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Show MOTORISTS PAYING FOR BETTER ROADS (By WILLIAM O. EDBNS, Prtildent Illlnoli Highway Improvement AwooUtlon.) It Is a trlt but true saywg that the motor car is responsible for good roads as we know them In the year 1024 In the United States. .., ' There Is no place In the country where this la more true than In Illinois. Illi-nois. In the current year motorists will pay In license fees to the stute alone approximately $10,000,000 for the maintenance and building of roads. Nearly every city in the state levies a wheel tax against motor vehicles. It Is probably safe to suy that the aggregate ag-gregate 1924 municipal wheel tax collected col-lected In Illinois will be $5,000,000. Thus the motorists of the state will pay approximately $15,000,000 this year for roads and streets. 1 It Is claimed by some experts In taxation that this is a special tax, and that the legislation responsible for It Is class legislation. However that may be. It Is an historic fact that organizations organi-zations representing the motorists of the state were the first to propose and agree that such a tax should be levied, In order that the state might be saved from the terrible transportation transporta-tion conditions under which it labored until the modern businesslike method of road Improvement was evolved. It hns become a habit of some later day advocates of good roads to claim ploneership nnd tp assert that whatever what-ever progress bos been made In the state is due solely to their Initiative and efforts. The transition which Illinois Illi-nois Is now experiencing Is due to a movement started by motorists .and not by politicians, and Is the natural outcome and continuation of a road building effort that was created more than a dozen years ago. It may be Interesting at this time, therefore, to give a brief sketch of the good roads movement that has brought to Illinois many hundreds of miles of concrete and other permanent pavements pave-ments In place of mud, sand and clay that were prevalent In the early part of the present century. |