Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 218, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1918 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

PRACTICAL CLEAN-liP DAY

How the People of an lowa Town Improved the Roads Leading Into the Place. In Farm and Fireside a writer says: “When the town of Mitchellville, la., with a population of 900, decided on a general clean-up; a woman arose in ; meeting and promised the help of the. women in every way possible. She suggested that perhaps about all they could do would be to cook a picnic dinner. „ Whereupon one man arose and gave it as his opinion that inasmuch as lowa was in a fair way to have equal suffrage shortly and the Mitchellville women had been insistent upon It, he, for one, thought the women ought to work alongside the men on clean-up day. And work they did! “While other towns were content, on such occasions, to remove the un-. sightly ash heaps that disfigured back yards and otherwise make more presentable the general municipal appearance, the Mitchellville workers decided there was no reason why every able-bodied man and woman should not put in ten good, solid hours’ work on the roads leading into the town. “Roads, they argued, were a country town’s principal asset, as without them the country trade, which kept the town prosperous, was not forthcoming. What if there were an ash heap left at night, would it not be better to have a few miles of good roadway all completed, so the farmers could come in with produce and go back with their wagons and automobiles, filled with all sorts of store goods? “So men and women alike of Mitchellville worked all day long, though the sun was hot and the work was hard. Today the Mitchellville speedway, six miles long, is a monument to the efforts of the men and women of Mitchellville who decided ‘that a clean-up day should mean something more than just idle talk and newspaper publicity.”