amount will be used in the reconstruction of sections of the trunk line roads that are carrying the heavier traffic and where a hard surface road is demanded. Seventeen projects have been outlined under the heading of reconstruction. "There are a number of unimproved sections of laid-out system where existing traffic is suffering for a new road. Answering this FREDERICK E. EVERETT demand, the department has outlined seven federal aid projects under the heading of construction. In these cases with one exception, the towns will be asked to advance the funds to meet the federal allotment. "In addition to the federal aid program, extensive reconstruction is planned in various towns throughout the trunk line and state aid system and it is planned now, providing the towns raise the money requested of them, to treat with bituminous material the whole of the West Side Road from the Massachusetts line to Newport and from Woodsville to Twin Mountain; all of the Daniel Webster Road that is not now surface treated from the Massachusetts line to North Woodstock and from Twin Mountain to Groveton; the South Side Road from Keene to Nashua and from Manchester to Portsmouth and various sections along the East Side Road that have been carrying extensive traffic. "It will be impossible to make all the improvements in 1922 that the public will demand. Many sections of gravel road that perhaps should be oiled or tarred cannot be treated. $300,000 to $400,000 additional revenue will not perform the impossible. $1,000,000 could be used to advantage on the roads of New Hampshire. However, it will be the earnest endeavor of the department to give value received for the additional revenue given by the passage of the new motor vehicle act. "New Hampshire has a greater mileage in its trunk line system than most states, and a much smaller revenue for construction and maintenance. These roads must be adequately maintained in order to give satisfactory service and to preserve the original investment in the construction. The motor vehicle fees for the last few years have not been sufficient to provide adequate maintenance, and we believe that the motor vehicle owner will be more than repaid for his increase in fees by the better maintenance and the increase in oiled and hard surfaced roads which this increase will make possible. The wear and tear on a main highway today is is almost wholly caused by the motor vehicle and when the taxpayer builds a road it seems not only reasonable but justifiable to require that the motor vehicle user keep this road in good repair by replacing through proper maintenance what he has destroyed." Upwards of 35,000 inhabitants of New Hampshire in 1920 were natives. of Massachusetts, nearly 21,000 were born in Vermont and more than 17,000 first saw the light of day in Maine, according to statistics just made public by the Department of Commerce through the Bureau of the Census. Of the 443,085 people in the state in 1920, 257,074 were born within its confines. Exactly 94.612 were natives of other states of the Union or outlying United States territorial possessions. Slightly less than this number, or 91,397, to be exact, were born in foreign countries. One striking fact the census records indicate is that during the decade from 1910 to 1920 the percentage of native Americans in New Hampshire shows a distinct increase and, correspondingly, the number of foreignborn inhabitants shows a distinct decrease. The native population increased from 77.5 per cent in 1910 to 79.4 per cent in 1920. The foreign-born population decreased from 22.5 per cent in 1910 to 20.6 in 1920. Following the lead of Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, whose native sons have found a habitat in the Granite State, New York takes fourth place in such a list, claiming 1.8 per cent of the total population for her native sons; Connecticut and Rhode Island are tied for fifth place with 0.4; Pennsylvania is sixth with 0.3; New Jersey and Michigan are tied for seventh place with 0.2 and Illinois held eighth place with 0.1. The percentage of the total population held respectively by the sons and daughters of Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine are 7.9 per cent, 4.7 per cent and 3.8 per cent. All the states listed above have shown a percentage increase in the number of native sons who have emigrated to New Hampshire during the last 10 years, excepting Connecticut, New Jersey and Illinois. These three states have not lost their 1910 ratio; it has simply remained stationary. The state of New Hampshire itself has shown a gain of only three tenths of 1 per cent as regards the number of persons born within the state relative to the total population during the last ten years. In 1910 the number of persons living in New Hampshire who were born within the borders of the commonwealth, constituted 57.7 per cent of the total population. In 1920 this percentage had increased to exactly 58 per cent. In New Hampshire is having her share of the plagues and problems that follow in the wake of war. this state, as in this country and throughout the world, there is the greatest need of less splurge and more sense; fewer words and more work. We are more fortunate than some of our sister states in that we did not reach their heights of war-forced industrial activity and therefore have not so far to descend, rather suddenly, to the sea-level of sea-level of normal conditions. But even with us too many employers have been profligate with their excess profits; too many employees have been wearing silk shirts and fur coats and paying high prices for low liquor. We, too, must have a sobering-up time, during which our aching heads, outraged digestions and general grouches will lead us into serious trouble if