People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — Gravel Roads. [ARTICLE]

Gravel Roads.

Ed. Pilot:— lnyour last issue appears an article purporting to be on the “Gravel Road Question,” but is wholly made up of low-flung personalities. I take it for granted that no one person could have put together such a mass of silly twaddle, and that it must have been the joint product of two heads, fairly bursting with pefit up ideas, in a state of fermentation, the one head furnishing the mathematical details and the other those choice literary tidbits. This double has discovered an immense murre’s nest with many large eggs. The first discovery is, that roads, ditches, etc., are wholly philanthropic in their design, whereas, most of us have been under the impression that such works were purely business enterprises. Of course those of us whose names are so conspicuously displayed in that article, will consider ourselves utterly annihilated by the array of Arabic figures and screed of personal spite. The whole argument, if such childish gabble can be called argument, is based on the groundless assumption that the contractors and builders of the proposed roads will be compelled to buy their material from the Iroquois Drainage Co., regardless of cost or convenience. Now every man of common sense knows that these contractors will get their material where it can be obtained at the least cost. These people should agree upon some plan of campaign, and not circulate so many contradictory stories in their crusade against the tide of ruin and distress which their imaginations have conjured up as the result of a plain, simple and cheap method of obtaining a long desired and much needed improvement. If the contractors find - that crushed rock from the river bed will fully answer their purpose, it is hard for any reasonable person to understand why they should not have that privilege, or how to prevent them from exercising that right, or how any person can be injured thereby. Again the mathematician has figured in his imagination how certain shrewd, individuals can and will make a clean profit of *33,000 on material furnished to build these roads, when the whole cost of the roads cannot exceed *39,630.74. This beats the w r orld. Mr. Thompson and I will will be vastly pleased if our lands are increased in value to the extent set forth in that article. I find that all the physicians in Rensselaer plead equally guilty with me in desiring and advocating better roads. In this they are supported and endorsed by all the enterprising and public spirited business men of the town, and all enlightened and progressive farmers in the country.

J. H. LOUGHRIDGE.