PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 201 



If you leave the roads or highways, then, to untrained men, inexperi- 

 enced men, you can't expect anything but poor roads; you have got to 

 get them into the hands of trained people, and I think that through 

 a slate plan this matter will be solved and the roads will be put upon a 

 proper footing. Understand me, I mean that the technical part of the 

 road work should be in trained, technical hands, and the business part 

 should be by good business men or men of large executive ability. We 

 see to-day, for instance, where there is a good man elected supervisor 

 who looks after his roads. Perhaps he has done something that has not 

 quite suited his constituency; at the end of four years they put him 

 out and another man is put in. How can you ever expect to get a 

 system worked out in this way? I don't doubt but a great many of 

 you here have seen this, that one man in charge of a piece of road had 

 his views and ideas about the construction, and he went to work to carry 

 them out. "When the change took place and the other fellow came in, 

 his views and ideas were diametrically opposed to his predecessor's, 

 and he fixed it upon in his way, and the next fellow probably did 

 the same thing, and instead of getting roads you got a hodge-podge 

 out of it. As I have said, it requires considerable scientific ability to 

 get these roads on a proper footing, and I think that the roads require 

 engineers just as much as any disease requires the man of medicine. 

 I don't think if you were ill at home you would go to a blacksmith to 

 have him cure you. If you are going to get a road, I believe you will 

 have to go to the engineer to get it. 



In this bond proposition of eighteen millions of dollars, stop and 

 think what it means; stop and think, by tying up the county seats, 

 what it means. Again, stop and think what the opening up of the 

 great Sierra Nevadas of this State means. You know that the southern 

 part of the State has a great harvest, not only of oranges and lemons, 

 but tourists. Those people can be induced to stay longer and spend 

 more money if you give them good roads up through the Sierra Nevadas. 

 They come out here to the coast with their machines, and they spend 

 their money whenever they do that. I have been in the hotels and 

 heard them say, ' ' Well, there is no good of coming out here again. ' ' They 

 can't go anywhere, owing to the mud and dirt and bad roads, yet if 

 we had good clean roads for them to travel on they would not stop 

 in that section, but they would travel over this beautiful country. That 

 alone is a very important item. In the expenditure by the State of 

 eighteen millions, just see how small it is compared with what we are 

 now spending. Look at the past thirty years and see what we have 

 expended on roads. We have expended alone on oiled roads some 

 millions of dollars, and where has it gone? There isn't much of it left. 

 I dare say that in the past thirty years the State of California, through 

 its counties, has expended something in the neighborhood of sixty 

 millions of dollars for its roads. If we can stop this and put a system 

 into use and get it going and spend only eighteen million dollars for 

 that system, and see to it that the monej^ is put out properly and 

 expended only on the roads, I think that the people of this State would 

 all be for it, because it means as much to the State of California as 

 any one thing that I know of. (Applause.) 



PRESIDENT JEFFREY. I would like to ask one question, Mr. 

 Ellery. If the people of the State of California could be assured that 



