THE MINNESOTA

HORTICULTURIST.

VOL. 26.

SEPTEMBER, 1898.

No. 9.

HORTICULTURISTS AND GOOD ROADS.

A. B. CHOATE, MINNEAPOLIS.

(Address before the Horticultural Society at last annual meeting.) I feel almost like apologizing for interrupting your program in which you are so deeply interested, and also because being a lawyer and a city man you may feel like I did when I was a boy in the southern part of the state; I used to think it was kind of presumptious for a city man to come into the country and tell us farmers how we should vote. I have never done that myself; I have never gone into the country to make political speeches. This is a subject that is a hobby of mine, and while it may not be a hobby of yours, still you ought to be interested in it. I have not only been a farmer, but I was a nurseryman, and for two years I represented a nursery firm. I did not buy anything outside of the state. My experience may be illustrated by a little story that I once heard. A man was on the witness stand being badgered on cross-examination by a lawyer. He had heard that the witness' father had been in jail, and he wanted to bring that out to disgrace the witness, and he asked him if it was true. The witness objected to answering the question, and appealed to the judge. The judge told him he must answer the question. He said his father started out a very honorable man, but he had had bad luck, had lost his crop, finally lost his farm, got discouraged, became a tramp, and thought he would take enough to get out of the country with and start a new life, but the sheriff caught him. and put him in jail. The lawyer asked, "Where is he now?" The witness did not want to tell, and appealed to the judge. The judge said he must answer the question. He hesitated a long time, and then he said at first his father had been a farmer

and an honest man, then he turned tramp and was sent to jail, and the last he heard of him he was practicing law in Texas. (Great laughter.) I do not know that I need to apologize for practicing law, but I want you to understand that I have not always been a lawyer.

I have addressed many different kinds of associations upon the subject of highway improvement but have never addressed one which seems to me should be more actively interested in the question than this association. There are two principal reasons why you would naturally be more interested in this question than agriculturists generally.

The first reason is that you are a better educated class of men than the average farmer is, and it is always to the more intelligent and educated that we must look for an appreciation of any good thing. For fear that you may think that I am trying to flatter you, I desire to add here that I consider flattery a sort of flapdoodle which pleases none but fools, and no one but a fool would offer it to an intelligent audience, and to further convince you that I don't mean to flatter you, I will say that while I think you more intelligent than the average farmer, I do not think you are the most intelligent audience I ever addressed. I had the honor of addressing the Minneapolis City Council once (Laughter), and they have all been bright enough to keep out of Stillwater, which is saying a good deal if half that is told about them is true (Laughter). Of course this remark does not apply to our honored brother, Elliot. It requires no particular brilliancy for such men as he and I are to keep out of jail. Seriously speaking then, this is the principal reason I expect you to be interested in this subject.

nes.

The second reason is that operating in the country as most of you necessarily do, you are obliged to use the highways in your busiYour products are of a perishable character, as we say in law. That is, they spoil quickly and become unmerchantable. It becomes important then that you should not only be able to take a large load to market, but if the road is not reasonably smooth the jolting will injure your crop on the way. Not only do you need to haul a large load without any more jolting than necessary, but you need to go to market quickly. Nor is this all. A road may be such that part of the time you can haul a large load quickly and smoothly and yet the road become bad when you need to use it most, just when you have a large perishable crop on hand. You cannot afford to have the marketing of your crop depend on so uncertain a thing as the weather. A farmer can put his wheat in the granary and wait until the roads dry up. He may lose considerable on the price, it is true, but you not only lose the high price but your whole crop besides if the road becomes impassable when your crop is ready for market. This is particularly true in Minnesota where the greater part of the horticulturist's crop consists of fruit and vegetables which will not keep.

The same is especially true of the dairy business. All the talk of all the reformers in the country has not done so much to impress the importance of good roads upon dairymen as has his personal experience going to market every day in the year with his milk, rain or shine, mud or no mud. So, while I have the impression that the average intelligence of horticulturists exceeds that of the average dairyman or farmer, the fact is, it does not require very much intelligence to see the need of better roads when a man is forced to use the roads in all kinds of weather. Horse sense is all that such a man needs to appreciate the importance of good roads, and on the whole it is probable that horses appreciate the difference between good and bad roads better than their drivers generally do.

There are two very good reasons then why you, as horticulturists, should be especially interested in the improvement of country wagon roads. Assuming, then, that argument is unnecessary to convince you of the importance of better roads, I will pass that phase of the question and briefly discuss that which bothers us all more than anything else, namely,-how shall we pay for better roads? An hour's talk would not exhaust this question, and as I have but ten minutes more I will confine myself to one phase of the question only, namely,-state aid.

UNEQUAL TAXATION.

It seems strange that the farmers and the people from the country generally have not demanded a more systematic aid from the state for building country wagon roads.

