436 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



travagant systems that could ever be employed by the people for 

 makiiig and keeping up any public work, and particularly the im- 

 portant public work of building and maintaining our common roads. 

 Here is the greatest problem the people of this country have to 

 solve io connection with the whole system of transportation. You 

 are appropriating millions of money for building canals and rail- 

 roads. On the wall is a placard which says that 95 per cent, of every 

 material that passes over your canals and railroads must in the first 

 instance pass over the primary roads. In connectiou with your 

 canals you are doing an immense work; you are still appropriatiog 

 money and making them more efficient. Your railroad corporations 

 are expending huge fortunes in reducing grades and making their 

 roads straight and smooth; steamboat companies are expending 

 great sums in eolarging the capacity of their ships and increasing 

 their speed. What does all that avail if you who are to be most 

 benefited do not in the first place undertake some sensible system 

 on a business basis for the improvement of the most important part 

 of the whole system of transportation, namely, the building and 

 maintaining in a wise manner of the commoo roads of the country? 



