THE NEW TRANSPORTATION. 139 



Cities like Atlanta, Ga., and Denver, Col., are destined to 

 develop ambitions for deep-water communication, and thus 

 artificial waterways of immense carrying capacity will con- 

 tinue to multiply, primarily for the profit of cities it is true, 

 but always with the effect of reducing freight rates for the 

 farmer, enabling him to get his produce to maximum mar- 

 kets at a minimum cost, and we may expect eventually that 

 almost every cultivable county in the country will find itself 

 within reasonable reach of the buyers of the world. 



While the work of canal building on the gigantic scale in- 

 dicated, has already begun, light is breaking from a new 

 quarter. It is being realized at last that, though we have 

 railroads and waterways for the transporting of freight over 

 great distances, the public highway and the common road are 

 of equal, if not of transcendent, importance to the economic 

 interest of the citizen, the townsman and the countryman alike. 

 Difficult roads, whether because of hills, gullies, sands or 

 quagmires, are bad business for everybody concerned. They 

 have kept the farmer poor and made him discontented ; they 

 have curtailed the profitable activities of towns to an incred- 

 ible degree; while the greater cities are in the end deprived 

 of that abounding prosperity which would be theirs if the 

 primary sources of their wealth and greatness were them- 

 selves rejoicing in the pleasures of plenty. It seems incredible 

 that it should have required so long a time to wake up. Un- 

 der the old plan of working out the tax it was calculated that 

 2,000,000 days' labor were annually spent upon the roads 

 of the state of New York alone, an outlay purporting to be 

 the equivalent of $3,000,000. Mud in wet weather and dust 

 in dry weather, almost impossible grades and nearly im- 

 passable roads were the result in all too many localities. They 



