A Community's Great Asset.

Otago Witness, Issue 3304, 11 July 1917, Page 51

A Community's Great Asset.

A good road is one of the greatest assets of a community. Considered as a means of getting education for the child so that he can comfortably get to school; as a means of transportation of foodstuffs; as a direct link in the life of a woman with certain necessary social activities; as a spiritual means of getting to church—consider a good road from any standpoint you like —civic, educational, economic, social, spiritual or moral—and it immediately looms up as an asset beyond price. The amazing part of it is that we have been so slow to see the value that lies in a good road, and more amazing is it that we still tolerate so many thousands of miles of roads unfit-to travel. It was recently said, at a large gathering of women, that the men were directly responsible for bad roads : that they had not what they might have done to have better roads, and that much of the isolation in women's lives is due to their inability to get from one point to another on even a passable road. If that is so, men have not risen to their b<" in this matter, if they have failed to all they might have done, why not k women everywhere try - what they can do in the matter of getting better roads? Getting a good road does not depend on having a vote: men know that. Women have done much for good roads in this country, but have they done all they might do? Has the actual value of a good road reallly been brought home to the comprehension of thousands of women? Have not women failed to grasp the full significance of good roads, as a matter of fact? If not, why these miles and miles of scandalous roads, with women living on them everywhere? The time has "gone by for an excuse for a bad road that keeps a child from school, a man from the market, a woman from her church or from those social chances to which she is entitled. And the sooner we believe this fact, and start to cry it aloud from the housetops, men or women, the wiser we will be and the fuller and happier our lives will be. There is scarcely anything in which a community can so wisely put its money as in a good road ; and the woman who proclaims this, day in and day out, until she gets every road in her community comfortably traversable, is a saviour to her sex!