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In 1843, the famous "Rebecca" disturbances broke out among the Welsh peasantry; the men dressed in women's clothing, blackened their faces, and fell in armed crowds upon the toll-gates, destroyed them amidst great rejoicing and firing of guns, demolished the toll-keepers' houses, wrote threatening letters in the name of the imaginary "Rebecca," and once went so far as to storm the workhouse of Carmarthen.
"Commerce levies usurious profits on the consumer. I will strew its road with toll-gates, I will stamp its checks and indorse its invoices, and it shall pass. "Capital has overcome labor by intelligence. I will open schools, and the laborer, made intelligent himself, shall become a capitalist in his turn. "Products lack circulation, and social life is cramped.
The child had heard much of this wonder of roads from the gentlemen at his father's table who were interested in it, and he was eager to see its toll-gates and stone bridges. After leaving "the corduroy tracks" leading to it from Cooperstown, the famous turnpike burst upon the gratified schoolboy's vision.
They should not be elaborate toll-gates of plot, to be laboriously lifted and lowered while the horses stop, mid-career. The Venus of Milo, that comes directly to the soul through the silence, requires no quotation from Keats to explain her, though Keats is the equivalent in verse. Her setting in the great French Museum is enough. We do not know that her name is Venus.
Hence we might sum up the cause that have produced the Mexican of the present day by enumerating the absence of the scriptural idea of family relation; the despotism exercised by the priesthood with the aid of an Inquisition, and the unnumbered toll-gates they have placed on the road to heaven; the effeminacy of the higher classes and debasement of the peasantry; the absorption of half the revenues of the country in superstitious and idolatrous purposes, and the uncleanly habits superinduced by mental and physical degradation for generations, so that the word leper is used to designate a poor man in the city where that loathsome disease has its victims.
"Did ye hear whut they was talkin' about?" "Somethin' about the toll-gates." A long silence followed. "The teacher said he was comin' over to see you and pap." "Whut fer?" "I dunno." After another silence Mavis went on: "The teacher is that rock-pecker Jason was always a-talkin' 'bout."
Very early he became familiar with scenes of violence, for, goaded to madness by the taxes exacted at the seven toll-gates, a mob of the metropolitan citizens rose in arms, beat off the troops sent to quell them and threatened to sack the city, when, they were appeased by the issue of a tokusei ordinance, which, as already explained, meant the remission of all debts and the cancellation of all financial obligations.
The commerce which they fostered may have paid its dues at toll-gates erected for the purpose: and the ancient Roman device of creating a class of settlers on the line of a public road, for the purpose of keeping it in repair, was probably extended. Road-making was often the complement of agrarian assignation, and the two may have been employed concurrently by Gracchus.
Everywhere, no sooner do the people open or propose to open a new road into a source of wealth, than men like these clients of mine hurry to the politicians and buy the rights to set up toll-gates and to fix their own schedule of tolls. However, the time had now come when I must assert myself. I made no radical changes in that first program of Burbank's term.
At every corner was erected an artistically designed cast-iron road sign; instead of the unsightly wooden ones, cast-iron automobile warnings were placed at every dangerous spot; community bulletin-boards, preventing the display of notices on trees and poles, were placed at the railroad station; litter-cans were distributed over the entire community; a new railroad station and post-office were secured; the station grounds were laid out as a garden by a landscape architect; new roads of permanent construction, from curb to curb, were laid down; uniform tree-planting along the roads was introduced; bird-houses were made and sold, so as to attract bird-life to the community; toll-gates were abolished along the two main arteries of travel; the removal of all telegraph and telephone poles was begun; an efficient Boy Scout troop was organized, and an American Legion post; the automobile speed limit was reduced from twenty-four to fifteen miles as a protection to children; roads were regularly swept, cleaned, and oiled, and uniform sidewalks advocated and secured.
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