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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 cultu'r e. These weeds furnish an inexhaustible supply of seeds with w h i c h 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

''amaged 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. Ry 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 then- 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


A Small Two By Two Contrhtk Culvert Would Obviate This Very Common Disgrace.

quarter section each might be worth a little earnest consideration.

Even this is not all the story, by any means. Rack of it all are the still greater losses of the farmers who are unable on account of bad roads to Irani their crops to market when prices are highest. In a paper read before the American Road Builders Association at Indianapolis last December, Mr. Page bruised the pocket nerves of every fanner in Indiana by reminding them that in 1909 prices of wheat in Chicago ranged from 99l/l 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 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 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. Resides the outdoor work is better for the prisoners.

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Miles Of This Type Of Drain Ought To Bk Blmit Along
Our Highways.
Laying side drains at Westfield. Mass.

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