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Show , v ROADS When a man is sick he calls the doc' or. He has faith In the doctor as long as the doctor makes him better. But when he finds that the physician physici-an has diagnosed the case incorrectly incorrect-ly or is using treatment which does not bring back health he either changes doctors or asks for a consultation. consul-tation. Sick for good roads, the American people called in a doctor (Congress) and received a "first aid treatment, called Federal aid, by which the physician phy-sician ordered from the pharmacy (the public treasury) sufficient dollars dol-lars to help the various parts of the United States to build new arteries. But the United Slates needs not a few but a very large number of new arteries, and the prescription of the doctor Isn't producing them, in time to save the economic life of Ihe patient. pa-tient. Is it, therefore, not the part of wisdom wis-dom to ask for a consultation, and have the doctor confer with other physicians with another and a newer vision of the illness of poor' roads and the method of their cure? One of the cures advocated, and the only one which hasn't been tried, is the appointment of a Nationa highways commission, to consider and report to the Congress on the subject of establishing, building and forever maintaining a system of national na-tional highways. States which tried S-ate aid and found it did not cure have tried State highway commissions commis-sions and found they did cure; why should not the United States find as a whole the same good reslut the several sev-eral States have found for themselves Roads are a national not a state problem. Transportation is a national nation-al not a state problem. Only the Nation Na-tion can adequately and intelligently intelligent-ly lay out a system of roads for the Nation, and only the Nation can afford af-ford to build and maintain such highways high-ways as will adequately care for the present, not to speak of the future traffic! |