Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1920 — THE DECEPTION BEING USED [ARTICLE]

THE DECEPTION BEING USED

Fais* Stories About Proposed State Road North of Rensselaer. Tn speaking of the driving over the two proposed routes of the state highway from Rensselaer to Crown Point by State Highway Director L. H. Wright on Sunday, Feb. 1, the Morocco Courier It was perhaps unfortunate for Newton county that he chose this time to make the inspection trip, in that the sink holes north of Rensselaer wePe frozen and covered with snow and not discernible to the eye. However, T the people of Newton county <may rest easy, for Mr. Wright is able, conscientious and just, and our interests will be well cared for. We feel that the route from Rensselaer to Crown Point will be designated through this county for a number of reasons. It is the most direct route and would give both Newton and Jasper counties about equal mileage of state highways. It would also tend toward the state line as it neared the northern boundary of the state, which is highly desired in all quarters beca se of the traffic to and from Chicago. » r ‘

The above is a fair sample of the propaganda that teas been waged in Newton county before the highway csmf.nission, according to re(port, in order to pull this road over near the Illinois line where it wih accommodate ' very few local people or anyone else. There are no “sink-holes” north of Rensselaer, a fact that the writer of the above clipping very well knows, and this is the second time he has made reference to such an alleged condition. The fact that nearly every foot of the proposed route north from Rensselaer is covered by rural mail routes and the alleged “sink-holes” have been driven over every week day for the past 15 years by rural carriers thoroughly disproves any such inference. More than 90 per cent of the present through traffic, both north and south bound through Rensselaer, goes over the Jackson highway and right over the alleged sink-holes referred to by the Courier.

f This has been so for several years, and if any difficulty has been experienced it would seem that the same people who tour and drive autoVobiles and trucks from' factory to agencies and have been doing it for years over this route, would choose some other—by Mt. Ayr, for instance. If it is such a beastly route and filled with sink-holes; if it is farther and accommodated fewer people than the Newton county route, it would seem that the government experts who established a >post route over the Jackson highway north from Rensselaer —and which was in operation for six months or more and was only dropped when the appropriation for this route from Chicago to Lafayette and Indianapolis lapsed—would have gone the Newton county route rather than north from Rensselaer over the Jackson highway to Demotte, which was made a division point. If the Newton county route is the nearest and best, why did the International Transportation company establish its route from In dianapolis to Chicago over the/Jack, son highway north from Rensselaer? This is the Company having the mammoth trucks tires 48x 12, the trucks having a capacity of nearly as much as a railroad car. None of the email or post trucks nor the International Transportati >n

trucks ever had any difficulty in getting over the “sink-holes” north of Rensselaer, yet they went over that -part of the Jackson highway where, the Newton county people would have the highway commitsion believe these sink-holes exist. There is more through travel over the Jackson highway north of Rensselaer every day than there is in 60 days over the Newton county route, which some* of the people there want the commission to adopt. Why is it? Why do all these people still keep to the Jackson highway north from Rensselaer? Are they damphools or are the boosters of the Newton county route such? If these state highways are to be given out to the politicians - as a little political “pap” rather than 10-, cate them where they will do the most good and accommodate the whole people, then Newton county perhaips has some claim to pulling this road clear over close to the state line and close to another state road and leave a stretch of splendid country with dozens of towns as feeders without any other road nearer than 30 to 35 miles. . < I