Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) ROADTOWN ROADTOWN BY EDGAR CHAMBLESS NEW YORK ROADTOWN PRESS 150 NASSAU STREET _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1910 BY EDGAR CHAMBLESS DEDICATION This book is dedicated to J. Pierpont Morgan, a _straight_ player of a _crooked_ game, who, it is said, played his usual role in the Wall Street manipulations of the Central Railroad of Georgia securities, which adroitly and legally absorbed the small savings and happiness of many unsophisticated investors--an action which, in my case at least, proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it made me _suffer_ first and then made me _think_. Hence the gratitude and consequent dedication to Mr. Morgan for starting the train of thought, which finally resulted in the invention of Roadtown, a plan for side-stepping the _crooked_ game as now played so that henceforth whosoever will may become a _straight_ player of a _straight_ game. FOREWORD Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, London, New York,--all cities from the twilight of the past to the high noon of the present have been constructed on one plan, which is no plan at all. Like Topsy, they jest growed, with no further aims in view than to huddle together for the sake of companionship and self-protection against enemies. A map of the haphazard streets straying crookedly through them looked like cracks in an earthenware dish. The siege-walls which until recently surrounded them emphasized the prisoner-like existence of their inhabitants. Noise, dirt, disease, suffocation and confusion, crime--these spirits of evil took up their abode in the midst of them, never to be dislodged, and students of political economy, hygiene, decency and morality wasted eloquence and logic in showing how bad it all was, and in suggesting picayune and transient remedies. The true Moses, with the effectual remedy, which will lead us out of our long Egyptian bondage, arrives only to-day, and if we will but follow the teachings of the gospel contained in the ensuing pages, we may be free, healthy, wealthy and happy forevermore. This Moses of ours, contemporarily incarnated as Mr. Chambless, arrives at the psychological moment when we are all ready for him. The Jeremiahs of rotten conditions and the Cassandras of impending woe had prepared us for the necessity of change, and the Edisons, Teslas and Lodges of electrical and other inventions had supplied the means for it. The great riddle was ripe for the guessing: and Mr. Chambless has guessed it.