Show ap pp ra affo 1 ayi 2 or ell 10 now there la is no more important question boford tile tho american Amo rican public than the general 0 of f tho the hichwa ys to the standard of twentieth century re Is tho the volume of traffic over tho the public highways Is equal to or exceeds that of all tho the railways the food products of the tha world pass over these roads to reach tho the market ual bad roads inter fore with tho the regular distribution of these products resulting in an erratic and inconstant supply for a fixed and regular demand bad roads have necessitated the practice of rushing tho the crops to market all in a hoop heap taking but two or three months instead of spreading this over avor six to ton ten months scientifically farm products should be moved from producer to consumer no as they are arc needed for consumption lo but tho the farinas will find the roads in tho the and spring bad and at times practically impassable and for this very reason ho he hurries his grain to market as soon boon as this causes congestion on tile tho railroads and works havoc in business conditions tho the moving of the tha crops requires an enormous amount of money aud and a general upheaval in financial centers every fall Is tho the result of this sudden cuddon drain the hurried disposition of tho the years crop lias haa necessitated the building of largo storage houses in tho the grain centers to care for it in chicago tho the storage charge Is nine cents per bushel per year the carrying r capacity or of tho the elevators of that city alono alonce la iss about bushels representing a storage charge of over per year the passing of the food supply into the control of tho the grain kings moans means a loss loaa to tile tho farmer rind and an additional and unnecessary cost to tho the consumer tile tho general improvement of tho the highways of the tha country Is vastly moro more important to tho the people as a whole than tho the building of tho the panama canal the improvement pro of tile inland waterways waterway s or the irrigation of tho the semiarid semi arid rinds lands of tho the west those who have traveled know that the ronda roads throughout europe are good the tha samo same Is true of 0 k Y V W A IA I A daab PA e 4 N y J ta fr 74 ROAD MAX AR 2 rt A ca T iri PA P A WW IOU sum and then finally pay oft the bonds will hardly be felt by the property owners of the empire state owing to their immense list hat of taxable property ohio after 40 years of building roads by the old plan of local taxation and bond issues in which the farmer had to pay practically the whole blile ball has haa p passed asso d a state aid law which will enable it to build ld three miles of improved roads where it has been building ulla one without any increase whatever in taxation upon farm property virginia Is tile the first southern state to join the state aid column for good roads kentucky is alive to the situation and Is taking steps to change its constitution in order to bo be in a position to spread the road tax over all the property in the state in certain parts of the country notably in tho mississippi sis sippi valley there is an entire misconception as to what the state aid plan of road building means some imagine tile the state would take control of the highways build expensive roads and tax the people to pay for them others that it lis Is a a scheme to force road building ri against the wishes of the farmers nothing could be farther from tile the truth the state does not in any manner under tinder a state aid law interfere with the absolute local control of the highways tho the voters of every township decide whether any roads shall be im proved what roads to what extent when it shall be done 1 at all the state has absolutely no voice in tho the matter if however the township by a majority vote decides to build a road under the state aid plan it makes application to the state for purpose the state engineer thereupon visits the locality goes over the road proposed to be improved with the local authorities and decides upon the character of the improvement best suited to the conditions lie ile then prepares plans and specifications and when these are approved by the highway commissioners or other properly constituted loc local al authorities the contract is let to the lowest responsible bidder and the work Is then done under the supervision of the state engineer this insures proper construction and that means durability and low cost to maintain tho the road afterward under a state aid law not a rod of road could be built unless the residents of a township decided to do so BO not a dollar of state money dould could bo be expended unless tho the farmers who live in the rural township voted for improvements if it should be alleged that state aid was a plan to compel railroads corporations merchants and manufacturers rs to help build the roads it would not be far from the truth under state aid the farmers control the situation if they decide to improve tho the roads the other people are obliged to help pay the bill in order to build roads cheaply they should be built extensively it costs a great deal moro more proportionately tiona tely to build a halt half mile of road than it ii does to build ten halt miles no contractor cares for a small job but for a large