28O FARM DEVELOPMENT 



Besides, they could purchase products of heavier bulk. 

 By enabling farmers and others to get to and from the 

 cities more easily passenger traffic would be increased. 

 With good roads there would be no muddy time in 

 spring or fall when crops could not be marketed, thus 

 congesting traffic at other seasons of the year, and less 

 rolling stock would be needed on railroads for emergen- 

 cies. As we increase the ability of the farmer to go 

 about among his neighbors and to distant towns and 

 cities, co-operation among farmers and between farmers 

 and corporations becomes more practical and there is 

 less opportunity for friction ; there is a closer fellowship 

 everywhere. 



Road legislation. In some respects the making of 

 laws relating to public highways in most American 

 states is decidedly behind the times. Some of the gen- 

 eral principles which must be recognized in a public 

 movement for building roads are not found in the laws 

 of most of the states. As a rule, there is no adequate 

 provision contemplated in our laws for the surveying 

 and making of general plans for systems of roads nor 

 detailed engineering plans for their construction. 

 Neither do the laws sufficiently arrange for superin- 

 tending the construction and maintenance of roadways. 

 The work is too often left to men with very short tenure 

 of office not trained in that phase of engineering which 

 has to do with planning, building or maintaining these 

 important arteries of commerce. 



Laws should provide more liberally for educating men 

 in road making and for seeking the best methods of 

 building roads. A detailed knowledge is needed of 

 where good road material is to be found, how secured 

 and how used. Too little is known of the use of different 

 kinds of gravel, stones or other materials useful in road 

 surfacing, and even the nomenclature of materials useful 

 in road surfaces should be better developed. Men edu- 