We have a provision in our state constitution which reads as follows: "All taxes to be raised in this state shall be as nearly equal as may be; and all property on which taxes are to be levied shall have a cash valuation, and be equalized and uniform throughout the state." Now that provision of our constitution means that one man shall not pay any more tax in proportion to the value of his property than any other property owner in the state. This principle of taxation has been so well impressed upon our minds that we apply it and insist upon it in the ordinary methods of taxation as a matter of course: for example, if you own a farm adjoining that of your neighbors, and his farm is worth just as much as yours is, you insist that his tax shall be just as much as yours. This is elementary, and yet property owners in the country consent to a violation of that principal continually. We all know that the agitation for improvement of the country wagon roads originated in the cities and has been chiefly supported and kept alive by city men. The natural inference is that the cities will be benefitted by better country roads. You are not simple enough to suppose that these city men are agitating this question so much from purely benevolent motives. The fact is that it is admitted by the best informed people that the cities will be nearly, if not quite, as much benefitted by the improvement of country wagon roads as the country people will be.

The New York Chamber of Commerce says: "We are handicapped in all the markets of the world by an enormous waste of labor in the primary transportation of our products and manufactures,

while our home markets are restricted by difficulties in rural distribution which not infrequently clog all the channels of transportation, trade and finance," and it this keen appreciation by the commercial and manufacturing classes of their own losses by bad roads that makes the cities and towns so ready of late to help the farmers in making good ones.

Now, in connection with this idea that the city people want the country roads improved, you should bear in mind that the bulk of the wealth of this country is in the cities. In Minnesota considerable more than half the taxable property is in the cities and villages. In the state of New York only 7% of the state tax is paid by the farmers. This proportion varies in different states, but the tendency is continually to increase the wealth of the cities in proportion to that of the country.

This being true, why should we not apply the same principle as between the owners of property in the country and in the cities which we apply between two owners of adjoining farms? Is there anything more reasonable than that the city people should help to pay the expense of an improvement which is largely for their benefit? Does not this principle of equal taxation prohibit the burden of improving the country roads being cast upon the country people alone? The people in the country surely ought not to object to requiring the city property to bear a portion of the expense if the city men do not. It is not a new principle of taxation, then, which we are urging but simply the application of an old, well established

one.

Neither is the application of this principle in this way anything new. Lord Macauley in his English History, describes the condition of the roads in England in the seventeenth century, and the description which he gives is a true picture of the situation in nearly every state in the United States at certain times of the year. Mr. Macauley observes that one of the chief causes of the badness of the roads was the defective state of the law which required each parish to repair the highways which passed through it, by the gratuitous labor of the peasants six days in each year. Mr. Macauley then observes, "that a route connecting two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be maintained at the cost of the rural population scattered between is obviously unjust." He says that a change, however, was finally effected, but not without great difficulty, “for unjust and oppressive taxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more willingly than the most reasonable impost which is new." An effort is now being made all over the United States to make the change in regard to taxation for roads which Mr. Macauley says they had two centuries ago in England, because "unjust taxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more willingly than the most reasonable impost which is new."

Neither is the principle of state aid new in the United States. In the early history of United States, at a time when the tendency of our government was to limit the functions of the general government more than it is now, it was considered necessary to the enjoyment

of life, liberty and property that wagon roads should be built by the general government, and in that period (when the government was limited to such matters only as were considered necessary for the proper enjoyment of life, liberty and property), the government did carry on internal improvements such as the constructing of canals, harbors and wagon roads. But corruption, extravagance and incompetence in carrying on these works of internal improvement created in the public mind a distrust of the wisdom of entrusting such work to either the general government or the state government, and so we find in the constitutions of some of the states an absolute prohibition of internal improvements by the state. The constitution of the state of Minnesota contains such a prohibition, and in a case which went to the supreme court, it was decided that the term "internal improvements" in our constitution meant the improvements of wagon roads. You will see then that public opinion upon this subject has radically changed in United States from the idea that the building of public wagon roads was a legitimate governmental function because roads were necessary to the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, to the opposite extreme of prohibiting the state from having anything to do with the building of wagon roads.

STATE AID FOR SCHOOLS.

But while the state is prohibited from building wagon roads it has not been prohibited from applying the principle of state aid to the conduct of public schools. And in the state of Minnesota we have a large state school fund, at present about $10,000,000, the income from which is distributed together with an annual mill tax to all the school districts throughout the state which shall conduct a school of a certain character during each year. This system you are all familiar with. The state does not undertake to carry on any of these district schools but aids in sustaining them by paying part of the expense of running the schools. Now, it is upon the same principle and by a system very similar to the state aid for country schools that it is proposed that the state shall aid in the building of wagon roads.

STATE AID IN NEW JERSEY.

We have not only the early history of United States and the experience in the conduct of our district schools as precedents for state aid, but in the state of New Jersey they have adopted this principle in the construction of country wagon roads, and I am informed that farms lying along the roads improved through state aid have increased in value during the past few years as much as 100 per cent. One farm which went begging for a purchaser at $40 an acre before the roads were improved, has since been sold for $125 an acre, and this increase in value of farm property in New Jersey along these improved wagon roads has taken place during the recent years of panic when every other kind of property nearly has decreased in value. The farmers haul four or five tons on these roads at a load, when a ton or less was formerly a heavy load, and so popular and successful has state aid been in New Jersey that the farmers