Let me restate these important facts: the average American farm is ten miles from a railway; the railways have about reached their limit of growth territorially; and we pay six hundred million dollars every year to get the seventy-five per cent of our raw material and produce from our farms to our railways.
This is the main proposition of the good roads problem, and the reason why the road question is to be one of the great questions of the next half century. The question is, How much can we save of this half a billion dollars, at the least expenditure of money and in the most beneficial way?
In this problem, as in many, the most important phase is the one most difficult to study and most difficult to solve. It is as complex as human life itself. It is the question of good roads as they affect the social and moral life of our rural communities. It is easy to talk of bad roads costing a half billion dollars a year--the answer should be that of Hood's--"O God! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap." You cannot count in terms of the stock exchange the cost to this land of poor roads; for poor roads mean the decay of country living, the abandonment of farms and farm-life, poor schools, poor churches, and homes stricken with a social poverty that drives the young men and girls into the cities. You cannot estimate the cost to this country, in blood, brain, and muscle, of the hideous system of public roads we have possessed in the decade passed. Look at any of our cities to the men who guide the swift rush of commercial, social, and religious affairs and you will find men whose birthplaces are not preparing another such generation of men for the work of the future.
For instance, bad roads and good schools are incompatible. The coming generation of strong men and strong women is crying out now for good roads. "There is a close and permanent relation," said Alabama's superintendent of education, "existing between good public roads and good public schools. There can be no good country schools in the absence of good country roads. Let us be encouraged by this movement looking toward an improvement in road-building and road-working. I see in it a better day for the boys and girls who must look to the country schools for citizenship." "I have been longing for years," said President Jesse of the University of Missouri, "to stump the capital state, if necessary, in favor of the large consolidated schoolhouse rather than the single schoolhouses sitting at the crossroads. But the wagons could not get two hundred yards in most of our counties. Therefore I have had to smother my zeal, hold my tongue, and wait for the consolidated schoolhouse until Missouri wakes to the necessity of good roads. Then not only shall we have consolidated schoolhouses, but also the principal of the school and his wife will live in the school building, or in one close by. The library and reading-room of the school will be the library and reading-room of the neighborhood.... The main assembly room of the consolidated schoolhouse will be an assembly place for public lectures.... I am in favor of free text-books, but I tell you here and now that free text-books are a trifle compared with good roads and the consolidated schoolhouse." It is found that school attendance in states where good roads abound is from twenty-five to fifty per cent greater than in states which have not good roads. How long will it take for the consolidated schoolhouse and increased and regular attendance to be worth half a billion dollars to American men and women of the next generation?
