LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 3S9 



for road construction or repairs. Overseers are changed frequently and 

 each man as he comes into office proceeds to put into practice his peculiar 

 ideas of road construction. 



He is generally removed before his system has been completed, and the 

 result is that the public is compelled to travel back and forth over a road 

 that is continually in a partially finished condition. Such a road never 

 improves and the road work is wholly wasted. Against incompetent officers 

 no law in the world would protect you ; if you see fit to select men who can- 

 not perform the duties imposed on them, you must take the consequences. 

 As for the continual change of method, the only remedy is to call a public 

 meeting and have everyone in your road district agree to some system of 

 road improvement, grading, graveling or whatever it may be, and then carry 

 into execution that plan of improvement, although each year may advance 

 the road but little toward completion. Still it would be advanced in con- 

 dition, and everything done would be of ultimate value. There should be 

 a clause in the law, making the action of the people in the road district on 

 such a point binding on the road overseers for at least ten years to come. 



I do not believe that our highway laws, as they stand at present, should 

 be changed materially ; I do not believe any substitute could be devised as 

 satisfactory in all respects as our present laws, yet there is one point, and a 

 very important one, which they fail utterly to reach, and that is the proper 

 construction of trunk roads. Our present laws are sufficient for the ordinary 

 highways with a small amount of travel, and perhaps for the maintenance 

 of any road if it were properly constructed. There are, however, important 

 roads leading into nearly every town, which receive the travel and unite it 

 from various branch roads, very much the same as the main river receives 

 all the water from its tributaries. 



The condition of this trunk road is a matter of interest to every person 

 who travels over it; it is not a local affair, indeed the people who live 

 directly along it may not use it, and consequently may not have as much 

 interest in it as others living in a remote road district. The travel over it 

 may be larger and consequently the need of repairs great, and the cost to 

 maintain it probably large. Such conditions are not new, yet our law makes 

 no provisions for such cases. This road, like any other, is maintained by a 

 tax on the property immediately adjacent to it, and rarely is there any more 

 labor per mile for this important road than for roads of no interest what- 

 ever except to the immediate residents. Illustrations of this may be drawn 

 near any city, town or village in this State. 



Our present law is unjust in that it makes no provision for distributing 

 the burden of road building over the people who use the road, and it is 

 faulty in that it provides no means of road repairing proportional to the 

 traffic. I think the law should provide a method for the construction and 

 improvement of trank roads, independent, as far as may be necessary, of 

 our present organization for road repairs. A very feasible plan would be to 

 improve the roads by an organization similar to that authorized for the con- 

 struction of public drains. The method of road improvement would then 

 be outlined as follows : Resident tax payers who live along the trunk road 

 or who travel over it, — the number can be specified per mile or township, — to 

 unite in signing a petition addressed to the judge of probate of the county, 

 if they live in different townships, asking for the appointment of a special 

 road commissioner to improve that road. If the road lies entirely in on« 



