198 TRANSPORTATION 



coach and the ox cart. The Erie Barge Canal is a disappointment. 

 The Ohio and Mississippi Rivers do float some commerce, but it is 

 mere dust in the balance compared to the traffic borne by the rail- 

 roads that parallel their banks. Steamboat traffic on the Missouri 

 River, once important, may now be pronounced dead. Aside from 

 a few especially favored cities, like Washington, St. Louis and New 

 Orleans, the ordinary American River city derives little or no 

 transportation benefits from its river. 



The river is a public highway. Any person, even with small 

 capital, can enter the competition thereon. Yet the field remains 

 practically unoccupied, while the railroads continue to handle the 

 traffic. The public are doubtless a little slow to take a serious 

 and hopeful interest in river improvement since for a long period 

 of years the worst " Pork Barrel" legislation of the United States 

 Congress has centered about the appropriation for " Rivers 

 and Harbors." Doubtless this mishandling of an important 

 matter has set back the cause of real river improvement a good 

 many years. 



Good Roads. The term "Good Roads" is now coming to be 

 applied to improved country highways. The implication is that 

 ordinary country roads are not good roads. In other words, we 

 are just now developing a road system which compares favorably 

 with the good roads of European countries. For many decades 

 the roads in rural America were left to the strictly local units of 

 government as one of their sacred "functions." In practice this 

 meant that roads were rarely constructed with scientific or per- 

 manent improvements, but were generally left in a "state of 

 nature." True, the owners of adjoining farms were permitted to 

 "work the roads" once a year in lieu of paying their so-called road 

 tax. This farcical performance is now happily extinct except in a 

 few backward and hidebound communities. With the coming of 

 the automobile to both city and country, the farmer and the city 

 dweller are both of the same opinion as to good roads, namely, 

 that State and national systems of highways are a necessity. 

 Hence to-day we have the various transcontinental highways, 

 such as the Lincoln Highway east and west, the Jefferson Highway 

 north and south, and many other great trunk highways; we have 

 also the federal office of good roads and a huge federal appropria- 

 tion to subsidize State highway systems; we have also in most of 

 the States a central commission or board of engineers in adminis- 

 trative charge of the construction and repair of public roads. Cen- 

 tralized administration is bearing good fruit. Big transportation 



