262 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



and hold young men of ability and energy. Material of this 

 character can be trained to high efficiency if politics be excluded, 

 if promotion follow on proven fitness and discipline be rigidly 

 enforced. 



Road-work calls for analytical study requiring the combination 

 of experience, common sense, and technical training. It involves 

 also, in the higher grades, difficult administrative work, which 

 cannot be readily separated from the engineering and executive 

 ability of no mean order. This always demands and must receive 

 good pay. A high professional standard for such a force gives 

 the members a pride in their organization and a confidence in 

 its ability to do its work, without which it is useless to expect 

 any full measure of success or of public trust. This latter, I 

 repeat again, is essential to any satisfactory solution of our prob- 

 lem. Without it the public will not insist on the exclusion of 

 politics from road-work, and before they will so insist the people 

 must know that their business is being handled by experts and 

 honest men. 



The technical work to be performed by such a body should 

 consist, in addition to the preliminary study needed for the laying 

 out of road systems, of design, construction, and maintenance. 



"Safety first," of which we have heard much of late, needed 

 but little consideration in the road design of the ante-automobile 

 age. Any road was safe enough if it was good enough. Guard- 

 rails on high embankments, avoidance of sharp turns at the foot 

 of steep grades, and a little care at approaches to bridges were 

 enough to make a road reasonably safe at the speed and weights 

 for which they were designed, say ten miles an hour and about 

 three tons. It is no wonder that they have become * ' death-traps ' ' 

 when called on to carry traffic at forty miles with maximum loads 

 of from twelve to fifteen tons. The solution of the guard-rail 

 question is yet open. Any obstruction to the view within a 

 distance of from 350 to 400 feet is highly dangerous. Curves on 

 or at the lower end of steep grades, narrowness, excessive crown, 

 unprotected ditches, badly placed trees or poles, and even the 

 pipes often used to carry water across entrances, have become 

 dangers that are taking a heavy toll of human life. 



The most apparent dangers on our highways are the crossings 

 over railroad and trolley tracks at grade. The elimination of 



