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iel and Alexander P. Corbit, both with large holdings, offer to donate a 200foot right-of-way strip through their territory, and that means the giving away of a lot of land. Middletown is eager for the road and is protesting because it is left out, and Townsend is in a similar case. But near New Castle, where it is merely proposed to widen the old fortyfoot State road, the farmers will not give up the narrow strips on each side of it to make up the two hundred feet of boulevard. They object strenuously to condemnation and are placing the matter in the hands of their lawyers. In Brandywine Hundred there is also a big howl against condemnation, and from Smyrna there comes another great protest. The farmers declare that they cannot afford to have their land cut up by the boulevard, and if it were built through their farms they would be shut off from their own land, as the road could be fenced up against them.

All this blowing hot and blowing cold does not seem to dash the spirits of Du Pont. He is known as a good fighter and he declares that he is going to build that boulevard if the whole State rises up against him, which it won't. For under their skins the people know that he is doing a big thing for them and that they will greatly benefit by it.

"If this Du Pont offer was made out West," said a traveling man to me in the Hotel Wilmington, "the people would grab at it. But this isn't out West-it's Delaware, and that explains a lot to those who know this State as I know it."

But fancy the position of a man trying to give his State the best road in the country and having virtually to force the people to accept it! Most men would throw up their hands in disgust and call their workmen from the field. But Du Pont isn't going to recede one inch from his original intention to give the State this grand boulevard. In fact, he is beating the anvil and drowning out the voices of the opposition wherever they are heard. Village folk stare as they see his great traction engines and trains pass through the street loaded with macadam for the new road, and as they gaze after the big Du Pont motorwagon, flying down the way, they not only wonder how many chickens it is going to kill, but they

nudge each other and say to each other significantly:

"Well, it looks as if that road was going through."

Going through! Nothing can stop it— that is, for long. An army of men is in the field and they have been working north and south. As I saw it in April, it was Homeric work. Following the straight line of tack-centered stakes came the axmen and the dynamiters. Great trees fell with a roar and a crash and were speedily sawed up and jerked to one side while their stumps were upheaved by explosives. Then followed the graders, with their mules straining at the scrapers. The rock crushers rattled and roared and the traction trains came steaming in, dumping their loads of rock, which were mixed with cement by the busy shovelers and grout-pourers, and over the concrete foundation and up and down and back and forth trundled the steam rollers, packing the great pavement smooth and hard to make easy the path of future motor-truckmen and the automobilists who shall go forth bent upon marketing enterprises or pleasure and chicken-killing.

Straight up to the Pennsylvania border, in the north, the road will go, there to be joined by the Quaker boulevard at some future day; and straight to the south and the Maryland line-as straight as the lay of the land and the objections of the farmer, who is being benefited in spite of himself and his human nature, will permit.

So that possibly within a year, and surely within two, the great Du Pont boulevard, upon which envious eyes of other less favored States are being cast, will be an established fact.

It was inspiring to watch the workmen bringing into actual being this great good-road object lesson to Delaware and the whole country. The delvers and pavers were nearly all of that grand army from the ancient Roman Empire whose slaves built the great Appian Way. But though fallen from their high estate, the Du Pont road-builders, are not slaves. These hardy men, living on sour bread and macaroni, are doing the heavy labor for a nation that tends toward luxury as did the people of ancient Rome. In themselves these workers are an object lesson in that thrift and industry which

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STATE ROAD FROM A PRIVATE PURSE

subdues the earth, and it is a thrilling sight to see them fell the trees and level the ground on the great highway. When the work was halted by Mr. Du Pont temporarily a few weeks ago, it was said that he would be forced to reduce his right-of-way to one hundred feet, and it may be that this will be ordered by the courts as a compromise between the farmers and Du Pont.

At the next session of the assembly the boulevard act will be amended so that Mr. Farmer whose land is cut in two will be granted the privilege of crossing the right-of-way at frequent intervals, and other points overlooked in the bill as it passed the legislature will be adjusted.

Mr. Du Pont laughs at the idea of the right-of-way being turned over to a railroad company. Under the terms of the act this would be impossible, but if the people want to have a trolley line built upon it at any future time this can be done by suitable amendment.

The good-roads people of Wilmington are mightily pleased at the prospect.

"We are awfully tired of banging over the ruts and through the sand in our machines," said Charles Guyer, Secretary of the Delaware Automobile Association, to me. "And those oyster-shell roads in the southern part of the State cut the life out of a tire in no time. It will be a great day for the autoists when the Du Pont road is opened for travel."

As for the big fruit growers, they are, as a rule, in favor of the boulevard. And why not? No long hauling is now done on the Delaware roads. Selbyville, in the south, where land is cheap and much of it is lying untilled, has a record of one hundred carloads of strawberries shipped in a single day. Its market is Wilmington, and the freights are high. When the motortrucks begin to hum up that smooth

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roadway to Wilmington, there will be a bigger profit in strawberries. And the Delaware apple-growers, who are excessively proud of those first prizes won at national exhibitions, will find a bigger. profit in apples. So also with peaches.

To complete the symmetry of his benefaction Mr. Du Pont now has agricultural experts at work down in Sussex County, showing the small farmers what they can raise on their land. They are demonstrating that what has been regarded as untillable soil will grow big watermelons and luscious red tomatoes. Waste lands are going to be cultivated and soon the sandy flats of Sussex County will blossom like the oft-quoted

rose.

[graphic]

THE DU PONT MOTOR CAMPWAGON AS IT APPEARS READY FOR THE
ROAD. AND WITH ITS "WINGS" OUTSPREAD,

The engineers can be housed comfortably for the night, anywhere, at a
moment's notice.

The PNEUMATIC
HAMMER

OU can hear my sharp staccato as I play an obligato

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On the girders of a structure that is forty stories high,
While the crowd below is gawking at the iron workers walking
On a slender swaying "I" beam sort of tethered to the sky;
They're the song and I'm the chorus, and we have our job before us
As we tie the steel together with the rivets red and hot,
And the sparks they hiss and spatter as I clatter, clatter, clatter!
For I like to have it noticed that I'm Johnny on the the Spot!

Then I'm numbered with the toilers who are turning out the boilers
And you'll find my masterpieces on the land and on the sea,
Keeping railroad trains in motion, driving liners on the ocean,
Or supplying the compressors with the force they give to ME!
Set a task, I sure attack it with the maximum of racket,
I'm no shy retiring worker, I am talkative and loud,
And I batter and I chatter as the sparks go spatter, spatter
And I love the busy city and the noises and the crowd!

Where they build the ships for battle you can hear my airy prattle
As I hammer on the framework of the warriors of the deep,
And where bridges span the river I can keep your nerves a-quiver
With my everlasting clamor which would never let you sleep.
I'm the young tradition shaker, I'm the blatant empire maker
I'm the prophet of tomorrow and the builder of today,
Sloth and ancient doubt I shatter as I clatter, clatter, clatter
In a song of hope and progress and a yell of "clear the way!"
-Berton Braley

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