Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 247, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1919 — ROAD BUILDING [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ROAD BUILDING

BOND ISSUE IS BIG PROBLEM Best Means to Pull Counties Out of ments Permanent. The biggest single issue before the people today “is good road«t~ biggest not alone of itself, but biggest because the prompt and satisfactory solution of a permanent road system in every state will help to solve a halfdozen fundamental problems and indirectly affect for good, as well as in dollars and cents, almost every phase of farm, social and Industrial life in the state. We cannot expect to have a real system of roads unless it 13 based on large units and this, is best accomplished by accepting county and state basis with a few experienced and responsible men in charge in each case. We must have roads that begin and end somewhere. ; Many counties are presenting to the taxpayers the questlon of a bond tssue for the improvement of their highways. The bond issue for a public improvement should be governed by the same considerations which govern a bond issue by any business organization. When a manufacturing concern issues bonds, the money raised is placed in permanent improvements in the plant which will last far beyond the life of the bonds, or else no investor wo u 1 dpur chase the— Bonds for muni ci pal purposes or for public improvements not always subjected to this acid test, and instances are numerous in this country where bopds for twenty years have been Issued for the construction of public roads, where the type of roads -built with the proceeds of the bond issueconldnotpesslbly last mere than ■ maintenance is continually necessary. In some instances history show’s that during the life of such a bond issue the original road has been worn out and rebuilt with a different material, and with the proceeds of subsequent bond Issues as many as three times, and still the original bonds are a liability on the community. Bond issues for better roads are the best means to pull counties out'of the Land of Mud. But it must be certain thnb the road Improvements w’lll last the life of the bonds. This can be as--tttced- engmeering - advice- en- the hestkind of roads for the soil. The banker can perform yeoman service in this connection. In the state of lowa the man who began w’ith nothing and now owns a $30,000 farm, believes in paying as he goes when building a road,’but he will borrow money from an insurance company with which to buy more land, and he has not yet seen that when he builds

a concrete bridge with one year’s tax money, he has made a Christmas present of that bridge to posterity for the next one hundred years. He says that thirty-year paved roads are Impossible because SIO,OOO per mile is too much to pay out of one year’s tax money, and it has not occurred to him that there will still betaxpayerswhen he is dead and gone, who will be using that road, and by rights should have to pay some of it. —Wallace’s Farmer.

Making Necessary Repairs on Macadam Road.