Roads Must be Cared For

1916

Remember the admonition of the President of the United States: If you want to keep a black post white, you must keep on painting it white. If you don't it will get black again and finally it will rot all the way through and perish of neglect. If you want to keep good roads good, you must maintain them, else they will speedily become bad roads, and all the money and effort and engineering skill expended in their construction will be wasted; worse than wasted, because the man who has a good thing and doesn't know it, sins against the light.

In this world, no sooner is a thing done than it has to be done over again. Good roads begin to wear out as soon as they are built, good clothes begin to wear out as soon as they are worn, no sooner is a man elected to Congress, if he be a provident and forward-looking man and likes this sort of work, than he must begin to build his fences for the next election two years hence. Everything wears out, even "favorite sons" — moth and rust corrupt, and in some parts of the country thieves break through and steal — and there is nothing that wears faster than a public road which has been built at great cost and is left to take care of itself. It won't do it. If it is used by the people for whose benefit it was constructed, it will wear away; if it is not used by anybody, the elements — wind, rain storm and sunshine — will destroy it in time.