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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



oppose the building of good roads if they own land within the district to 

 be taxed. But these men will travel a long way around and open eighteen 

 gates to get on to the smooth road after it has been built. 



Good roads are, in one respect, like a good wife. You must take 

 care of a road if you wish to keep it smooth and have it wear well. Neglect 

 your wife and you'll lose her or she'll go to the hospital for repairs. 



There's an excuse for almost anything except bad roads. The most 

 inexcusable thing is the failure of men to have good roads when split 

 log drags are so easily made and so easily used. 



"Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man,'' 

 was written in Massachusetts where good roads ideas began long before 

 Mr. Bryan started to run for things. No one could be a real friend to 

 man, with a kindly smile and a ready hand if he lived in a house by the 

 side of a bad road. Bad roads and good spirits will never be found 

 together. Bad roads and tenantry; bad roads and poor churches and schools; 

 bad roads and no social life; bad roads and discontent — these are com- 

 binations always to be encountered. 



The Middle-West has been lamentably slow in its road building. If 

 it were not for a few cheerful persons in isolated places we never should 

 have a mile of improvements in some of these states. My private opinion, 

 publicly expressed, is that we have been altogether too easy, too good 

 natured about this business in every part of the country. The farmers 

 are not always to blame for poor highways. 



Indeed if every dollar of taxes for the purpose were properly expended 

 there is scarcely a county in Kansas or Missouri in which all the roads 

 might not be improved in three years and the improvement be maintained. 

 This does not mean, necessarily, that money is stolen in all these counties — 

 although it has been stolen in a number of them. It means that incompe- 

 tent men under the poorest management have squandered or wasted the 

 people's money. 



Necessarily a Kansas man will say most about his own state. Do 

 you know that Wyoming — a name that strikes more ears as might Van- 

 couver or Vladivostock — Wyoming, with a population of less than 200,000, 

 has nearly 100 miles more improved highways than has the older, wealthier 

 state of Kansas, with its million and three-fourths population? In Wyom- 

 ing four percent of the road mileage is improved. In Kansas we have 

 four-tenths of one percent of the mileage improved. Missouri, with its 

 four million population, has only four-tenths of one per cent more improved 

 highways than has Wyoming which so many of us refer to, patronizingly, 

 as the Far West! Wyoming has spent more money and has done more 

 work on its roads than have Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, 

 Oklahoma or West Virginia, and it has done as much as Texas, the largest 

 state in the Union! 



I often wonder what becomes of the money. The Washington experts 

 say there has been an awakening. I haven't heard a sound to prove it. 

 The reports show that approximately 206 million dollars was spent last 



