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BUTTS COUNTY MESS.
Published Every Friday.
ALKRKI) AKKKMAN, - Proprietor
J. DOYLE JONEB, - - - - Editor
Subscription $1 a Year
Official Organ of Butts County.
Entered a necond-cla** matter, Novem
ber 8,1907, at the postoflh eat Jarkson, Oa.
Telephone No. 166.
Jackson, Ga., Friday, April 16, 1909.
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Castro having no where to lay
his head might join Teddy in his
African hunt.
Monticello never stopped until
she got a monument. We are
too much alive for anything like
that over here.
Butts county may not get a
million dollar cotton mill right
away -here's hoping she will
but she will get some other
things she needs.
There is a great sadness in At
lanta. Caruso will not sing at
the Musical Festival and the
wailing going up from that burg
is piteous to hear.
If you believe in good roads
say so, tell your neighbor it is the
thing and get everybody inter
ested and it will be easy to get
them.
With the Hon. J. J. Flynt in
the race for congress and other
fovorite sons ready to get in the
race it will be a lively scrap in the
sixth next year.
A little spring cleaning up of
the premises will do good and
prevent sickness during the ap
proaching hot season. Of course
the City Council will look to that
matter.
The farmers are late with their
work but a good crop will be
made just the same and the far
mer that plants the largest
acreage in food crops will be the
winner.
Athens is becoming the lead
ing convention city in the state.
Jackson could get in the running
if she had the accomodations.
All is needed is an auditorium
and a big hotel.
While congress is warring over
the tariff the farmers are busy
on their farms, making money to
be spent on some appropriation
that nobody but a congressman
and a politician ever heard of.
Walker county will vote on a
one hundred thousand dollar bond
issue for road improvement So
will Butts county-some time
time within the near future.
And the election will carry, too.
If the Griffin News man will
give the Butts County Progress
and the local correspondent of
the Atlanta papers credit for
some of the stories used it will be
all right but if he can feel just
the same without doing this we
don’t care.
BUTTS COUNTY PROGRESS, JACKSON, GA., FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 1909.
NO LONGER AN EXPERIMENT.
The present road system in force in Butts county is no longer
an experiment.
For some eight or ten years now it has been tried, has been
weighed in the balance and found wanting. It has not stood the
test of practical experience. Somehow, somewhere and in some
way the system is not what it ought to be. The experiment
has cost Butts county thousands of dollars. This money had
better have remained in the pockets of the people. The system
being faulty and out of date should be abandoned.
It needs no editorial preachment to tell the people Butts
county needs good roads. The people know it themselves. It
is a plain, open and urgent need and anybody can see the situa
tion as well as the editor of this paper. Facts, undeniable and
irrefutable, statistics proven and true, have been given to show
the benefits and the advantages of good roads. The argument
in favor of good roads is all right and the needs are great. It
is the system that is wrong
The spectacle of a county trying to build roads without money
and without credit is not uplifting. The situation is not one
likely to inspire one with patriotism. Butts county, poor bleed
ing pauper that is, is not making any strides in road
ing and the thoughtful are worried. That the situation will be
changed before long there can be no doubt.
There is enough wealth in Butts county to justify the best
system of roads in the state. There is no county in Georgia
with more fertile soil and with a better class of people than
Butts county. It is a great county. The soil is fertile and the
people are prosperous. There is no excuse for such a state of
affairs as exists here now. The tax rate is high enough
heaven forbid that it should become higher.
It is a bond issue that the county needs for road building.
A one hundred thousand dollar bond issue will put the roads in
fine condition. A bond issue will not burden any tax payer.
It is the system used by all corporations, county and municipal,
for improvements. It is a long-time method of paying off
indebtedness. A bond issue of one hundred thousand dollars
could be paid off in thirty or forty years and nobody would
feel it.
The topography of Butts county is such that road building
must be gone into in earnest or else left off entirely. It does
no good to rake a little dirt on a road and have the rain wash it
off into the creeks and branches. The roads must be graded
before any permanent good will result and when the roads are
once put in good condition they will last for years and years.
The matter resolves itself into this: Butts county must either
go into road building in the right way or quit.
To build good roads costs money and a lot of it. It is worth
every cent spent though and is the best investment a county
can make. Every county that does not go in for good roads at
this time in the civilization of the country is committing suicide
and will die a commercial death as sure as night follows day.
All that remains for Butts county to do is to go in for good
roads or quit the game. Honestly w T hat is being done is not
worth the time and the expense. There is no money in the
country treasury. The old system of having the people work
the roads would be a better plan than to work the roads as they
are now being worked. And why not go back to the old sys
tem for awhile? Why not wait until there is some funds to
work on before anything is attempted?
When the county did not take her quota of convicts from the
state she made a big mistake, a mistake that will be costly be
fore it can be remedied. Butts county could have taken her
share of convicts and let a neighboring county have them and
when she got ready to work them she would have been paid
back in labor. Why wasn’t that done? It would not have
cost a cent.
Yet it is sufficient to know that this was not done. Just why
we don’t know. We spend from three to four thousand dollars
running down and convicting criminals and not a cent comes
back to the county. If this is not suicide then what is it? If
the county had taken convicts the convictions would have gone
to her credit and she could have let some other county have the
use of the convicts oniy to be paid back in labor later.
This is a matter that the people should think about. It is
not enough that they pay their taxes and swallow the conse
quences without a murmer. They should speak out. When
the people, the tax payers, the militant citizenship of Butts
county does get aroused there is going to be such a revolution
as will shake the county from one end to the other. And in the
shaking Butts county will get .good roads, the thing she has
needed for a decade and longer.
Good roads must come. They are a logical and natural result
of her growth. They are a product of the times, the age, of
our civilization. They mean everything. They make for pro
gress along all lines. Industries, enterprises, wealth and pros
perity follow in the wake of good roads.
There is but one side. That is the right side. There is but
one way. That is the right way. All else, all imitations are
wrong and must fall. Pipe-dreams will not stand. Rain-bows
vanish before the sun. A house without a foundation will not
stand. Roads built in the wrong way are no roads at all.
There is but one way to have good roads in Butts county and
that is to have them in the right way.
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