THE EARNING POWER HpHEORETICALLY the 
OF GOOD ROADS A “good roads movement” 
is a grand thing. As a national 
political campaign platform it meets with universal approval. But 
the good roads movement is more than the government or State 
construction of an intricate network of great highways; one 
very important step in the working out of the idea must be carried 
on by town and village and even individual before anything like 
a complete system may be produced. It is at this point, where the 
individual pocket is touched, that there is lack of enthusiasm 
for good roads. Dissenters prefer a local moving-picture theatre 
or a new station to a complete renovation of the branch roads 
feeding the main highway. There is objection to the issue of road 
bonds, complaint against special improvement taxes or an objec¬ 
tion to compulsory road labor. Some one has propounded the 
question, “Why should we stand the expense of new roads that 
are mainly enjoyed by the increasing fleets of automobiles from 
foreign districts ? They fly by without stopping and contribute 
nothing to our welfare or the road’s upkeep.” 
It is unnecessary to refute this attitude. It is not a careful 
judgment. But there is an important aspect of the question that 
should be well considered, as it affects intimately the small resi¬ 
dent. It is the fact that good roads pay the community over and 
above the effort and expense placed upon them. 
The condition of roads in the South has been notoriously bad, 
and this condition recently led to investigation by the Department 
of Agriculture. Beyond the recommendation and plans was the 
important discovery of the value of good roads as proved by 
several concrete examples. 
In Lee County, Virginia, the Department states this case: A 
farmer offered for sale his farm of one hundred acres lying be¬ 
tween Ben Hur and Jonesville. He asked eighteen hundred 
dollars, but found no bidders. In 1908 road improvement was 
suggested and urged, but the farmer strenuously objected to it. 
Shortly after the road was rebuilt, however, his attitude changed, 
for he has received offers of three thousand dollars for his prop¬ 
erty and refused to sell. That this appreciation in value was due 
to the road betterment is proved by similar examples along the 
same road. For instance, one tract of a hundred and eighty-eight 
acres sold for six thousand dollars, but the purchaser endeavored 
to repudiate his contract. While the matter was in abeyance, the 
construction work was undertaken and completed, and the would- 
be purchaser had to increase his original offer to nine thousand 
dollars. No other factors but the road improvement could be 
found to account for this rise in value. Nor was this state of 
affairs limited to Virginia. In Jackson County, Alabama, a road 
bond issue of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was voted, 
and with the proceeds twenty-four per cent of the roads improved. 
Where the census of 1900 gives the value of all farm lands at 
four dollars and ninety cents per acre, the census of 1910, taken 
after the improvement, places the value at nine dollars and 
seventy-nine cents. The actual sales at the first census taken 
varied from six to fifteen dollars per acre; and at the later one, 
fifteen to twenty-five dollars. According to these data, the Depart¬ 
ment is justified in stating that “Where good roads replace the 
bad ones, the values of farm lands bordering on the roads increase 
to such an extent that the cost of road improvement is equalized, 
if not exceeded,” and “The general land values, as well as farm 
values, show marked advances following the improvement of 
roads.” The figures seem to indicate that good roads indirectly 
increase the demand for rural property and therefore give rise to 
higher prices. 
When the individual realizes that the road is a factor in his 
farm operating expense and therefore bears directly on his profits, 
when he becomes aware that the highway conditions have an in¬ 
fluence on the morale of the neighborhood, the character of immi¬ 
gration and the prosperity of the people, he will consider it his 
personal business that better roads are made, no matter if it is 
expedient to defray the expense by contribution, assessment, 
or bond issue. 
THE NEED ' I ' HE stock story of the man who lived 
OF CHANGE A his whole life in the shadow of Wash¬ 
ington Monument without once ascending it, 
is used as an example of extraordinary callosity. The man be¬ 
comes characteristic of lack of imagination, smugness and plodding 
disinterest, but his is no unusual case. Thousands daily are guilty 
of just as dulled perceptions. 
You who have smiled at the man so deep in a rut that he had 
never explored an object which people come from all parts of the 
world to visit, are you so sure that you are keenly alive to all 
the attractions in your immediate vicinity? Take a concrete 
example. Can you name all the pictures along the west wall of 
your living-room or give an inventory of the furniture it contains? 
The chances are that many cannot. We do not mean to suggest 
that it would be most desirable to gain one hundred per cent in 
this little self-examination. It is merely an indication that the 
average home owner is so concreted in his habits that he is obliv¬ 
ious of the articles that were chosen to give him esthetic pleasure, 
and that he notices what might be improved as little as the good; 
desirable and undesirable are alike in merit. 
Habit plays such a large part in our lives and its influences are 
so strong that there is danger of our becoming machines, slaves 
to the evening newspapers, serfs to the after-dinner doze. There 
was a man who awakened from his lethargy and made a com¬ 
plete rearrangement of his library. He found himself a year 
after throwing papers in the corner where the waste-basket 
formerly stood. 
It is to keep the influence of the artistic things in your posses¬ 
sion active that you need change. The near at hand, the familiar, 
becomes commonplace. Habit makes gray and dull the best of 
color schemes. We need a new perspective to awaken our crit¬ 
icism. The faults in the rooms of others glare at us when we 
visit them for the first time. Probably ugliness leaps out to greet 
the guests who enters our home, and we have made it such a 
domestic pet that we cannot understand its repellance to others. 
But ugliness and poor taste have no pension of useful service to 
warrant their old age. Expediency brought them, routine glossed 
their faults and made them negative virtues. 
And so we want change in our homes. Not revolution, but 
evolution. The trial of new arrangements gives opportunity to 
refresh the pleasing voices of old favorites, shows where judicious 
pruning may better and improve, and what chances there are of 
new purchases for the general perfection of the scheme. In 
truth it is a sorry thing to realize the utmost at one fell swoop in 
the beginning of our careers. There is nothing to look forward 
to, no high hopes and aspirations. With a growing mind, and a 
growing purse, home making becomes a perpetual development. 
Those adventures of acquiring just the particular object that is 
craved for a particular situation, subtler, more full of excitement 
than the pursuit of big game, are joys of home making far too 
important to be neglected. They not only make the home most at¬ 
tractive in itself, but they add a constant source of delight. 
We need those occasional little upheavals of the old-fashioned 
house cleaning, those sudden attacks on the old order of things, to 
keep us from becoming “set in our ways” and make us aware of 
the Sehenswurdigkeiten within our own doors. 
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