"Then at last, the supreme folly of having a half-dozen competing lines, running side by side through the same territory, will be fully demonstrated. With this demonstration, will come the opportunity, to scores of paid press writers, pessimistic bigots, self-conceited, unprogressive wiseacres, who have so long and so loudly derided the government ownership of railroads, as the most suicidal and unbusiness like scheme ever hatched; to answer this pertinent question: Would it be possible, for government engineers building public railroads, to ever be guilty of such monumental stupidity? "The social effect of these good roads, on the lives of all agricultural people, will prove even more important than the financial advantages gained. Hitherto, they have been so hampered by environments, by lack of means, and lack of leisure, that as a class they have been unable to enjoy or to appreciate the wonderful, the educational, the broadening and the refining effect of much travel, on the mind of the individual. From lack of experience, they do not realize that the sum of human life is the sum of its sensations, which are produced by change of environment, contact with a larger or lesser series of natural phenomena, and more especially with other lives. "The more progressive lessons of life, are learned from example and not from precept. Men and women, are only children of a larger growth, they are imitative creatures with a natural instinct to choose other, higher, and better lives as models. Hence the great value of travel as an educator. The larger the area covered by the traveler, the wider the field of experience and choice. Through the law of action and reaction, social contact with a multitude of actors and thinkers, refines the individual. A healthy spirit of emulation is aroused, which leads on to progress. "With the advent of a universal system of good roads, cheap travel, and a dominant combination of co-operative, industrial and agricultural enterprise, an extraordinary era of recreation and travel, will dawn for all rural people. Opportunity, leisure, and means will be abundant. All co-operative workers, can afford to take an annual vacation of at least one month. The ownership of a swift, roomy, durable, road machine, capable of making from twenty to thirty-five miles an hour, will be within the means of every family. In this private car, the family, or a select party, could easily and leisurely accomplish a five thousand mile tour in twenty days. Along the whole distance, farm villages, from fifteen to twenty minutes apart, would offer the travelers, machine supplies, repairs, and excellent hotel accommodations, for an expense not in excess of the same at home. Than this, no traveling excursion could be more delightful! For pure enjoyment, a select party of nineteenth century millionaires, could not equal it.