: The Future of Road-making in America by Hulbert Archer Butler - Roads; Roads United States; Roads United States Design and construction Technology

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in one generation, would accomplish a social revolution throughout the United States that would greatly tend to better our condition and brighten the prospect of future strength. President Winston of the North Carolina State College of Agriculture said: "It might be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that bad roads are unfavorable to matrimony and increase of population." Seven of the most stalwart lads and beautiful lasses of Greece were sent each year to Crete to be sacrificed to the Minotaur; bad roads in America send thousands of boys and girls into our cities to the Minotaurs of evil because conditions in the country do not make for the social happiness for which they naturally yearn.

Thus we may hint at the greater, more serious, phase of the road problem. Beside it, the financial feature of the problem can have no place; the farm has been too much to the American nation, its product of boys and girls has been too eternally precious to the cause of liberty for which our nation stands, to permit a system of highways on this continent which will make it a place where now in the twentieth century foreigners, only, can be happy. The sociological side of the road question is of more moment today in this country, so far as the health of our body politic in the future is concerned, than nine-tenths of the questions most prominent in the two political platforms that come annually before the people.

William Jennings Bryan, when addressing the Good Roads Convention at St. Louis in 1903, said:

"It is a well-known fact, or a fact easily ascertained, that the people in the country, while paying their full share of county, state, and federal taxes, receive as a rule only the general benefits of government, while the people in the cities have, in addition to the protection afforded by the Government, the advantage arising from the expenditure of public moneys in their midst. The county seat of a county, as a rule, enjoys the refreshing influence of an expenditure of county money out of proportion to its population. The capital of a state and the city where the state institutions are located, likewise receive the benefit of an expenditure of public money out of proportion to their population. When we come to consider the distribution of the moneys collected by the Federal Government, we find that the cities, even in a larger measure, monopolize the incidental benefits that arise from the expenditure of public moneys.

"The appropriations of the last session of Congress amounted to 3,484,018, divided as follows:

Agriculture $ 5,978,160 Army 78,138,752 Diplomatic and consular service 1,968,250 District of Columbia 8,647,497 Fortifications 7,188,416 Indians 8,512,950 Legislative, executive, and judicial departments 27,595,958 Military Academy 563,248 Navy 81,877,291 Pensions $ 139,847,600 Post Office Department 153,401,409 Sundry Civil 82,722,955 Deficiencies 21,561,572 Permanent annual 132,589,820 Miscellaneous 3,250,000

"It will be seen that the appropriation for the Department of Agriculture was insignificant when compared with the total appropriations--less than one per cent. The appropriations for the Army and Navy alone amounted to twenty-five times the sum appropriated for the Department of Agriculture. An analysis of the expenditures of the Federal Government will show that an exceedingly small proportion of the money raised from all the people gets back to the farmers directly; how much returns indirectly it is impossible to say, but certain it is that the people who live in the cities receive by far the major part of the special benefits that come from the showering of public money upon the community. The advantage obtained locally from government expenditures is so great that the contests for county seats and state capitals usually exceed in interest, if not in bitterness, the contests over political principles and policies. So great is the desire to secure an appropriation of money for local purposes that many will excuse a Congressman's vote on either side of any question if he can but secure the expenditure of a large amount of public money in his district.

"I emphasize this because it is a fact to which no reference has been made. The point is that the farmer not only pays his share of the taxes, but more than his share, yet very little of what he pays gets back to him.

"People in the city pay not only less than their share, as a rule, but get back practically all of the benefits that come from the expenditure of the people's money. Let me show you what I mean when I say that the farmer pays more than his share. The farmer has visible property, and under any form of direct taxation visible property pays more than its share. Why? Because the man with visible property always pays. If he has an acre of land the assessor can find it. He can count the horses and cattle.... The farmer has nothing that escapes taxation; and, in all direct taxation, he not only pays on all he has, but the farmer who has visible property has to pay a large part of the taxes that ought to be paid by the owners of invisible property, who escape taxation. I repeat, therefore, that the farmer not only pays more than his share of all direct taxation, but that when you come to expend public moneys you do not spend them on the farms, as a rule. You spend them in the cities, and give the incidental benefits to the people who live in the cities.

"When indirect taxation is considered, the farmer's share is even more, because when you come to collect taxes through indirection and on consumption, you make people pay not in proportion to what they have but in proportion to what they need, and God has so made us that the farmer needs as much as anybody else, even though he may not have as much with which to supply his needs as other people. In our indirect taxation, therefore, for the support of the Federal Government, the farmers pay even more out of proportion to their wealth and numbers. We should remember also that when we collect taxes through consumption we make the farmer pay not only on that which is imported, but upon much of that which is produced at home. Thus the farmer's burden is not measured by what the treasury receives, but is frequently many times what the treasury receives. Thus under indirect taxation the burden upon the farmer is greater than it ought to be; yet when you trace the expenditure of public moneys distributed by the Federal Government you find that even in a larger measure special benefits go to the great cities and not to the rural communities.

"The improvement of the country roads can be justified also on the ground that the farmer, the first and most important of the producers of wealth, ought to be in position to hold his crop and market it at the most favorable opportunity, whereas at present he is virtually under compulsion to sell it as soon as it is matured, because the roads may become impassable at any time during the fall, winter, or spring. Instead of being his own warehouseman, the farmer is compelled to employ middlemen, and share with them the profits upon his labor. I believe, as a matter of justice to the farmer, he ought to have roads that will enable him to keep his crop and take it to the market at the best time, and not place him in a position where they can run down the price of what he has to sell during the months he must sell, and then, when he has disposed of it, run the price up and give the speculator what the farmer ought to have. The farmer has a right to insist upon roads that will enable him to go to town, to church, to the schoolhouse, and to the homes of his neighbors, as occasion may require; and, with the extension of rural mail delivery, he has additional need for good roads in order that he may be kept in communication with the outside world, for the mail routes follow the good roads.

"A great deal has been said, and properly so, in regard to the influence of good roads upon education. In the convention held at Raleigh, North Carolina, the account of which I had the pleasure of reading, great emphasis was placed upon the fact that you can not have a school system such as you ought to have unless the roads are in condition for the children to go to school. While we are building great libraries in the great cities we do not have libraries in the country; and there ought to be a library in every community. Instead of laying upon the farmer the burden of buying his own books, we ought to make it possible for the farmers to have the same opportunity as the people in the city to use books in common, and thus economize on the expense of a library. I agree with Professor Jesse in regard to the consolidation of schoolhouses in such a way as to give the child in the country the same advantages which the child in the city has. We have our country schools, but it is impossible in any community to have a well-graded school with only a few pupils, unless you go to great expense. In cities, when a child gets through the graded school he can remain at home, and, without expense to himself or his parents, go on through the high school. But if the country boy or girl desires to go from the graded school to the high school, as a rule it is necessary to go to the county seat and there board with some one; so the expense to the country child is much greater than to the child in the city. I was glad, therefore, to hear Professor Jesse speak of such a consolidation of schools as will give to the children in the country advantages equal to those enjoyed by the children of the city.

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