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AN OBJECT LESSON OF THE UNITED STATES OFFICE OF PUBLIC ROADS, AT MONROE, LA. The old highway to the left, and the new.

$250,000,000 HIGHWAY ROBBERY

By

CHARLES FREDERICK CARTER

ORTY million dollars were wasted on the public roads of the United States through ignorance, incompetence, and indifference in 1904. As the

same amount was wasted in the same way in 1910, the American people would seem to be holding their own nobly.

But these statistics present only half a truth which, like other half truths, is misleading. In 1904 the expenditures on public highways aggregated $79,000,000, while in 1910 they had increased to $100,000,000. That is to say, instead of wasting half the hard earned money devoted to road improvement we have become so enlightened that we only waste forty cents out of every dollar. Truly, we may plume ourselves on such a record.

Still, this is but the preface to that great National joke, the public road; for the direct waste which may be charged to the lack of suitable highways, according to Logan Waller Page, Director of the United States Office of Public. Roads,

foots up the neat little sum of $290,000,000. The way Mr. Page figures it out, the annual loss due to incorrect. and inadequate methods in the construction, maintenance, and administration of public roads may be set down at $40,000,000, while the burden imposed through excessive cost of transportation from the farm to the railroad station reaches the impressive sum of $250,000,000.

The latter item is based upon statistics gathered by the Government, which show that the aggregate weight of crops hauled to market annually is more than two hundred and fifty million tons. The average haul is 9.4 miles, and the average cost 23 cents per ton per mile. This makes the total cost amount to $540,500,000. In Europe, where good roads. are the rule rather than the exception, the cost of hauling is much less than half what it is here. Hauling on the famous highways of France, for example, costs but 10 cents per ton per mile; in England, the same; while Belgium reduces this low rate half a cent, and Germany

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pretty near to supplying the whole nation with adequate roads.

It would be a most profitable undertaking to borrow the money on bonds for bu.. ing highways, for the whole indictment against bad roads has not yet been recited.

Still another way in which American roads waste money is in the unnecessary amount of ground they occupy. The average highway here is four rods, or sixty-six feet wide. In the middle Western States much of the ground given up to highways is worth a hundred dollars an acre. Only a small part of this space is actually needed for a roadway, the rest being devoted to weed culture. These weeds furnish an inexhaustible supply of seeds with which adjacent farms are stocked without effort on the part of their owners, causing either a heavy outlay for labor to keep the weeds down or a still greater loss from

quarter section each might be worth a little earnest consideration.

Even this is not all the story, by any means. Back of it all are the still greater losses of the farmers who are unable on account of bad roads to haul their crops to market when prices are highest. a paper read before the American Road Builders Association at Indianapolis last December, Mr. Page bruised the pocket nerves of every farmer in Indiana by reminding them that in 1909 prices of wheat in Chicago

A SMALL TWO BY TWO CONCRETE CULVERT WOULD OBVIATE THIS VERY COMMON DISGRACE,

damaged crops. In Europe they think too much of their land to waste it so foolishly. They find there that a roadway from twenty to thirty feet wide is ample for traffic a hundred fold heavier than traverses the lonely highways of the prairie States. Robert J. Thompson, U. S. Consul at Hanover, who has been investigating the subject, estimates that in thirteen of the agricultural States of the middle West there are seven hundred thousand miles of country roads. By reducing their width from sixty-six to thirty-six feet, 2,500,000 acres of generally tillable land would be restored to cultivation, which, valued at $100 an acre, would foot up the staggering total of $250,000,000. When so many thrifty farmers are giving up their homes in these States to seek lands in Canada, it does seem as if a form of waste equivalent to furnishing 15,625 of them with a

ranged from 9914 cents to $1.60 per bushel, the lowest price being reached in August when the roads were at their best, while the top prices were attained when the roads were practically impassable; that the State's wheat crop that year being 33,124,000 bushels, every advance of one cent per bushel meant a gain in the value of the crop of $331,240, while an advance of one cent a bushel on the corn

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crop aggregated $1,965,200. Thus they could see what they lost by not having roads upon which they could haul a load to market at any time.