ono one competition Is keen it takes just as much time and bother to get ready to build halt a mile of road load as it does to build ten miles by building in the larger qua quantities ri titles from 20 to 26 25 per cent in cost of construction can bo be saved As roads properly built will last for a great many years they should be built as school houses and court houses are built viz by a bond issue thus a township under state aid could build 10 15 or 20 miles of roads in one year have the roads to use and spread the payment of the same over say 10 or 20 years it if this Is done and tho the state aid plan prevails there will be very little it any increase in taxation few people have any idea to what extent bad roads interfere with travel and how they affect the business of the me merchant in tho the country town the illinois highway lilg hway commission has gathered some very valuable data upon the effect of road and weather conditions upon highway traffic frame observations were made at 72 well distributed points in the state and an actual count was made by the vehicles passing upon different days throughout each month of the year covering all kinds of weather and road conditions condl tiona the report shows that traffic over stone or gravel roads was fairly uniform throughout the year while upon the earth roads it was subject to the widest varla varia eions the following figures are significant and tell the following table compiled from figures gathered by the agricultural department in 1904 shows the percentage of improved roadways in each state alabama 4 iowa nevada 50 south dakota 25 arizona kansas now new i tennessee 1 arkansas A 64 kentucky new jersey 1932 19 32 texas L ls 75 california 1887 13 new mexico I 1 01 utah colorado 58 maine new york vermont 1346 connecticut 1675 if TC maryland north carolina 1 ra delaware 2 1 0 north dakota 25 virginia district ot of I 1 1013 ohio 78 washington florida minnesota oklahoma 0 west virginea Vir gInta 97 georgia mississippi 38 oregon 7 as wisconsin 1672 idaho 25 1 pennsylvania wyoming ua illinois montana 28 rhode island nebraska 02 south carolina the united states more forcibly how great Is the burden of bad ny than anything else can possibly do tho the clear lake earth road leading into illinois showed an average traffic for tour four days la in march 1906 of 65 vehicles per day over the same sama road in june and july the average was waa vehicles leol on tho the same days in peoria 60 miles away under the tha same weather conditions but over a hard bard road tho the for march was and the average for juno june and july 1 1 observations at champaign over an earth road showed allowed the average for january february and march to be 63 as ag against dinst for september and october the count at decatur over a gravel road was march and april july and august over ari an earth road leading into sullivan the count for january february and march wits was 51 Au augustans gustand august and september while delivering an aa address ail dresa upon good roads the writer was once interrupted and asked it if he would favor taxing tho the widows cottage to help build the tha roads ile ho answered that he certainly would as the tha annual tax would probably not exceed 10 or 15 cents and lie ho gave the following illustration of how bad roads burden tho the people A woman goes into a grocery store for 4 a dozen and a pound of 0 butter when told the prices she protests tile the grocer in cefeus defense says saya well you see madam the roads are so bad now very few farmers aro are coming to town so butter and eggs are scarce she pays three cents more for tho the eggs and four cents more for the butter and this seven cents represents her bad road tax paid that evening this Is repeated from time to time throughout the year not only in her case but in hundreds of 0 others in that town and lit in thousands of towns throughout the length and breadth of tho the land there is a no doubt that the woman in question would benefit through good roads by at least ton times the amount of the tax on her cottage it would bo be interesting to take a concrete example of state aid apply it to a typical farm in one of the th centi central al western states and see exactly what state aid means so far as taxes upon that farm are concerned for the purpose of illustration let us ua take an average farm of acres in the corn belt of illinois and see sea what the effect upon the taxes on that farm would be it the state should undertake a very vigorous campaign V 13 t W 00 oo yv bog 1 4 na ro 5 M fin 41 7 iver P ja 4 1 0 4 v 0 VW I 1 australia anti anil new zealand countries newer than our 0 own less populous arid and with nothing like our aggregate wealth the fact that tho the rest of the world has haa good roads while we have bad ones onea to is significant it shows that the plan we have been pursuing has hais not been successful in throe three hundred years less than eight per cent of the highways of our country have been permanently improved arid and at the rate wo we arc going it would require nearly four thousand years to complete tho the job so as the tha people of J the united states have been a failure this is till all tho the more surprising when we consider that they aro are conspicuously successful in every other line of