40 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



ship and under favorable conditions, fairly good roads are found, 

 but speaking in a general way, I am not disposed to be enthusiastic 

 over the quality of the average wagon roads as we find them, and 

 because of the general interest shown by our citizens in any discus- 

 sion of better roads, I think it is fair to presume that the i)resent 

 conditions are far from being satisfactory. 



I would not belittle the efforts made for half a century or more 

 to construct a system of wagon roads through the State. The people 

 'n the matter of taxation have been liberal to a fault; it has not failed 

 ox success through any want of money or labor, — rather through the 

 misapplication of this same labor and funds. 



The law under which the early roads were constructed was unques- 

 tionably applicable to the then present conditions, but that it is equally 

 practical now does not follow any more than that the practice in farm 

 and orchard work of that early date would answer the demand of these 

 later years. 



Do not expect any very radical change for the better as long as the 

 present highway labor law remains in force upon our statutes; with the 

 many optional provisions it is but a patchwork system at the best 

 and fails to give us result. It fails in that it does not provide a uniform 

 system of road construction ; no fixed plans or specifications have ever 

 been adopted, and had there been, it would be practically impossible 

 to enforce them because of the small unit of management, the lack of 

 taxable area and the diversity of conditions. As it is, a great part of 

 the annual expenditures are practically wasted, except perhaps to 

 keep the roads in passable repair for present use. There are many 

 reasons why this is so, — as many perhaps chargeable to the system as to 

 the immediate supervision, — notably the fact that the original highway 

 laws held out an inducement to lay out and construct roads along 

 lines of naturally easy grades, economical construction and small cost 

 of maintenance. No greater mistake was ever made than that section 

 lines were laid out on the most desirable lines of road construction; 

 hills, swamps and undesirable bridge crossings were all ignored in 

 the interest of air line roads. 



Very often the cost 'of construction of such roads has exceeded the 

 entire original value of adjacent lands, when a slight curve of the roads, 

 or change of location, would not only have saved the larger part of the 

 original cost, but would have furnished to the traveling public these 

 many years an easier and much cheaper route and, further, the first 

 cost of such a road is a very small item as compared with the never 

 ending cost of maintenance. Because of this faulty method of laying 

 out and poor construction, we are annually wasting tens of thousands 

 of dollars simply to preserve the entity of and keep in repair these 

 roads which can never be made permanent, except at an excessive ex- 

 pense not likely to be incurred. 



Our present laws provide that after a road has been in use ten years 

 all labor or money thereafter expended upon such highway shall be laid 

 out with a view to permanent construction, but how to *do it the law is 

 silent. With thousands of road builders and no source of instruction 

 whatever, in matters of methods and forms best suited to the varying 

 conditions of soils, surface water, grades and the demands of travel, 

 with the inadequate supply of labor and want of engineering ability, 



