274 ROADS AND ROAD BUILDING 



ready for use, The streets of Santa Barbara, California, which 

 have been treated in this way with oil, have proved very satis- 

 factory. 



A few of the railroad companies have used crude oil at times 

 for sprinkling their roadbeds through dry, sandy sections of the 

 deserts to lay the dust. In southern Oklahoma it is frequently 

 used on race tracks for the same purpose. 



The Management and Construction of Country Roads. In 

 recent years Georgia has made great strides in the management 

 and construction of country roads. Some of their most notice- 

 able features are their width, and the gutters and curbings which 

 line them. In Fulton County every one of the county roads 

 now being constructed is of macadam, and has its brick gutter 

 and stone curbing, just as the city street pavement has. On one 

 side of the road there is also a dirt sidewalk as-'one of the most 

 important features of the road. They provide perfect drainage, 

 sewers being placed at intervals to carry off the storm water to 

 places where it will do no harm. The open ditch at the side of 

 the road is eliminated, and the danger of the road's caving or being 

 undermined at the sides is removed. 



Fulton County has not accomplished all these results in a day 

 nor in a year, but the greater part of the permanent work has been 

 done during the past ten years. 



One and One-half Million Dollars spent on Roads. The books 

 of the county commissioners show that $1,507,000 has been spent 

 by the county on the country roads in the last ten years alone, 

 and several hundred thousands of dollars were spent in the pre- 

 ceding decade. 



The county does not levy a special road tax for general purposes, 

 and all money spent on the roads is appropriated by the com- 

 missioners out of the general county fund. In 1899 the com- 

 missioners appropriated $97,000 for road work. The following 

 year $101,000 was set aside for that purpose, and the appropriation 

 has been increased by from $10,000 to $20,000 every year with 

 two or three exceptions. In 1907 the appropriation was $203,000, 

 and in 1908 it was $201,000. 



The total county tax levy for all purposes is six mills, or sixty 

 eents on every hundred dollars' worth of property. This brings 