human endeavor millions ons upon millions of dollars have been wasted in every state in the union upon the public roads by ill III timed or misdirected effort and with really very little to show for the ex es pond iture it Is s only within the last ten or fifteen years that any real progress has hag been made along the line of permanently improving tile the conditions the trouble Is wo we have been endeavoring to untangle tho the snarl by LuI pulling lIng tho the wrong string without any reason for doing so BO the farmers of tile the country f from rom maine to california from the very first assumed that the country roads belonged to them and it was their business to improve them and this misconception hold sway for nearly years A few years ago a man lu in new jersey made a discovery it was that tho the highways aro are public property as much so as tho the state house this raised the question why it the highways aro are public property pio peny should not the public take care of its own why should not tho the state and all property therein contribute to building the roads everybody Is interested in them everybody Is affected through the markets by the road conditions dit ions they are bencil benefited ted by good roads and injured by bad ones tho the now thought spread throughout tho the state and finally now jersey led the way to better conditions by passing a law by which the state should contribute one third the money required to improve the roads other states followed increasing the proportion to one halt half and in ono one case massachusetts to three fourths in many cases of the now new england states farm property la Is only a very small portion of the total taxable property to in some borne cases not ten per cent and when the cost of road improvement was distributed over all prop orty of tile state the burden was wag hardly felt and yet immense sums were adre raised for road purposes best ct cf all the roads were built under proper supervision instead of leaving it to ilia he inexperienced hands of the local loca path master ten tell years ago new york state began in a small email way to aid and appropriated to start the work the plan grew in favor so BO rapidly that within five years the state by an overwhelming vote passed a constitutional amendment providing for nn an issue of ijo rit bonds to help build the highways what a record in flap years yeara from fifty thousand to fifty mil millions lionO the tv t oy v to pay tile the interest on this enormous of road building under state aid one that contemplates an expenditure of the enormous sum of in ten years enough money to improve all the main highways of the state connect every community with the market town and county seat scat and give a complete network ot of good roads from galena to cairo the tha plan being that the state should pay one half the expense and the townships or road districts the other it were expended in ten years the state would be required to raise of it there Is in the state property to the total assessed valuation atlon of to raise a year or 25 in ten years ears would require a two mill tax upon this property so a two mill tax applied to all the property of the state of illinois at the present assessed valuation and not taking into account the possible increase in value thereof would produce the sum re r quiren the records show that the taxing value of an average acre farm in the corn belt of illinois Is a little less than 2000 the actual value being approximately A two mill state tax on this farm assessed on the value of 2000 would be ba exactly 4 a year and no more and in ten years the state tax would be 40 which would be the farms proportion of the total where this farm would pay 40 one single corporation in the city of chicago would have to pay another and the rall rail ways of the state over two millions of dollars thus we wa see by a state levy of two mills for ten years one half of the Is provided for the other halt half must be raised by loial local taxation or by a bond issue let us assume that the township in which the farm in question Is located votes bonds to the full constitutional limit that Is goes into delit debt just as far as it can go boand and pays the highest interest terest ln that the law por per mits it to pay the limit of the bond issue Is five per cent of the assessed valuation so BO the amount of bonds resting upon the farm would be five per cent of 2000 or exactly payable one tenth each year with interest at five per cent the total interest on oil this bond issue so far as this farm Is con concerned concerns cerne d for the ton years would bo be 2760 2750 thus it if we odd add the bonds interest on bonds 2 2750 and the state tax of we havo have a total tax on tho the farm of which Is exactly the amount of tho the tax that would be ba levied and collected upon this firm for both state aid and to pay off the road bonds and this amount la Is about 10 cents per aero acre per year and tho the totals total charge against the farm for the whole ton years yeara would bo be per acre this amount of money paid by tho farm under the state old aid plan pian would enable the to eapen expend d upon its highways and the oz 01 pend turo iture of that sum would add to the value of farm property at least fic and probably lioba bly ten times as |