and spend less time in cussing the 

 middle-man for with good i roads we can dodge him and reach the- consumer. 



Elbert Hubbard says "Instead of hitching your wagon to a star, suppose 

 you get in touch with the good roads movement." 



I am interested in the question of better roads, am not committed to any 

 pet scheme, am not interested in the manufacture of road materials or road 

 machinery and care not who gets the glory so long as the people of Ohio get 

 the results better roads. 



I am in the better roads campaign with the people to win a victory for 

 better roads everywhere to be constructde and maintained less and less at the 

 expense of the abutting land owner and more and more by county, state and na- 

 tional assistance. 



I am opposed to all laws, either existing or proposed, which place all the 

 burden of the construction and maintenance of public roads upon the farmer and 

 the abutting land owner. 



The highways of the state are for the use and benefit of the people of 

 the state and are free to inter-state travel 'which has all been made possible, with 

 but few exceptions, by direct tax upon the abutting and near-by land owner 

 who have blazed the way and laid the foundation for a great system of public 

 highways throughout the states and nation-wide extent. 



The state of Ohio has spent millions of dollars in the construction and 

 maintenance of its canals and but a meager sum "for the improvement of the 

 wagon roads of the state upon the theory that money spent for canals would 

 lessen transportation by water and without any consideration whatever of the 

 much greater demand for cheaper transportation by land. 



Now is the time for Ohio to follow the splendid examples set by Cali- 

 fornia, New York and Pennsylvania and issue the bonds of the state"' for state 



