Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1896 — GOOD ROADS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GOOD ROADS

Expensive Defective Highway. Mrs. E. Olmstead, of Matteson, Wau* paca County, is suing ,the town of Maine. Outagamie County, for damages on account of injuries sustained by plaintiff last October. Mrs. Olmstead was severely hurt by being thrown from a wagon while riding over a defective highway. The town board offered f 1,200 in settlement, but this was hot accepted.—Appleton (Wis.) Crescent. —® Friends of the Road, The spirit of unfriendliness that for a time threatened to produce strained relations between the horse and the bicycle is being softened by the flight of time and a clearer realization of the mutual interests and purposes of the two types of steeds. ' Tile horsenoTbiiger shles aTthe wEeeT and, the wheel no longer presumes to crowd the horse quite off the earth. They have mutually agreed that there will be room and use for both, though the former’s sphere promises to continue the shrinking process it has for some time been undergoing. But while the sphere of the horse may grow smaller, it will surely grow smoother and better, and the horse himself will improve to the extent that his surroundings are improved. ■ __ Bicycles will bring good roads. Good roads wjli.bring horses. , The Chief Road-Maker. The bicycle, which at first was seen only in the important cities and centers of population, soon wandered beyond the smoothly paved streets out into the highways and byways of the world. The wheel, which is the most nearly natural of all artificial means of locomotion, inspires in the breast of its rider a deeper and broader love of nature. It moves.too fast and too far to be hedged within the confines of a city’s Avails. Its mission is to “go,” and it has gone to the uttermost ends of the world. At some time or another the bicycle has threaded its way through every hidden lane and by-path, in every nook and corner of the land, and wherever it has gone it has sown amid the rough clods and muddy wastes of the highways the seeds of discontent with existing conditions. Those who watched it patiently feeling its way, for the first time in their lives realized that the roads were rough. And from that seed of thought has grown the now general movement to mend the public highways. Road, improvement has followed in the track of the bicycle. Wherever il has gone it has served as a forerunner of progress, and' to its presence the many and lasting joys of good roads may be very largely ascribed. The bicycle is the good road maker of the Avorld.