Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1894 — A REMARKABLE PETITION. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A REMARKABLE PETITION.

Recently Pretented to Congreta for Boad Reform. The memorial presented to Concress in favor of good roads, for which Senator Hoar recently stood sponsor, contained the names of 150,000 signers from all over the United States, praying that there be established at Washington a department of roads similar to the department of agriculture, for the purpose of promoting knowledge of the art of constructing

roads, and that in such department adequate provision be made for the instruction of students. Among the Bigners are the Governors of seventeen of the States and other State and United States officials, judges, lawyers, doctors, merchants, editors and prominent citizens generally, and it was indorsed by the Legislature of Massachusetts, by chambers of commerce and boards of trade, by trade unions and labor organizations, by banks and large corporations and by all sorts and conditions of men. The petition was unique in form and mammoth in proportions. It was 1,400 yards long and was wound around two gigantic reels, arranged one above the other in a frame of oak seven feet in height, the whole weighing 000 pounds. It required the united efforts of half a dozen Senate employes to get it properly before that body and to get it off the floor and into the committee-room after it had been referied to the Committee on Interstate Commerce. The movement in favor of good roads is growing rapidly, as is shown by the great number of signatures to this petition, though it must not be imagined that it represents any very important fraction of the people whc are in favor of road reform.

THE PETITION.