People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1892 — After the Road Congress. [ARTICLE]

After the Road Congress.

It is pitiful in the extreme to hear the wail of the petrified conservative whenever he thinks his long enjoyed function of bleeding the simple-hearted ruralist is likely to be disturbed. Of all men in the state he is the most hidebound. He has but one idea, and that is “Tax ’em.” He was on hand in force at the Road Congress, but he was unable to hide his spots beneath an assumed respectable coat. He lays no claim to statesmanship, but boasts proudly of the title of “schemer;” “fixer,’’ eto4 that is, he “schemes” 'to get the laws placed upon the statute books, then he “fixes” the rate of taxation that the farmer is to pay. The statesman is the man who accomplishes the most with the least expenditure of money consistent with public welfare, while the “fixer’ 5 is the man who accomplishes the least With the greatest amount of funds collected from the people. The latter gentry were on hand in the Road Congress in their best bib and tucker. Of lawyers a goodly number, Of Contractors quite a sprinkling and of civil engineers not a few. The F. M. B. A put in an appearance to the number of forty odd and were the representatives Of the only real progressive element in the congress. They were the champions of the farmers’ interests and the interests of the whole state. Sometimes farmers who have their opinions paid for at so much a line attend meetings and read pretty papers to tickle the fancy of those who employ them.

Then there was the really honest man who lives in the town and wants good Toads, but knowing nothing of the burden that now rests upon the farmers, suggest an increase of taxation as innocently as the Wife who asks her husband for a new flush wrap, not knowing that le cannot possibly meet the obigations already due and must be paid by Christmas. Of course he is not to be condemned; is he to be pitied and educated. He is not beyond redemption by ftny manner of means. He is our darling who never knew. He it was who said, “if you came up here expecting to secure better roads without an increase of taxes you had just as Well go back home.” But the well-fed contractor who is a twin brother to the engineer who was so thrifty as to get in 1,500 days in one year at $5 a day or $7,500 a year in an out county (not Montgomery I hope) was on hand like a sore finger. He, it was, who said: “We are here to teach the farmer how to make good roads. We understand it. He doesn’t. We want a law that says the farmer must pay taxes—not mpy, but must. That’s what we are here for.

Then the “Kunnel” must have his say. The “Kunnel” from Whitley. The “Kunnel” is a farmer, is so he says; gets up every morning at five o’clock, crawls through a barbed wire fence and milks thirteen cows before breakfast using the heel of his boot for a milking-stool. The “Kunnel” said “The farmers don’t make roads. It is the city people. We make the roads to enable the fanners to co me, to town to trade with us,” and a polished living statue who was never three squares from the Circle piped, “them’s my sentiments.” “The gentleman from Floyd” was “up an ‘a-cummin’.” His county wanted a road—a good road, a respectable road, a road fourteen miles long, a road that would enable the farmers to come to the capital of the county to trade. New Albany is Floyd county; New Albany was very gracious. It raised $2,000 to help build the road—the four-teen-mile road. The whole city actually raised that much. It would only cost about $3,500 to $4,000 a mile to build it, but what do you think about the farmers? They wouldn’t raise the rest of the money to build that fourteen miles of road —a road that would enable them to get to town to trade. To ask how much the merchant would give and how much would he take. Wonder what’s to become of Floyd county? Then the Journal had to get in its little chestnut about professional farmers. One would thiqk that the slanders it heaped upon Mr. Matthews because he is a farmer, when it referred to him almost every day as “professional” farmer, “telephone” farmer, “proxy” farmer, and their salutatory effect upon the fortunes of Mr. Matthew, the Journal would learn by and by to put its hands over its mouth

when it is tempted to make remarks that are likely to reach the ears of the people. The Road Congress was a great educator. We all want good roads, but the ill-balanced enthusiast would heap up the taxes till he would confiscate all the real estate in the state to build them, while the skinflint mossback who comes out on the road with gravel boards three finches high would tramp through mud up to his chin rather than help build them. He wants good roads, but he wants somebody else to build them. So does the rut-bound conservative, but the men who wants good roads and never have nor never will object to paying reasonable taxes such as say $2,500,000 to 18,000,000 a year are the progressive farmer,but it’s economically expended. If a law is to be made that will bond the counties we insist that those bonds be issued in such denomination as will enable the farmers to hold them and not the batiks, and that farmers may be enabled to Work on the roads in payment for silfih bonds. Such an amendment to the present law might not find a great deal of opposition among any but the mOncy-iehding class and these can afford to wait awhile. I see that the farmer’s institute of Wabash county has resolved unanimously against the road law, 1 have been in Wabash county • lately and the real farmers say that the farmer’s in-, stitute as conducted in that coUnty is a mutual admiration society among city people and a travesty on Agriculture.

C. A. RODINSON.