388 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE OS. Doc. 



fifty million dollar bond issue; from the wheelbarrow to the lux- 

 urious touring car or my lady's |10,000 limousine, is in a state of 

 evolution. 



The transportation of any and everything, which is transportable, 

 from a thought to an army, must, in this day and generation, be 

 conducted at top-notch speed. Whether it be hurled across a conti- 

 nent, forced over or under the seas, or flung through the air, the 

 movement must as nearly as possible annihilate time and space, and 

 the multiplied and complex problems of transportation involved are 

 the most important ones which we, as state or nation can consider, 

 excepting, possibly, the German, or our own, submarine. The rela- 

 tively small section of this tremendous whole, as bounded by the title 

 "Roads and Road Laws of Pennsylvania," covering an hundred thou- 

 sand miles of public roads, and almost as many miles, if they might 

 be measured in miles, of complex, overlapping, and often illy con- 

 sidered road laws, whose most prominent characteristic is their in- 

 tricate verbosity, which is at present before us, is far too large to 

 be more than glanced over in a paper of this kind. 



Let it be briefly said that the wonderful changes in both the Roads 

 and Road Laws of Pennsylvania, which have occurred in the third 

 of a century since this body first took cognizance of the road question, 

 have been steadily and rapidly though not uniformly, in the direc- 

 tion of improvement; and the modifications in the traffic which they 

 permit and encourage have, in a general way, added very largely to 

 the sum total of comfort, convenience and pleasure of the people. 



As an agency in the advancement of civilization, easy, comfortable, 

 rapid, safe and cheap transportation holds a place, than which none 

 other holds a greater; and it is a subject of gratulation that in 

 all of these qualifications the roads of Pennsylvania have made sub- 

 stantial progress within the period named. In the main, our legis- 

 lation has been propitious, and its administration might easily have 

 been worse though neither has been by any means, above criticism. 

 In speaking thus your Committee has reference to all road laws and 

 to all road administrations, from the youngest and most inex- 

 perienced supervisor in Podunk township to the chief highwayman, 

 and is not knocking. 



The promise for a more rapid progress in good roads is bright. 

 The general public has learned much and is learning faster than ever 

 before. A larger proportion of the people than ever before know 

 what good roads are, and have a deep sense and wide-spread realiza- 

 tion of their urgent need of it, and when the people get so far as this 

 in knowledge, they will soon get farther and know how to get what 

 they need. 



The recognition of our law-making bodies of the necessity for 

 the utilization of the highest possible degree of science and skill, and 

 of a centralized control, in the furtherance of the good roads project, 

 is evidenced by the erection of a Department of Highways, and the 

 large powers and somewhat liberal appropriations with which they 

 have imbued it. Notwithstanding the considerable current of ad- 

 verse criticism which has been directed against it, some of which 

 doubtless has been well earned, your Committee desires to express 

 its confident hope and belief that through its agency there will ulti- 

 mately come about, gradually improving in quality and decreasing in 



