COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION 257 



a big job on our hands, and that if we are to plan for its execution 

 we must do so in a big way. 



Let us consider the full extent of the problem what we are 

 now doing to solve it and what is needed to obtain good roads. 



Assuming for a moment that in 1920 we shall have 6,000,000 

 motor-vehicles and 6,000,000 teams using our roads, that the 

 motors will average 200 days at thirty miles and the teams 180 

 days at fifteen miles, we have totals of 36,000,000,000 motor- 

 vehicle miles and 16,200,000,000 team miles. The difference in 

 cost of operation on an improved as against an unimproved road 

 may be safely put at not less than six cents per mile for both 

 motor and teams. On this basis we would have 52,200,000,000 

 vehicle miles at six cents, or $3,120,000,000 the total yearly 

 saving. 



I need only allude to the other gains due to good roads 

 the opening up of the country, the development of industries, 

 the improvement of the conditions of agricultural life. These 

 cannot be readily estimated in figures, but the value is certainly 

 not less than the reduction in cost of haulage and probably ex- 

 ceeds it manyfold. 



The importance of the interests involved would seem to war- 

 rant the expense of scientific and businesslike administration. 

 Such administration we lack ; we seem to have formed but a faint 

 idea of our woful state of unpreparedness and of the seriousness 

 of the results. Our present methods of road administration are 

 inadequate. 



While most of the States have preserved the common-law doc- 

 trine of the king's highway, the treatment accorded to our roads 

 has not matched the dignity of their title. Generally, the roads, 

 except in the case of city streets, are in the hands of some local 

 body or of a turnpike company. The care they have received 

 is such as might have been expected in a community descended 

 from pioneer ancestry. The traditions still survive of the days 

 when each man raised his own food, built his own house, and 

 looked to no policeman to enforce his rights. Any man, in those 

 days, was supposed to be able to build and keep a road, and this 

 belief is by no means dead. It shows itself in the underlying 

 idea of our road administration, the turning over to township 

 committees, selectmen, or by whatever name they may be known, 