we are not careful. The re-assimilation into the civic body of our part of the soldiers returning from from war has not been difficult. The New Hampshire boys in the service were of a higher calibre than the average, in the first place; and in the next place, so far as our observation goes, most of them found work waiting for them which they are willing to do and which they are doing well. But the necessary re-adjustment to a new scale and manner of living, following the deflation of a few years' boom, is causing so many pains and aches and sore spots, in New Hampshire as elsewhere, that there seems never to have been a time when it was more necessary and desirable for all of us to keep the Golden Rule in mind in our civic, industrial and social relations. Our population is not exactly divisible into halves, but if it were, each half would know exactly how the other half lives and be severely critical of it. What a lot of trouble it would save us if a hundred leaders of public opinion in New Hampshire could be endowed suddenly with the power to see fairly and truly and wisely both sides of a question. An interesting letter recently received from a reader of the Granite Monthly in another state, states that she was led to subscribe for the magazine by finding some old copies in the New Hampshire house which she has acquired as a summer home. With kind words for the present magazine and good wishes for its growth. and prosperity she adds this interesting paragraph: "The state of our permanent home has had the experience of publishing a state magazine, which failed. It was a very artistic and valuable magazine and public libraries highly prize the copies that are still in existence. It seems to me that any state should encourage, with financial aid if necessary, the publication of a state magazine devoted to the history, the scenery, the general welfare of the state; and to the lives and talents of its people." "It's an Al magazine," is the concise way a leading Manchester merchant puts it in forwarding his $2.00 for 1922. It is a pleasure to announce that a new series of articles is being prepared for the Granite Monthly by Mr. George B. Upham of Claremont and Boston, the first of which will appear in an early issue, probably in April. "There is real meat for anyone interested in history, in everything Mr. Upham writes," says a Cheshire county correspondent, who is himself a writer and student of New Hampshire history. A BOOK OF NEW HAMPSHIRE INTEREST In her first novel, "Lost Valley," (Harper & Brothers) Mrs. Katherine Fullerton Gerould, distinguished essayist, short story writer and daughter-in-law of New Hampshire, takes our state skeleton out of its closet and rattles its bones as they have not been since the late Governor Frank W. Rollins issued an official Fast Day proclamation which is not yet forgotten, though its date was more than two decades ago. Mrs. Gerould does not say that her "Lost Valley," where nature is at her best and man is at his worst, is located in New Hampshire. But all of us who have been up and down and over and across this state for forty years know that we have our share, with the other New England states, of these "Lost Valleys.' The state board of education and the state board of health could tell quite accurately how many we have and where they are situated; for these departments of the government, and others, in a less degree, are trying to reduce the number of such places in our midst. In the last chapters of her novel Mrs. Gerould offers a solution of the problem in the love of the land that is inherent in the human animal and that oft-times is content with small return for its affection. But we fear that the number of Jake Leffingwells left in New Hampshire is too few to redeem its hill acres. It would have been more up to date, as regards the story, if when John Lawrence, the railroad king, came back to view with dismay the place of his birth, Silas Mann, his old schoolmate, who drove him over from Siloam, should have turned out to be a real estate agent, ready with plans for the damming of Lost Brook for water power, the reforesting of the hill sides above it and the building of a summer hotel on their sightliest spot. But on the whole Mrs. Gerould's local color as to both persons and places is excellent. Some of the minor characters, such as Sarah Martin, the Siloam school teacher, and Andrew Lockerbury, the workwarped farmer, are splendidly done. Madge Lockerby, the heroine, setting forth on her almost hopeless quest with a spirit that came straight down from a crusader ancestor, is vivid and true. The idea of the beautiful imbecile girl who looked like a saint and worshipped a monkey is grotesque, but motivates the plot with sufficient energy to carry us from Lost Valley to Boston and New York, to Revere street and Mulberry. street, to Mrs. Blackmer's boarding house on Pinckney street and to Arthur Burton's studio in "the Village." All of Mrs. Gerould's Yankees, whatever their age and generation, class and station, are true to life. She sees into our ingeniously closed hearts and fathoms correctly the reactions behind our impassive countenances. Her pictures of Italians and Chinese have at least the fidelity of good reporting. We do not question the artist, Burton, and his Juanita. Only when Desmond Reilly comes upon the scene to forecast the happy ending do we realize that this is one more "made up" story, as the children say. And even to the final page Mrs. Gerould revolts against the formulae of romance, her final "clinch" coming when "High noon lay on Barker's Hill. It was the least romantic hour of the day. The season had already wearied of temperance, and the Valley, shut off from the wind, sweltered below them in hot undress." |