Indeed, if all the indirect losses were counted in, it is not unlikely that the grand total properly chargeable to a lack of suitable roads would be somewhere near a half billion dollars a year. Nor is this all. Aside from any question of money is the isolation imposed by bad roads. Churches, entertainments, and agreeable neighbors count for naught if one is separated from them by a mile or two of impassable mudholes. Good roads mean more to the children than to the grown members of the farmer's family, for they may spell the difference between an education and the lack of one. It has been found that in communities provided with good roads the average school attendance the year

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A SCHOOL BUILDING AND A COUNTRY ROAD THAT ANY COMMUNITY SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF.

round is over eighty per cent, while with bad roads the attendance rarely exceeds seventy per cent, while it may be as low as thirty per cent. The best schools are always situated on good roads, the worst schools on bad roads.

But better things are now in sight. Energetic efforts are everywhere being made to still further increase the annual expenditure for roads, and more especially to reduce the percentage of waste.

As an earnest that the first purpose will be accomplished there are now thirty-two States which have adopted some form of State aid or supervision for road construction and maintenance. New York led the van with an expenditure from State funds in 1910 of $2,500,000, while Pennsylvania was second with an outlay of $1,000,000. Massachusetts spent $750,000 of State money on her roads, Maryland, $350,000, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Rhode Island $300,000 each, Washington $375,000, Vermont $175,000, Virginia $250,000, West Virginia $120,000, and other States various amounts. California, which at the last election ratified a proposal to

issue bonds for $18,000,000 to construct a trunk highway system, will soon rank next to New York in the extent of her useful roads. In the South they are not spending so much in cash but they are getting good roads by employing convicts to build them. Of the fifteen thousand miles of highways built in the twelve southeastern States between 1904 and 1910 the greater part was accomplished by the use of convict labor. Georgia keeps 4,500 convicts at work on her public roads the year around.

Indeed, no fewer than thirty-three States have laws favorable to the employment of convicts in road building. Unfortunately, though, the laws in many cases are vague, and in still others narrow; so that the plan is actually followed in but eighteen States, though in several others convicts are employed in quarrying, cutting, and crushing stone for use in road building. It has been found that a convict will do practically as much work in a day as a free laborer and that the cost of guarding and maintenance on the highways is actually less than the cost of maintenance and guarding in jail.

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Besides the outdoor work is better for the prisoners.

The highly important task of reducing the waste of money actually raised for highway construction is being accomplished through various agencies in addition to the State highway departments already referred to. Foremost of these outside agencies is the United States Office of Public Roads. Organized in 1893 with an appropriation of $14,000 with offices in two attic rooms, this bureau has increased in usefulness until now it occupies a four-story building of its own, which includes within its walls physical, chemical, petrographic, and photographic laboratories, and a machine shop, and has at its disposal an appropriation of $116,000. A staff of twentyfour engineers and superintendents of road construction are employed to teach the art of road building to any community that will take the trouble to ask for their services and provide the material and labor. A favorite feature of the bureau is the "Object Lesson Road Project." This consists in assigning an engineer to supervise the construction of

a short section of road to demonstrate proper methods and instruct local builders. Up to July 1, 1909, 264 object lesson roads had been built in thirty-five States, demonstrating the proper methods of using crushed stone, gravel, sand-clay, shell, earth, bituminous materials and brick. Besides this, the engineers of the bureau give special advice, deliver technical lectures, lectures, introduce model systems of construction, maintenance, and administration in counties and study and report on practical methods for a series of years.

Beside the Government bureau there are several national organizations, such as the American Highway League, which held a convention at Chicago last May. Membership in this League is limited to representatives of State highway departments. Its purposes are to provide a means of effective co-operation between States and to study methods of construction and maintenance.

An organization which is expected to accomplish a good deal is the American Association for Highway Improvement, organized at Washington last November.

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