SYSTEM OF ROADS IN BADEN. 255 



follows : All town roads are taken care of by the towns. The 

 State merely appoints and pays a road-master, so called, who 

 superintends fifteen or twenty road-keepers and reports on the 

 state of the roads, the reasons for their bad condition, if that be 

 the case, what is needed, &c. The law for second class or county 

 roads was formerly, that when they were of importance to several 

 towns, they had all to help maintain the same. As this gave 

 rise to continual bickering and quarrelling, in which the road 

 suffered most, it was changed in 1856. They are now taken 

 care of under the direction of the State and paid for partly by 

 the State and partly by the towns in which they are situated. 

 Most of the roads under this head are those which have risen in 

 importance since the building of railroads, and are generally 

 those that lie perpendicular to the direction of the railroad they 

 are influenced by. The towns not having the means very often 

 to properly improve and repair such, it was found necessary and 

 expedient to give them the aid of the State, and in order to pro- 

 cure the necessary funds, all roads that run parallel to railroads 

 and all those that had lost their importance by the construction 

 of railroads, were in 1855 stricken from the list of state roads. 

 These latter as the name implies, are wholly under the care and 

 kept up at the expense of the State. 



In 1835, the total length of the State roads was . 1,430.8 English miles. 



In 1855, " " " " was . 1,500.8 " " 



In 1855, by excluding several State roads, this last 



length was reduced to 1,142.4 " " 



In 1861, it had increased to 1,190.0 " " 



Second class roads, (keeping partly paid for by State.) 

 In 1835, the length of these was .... 467.6 English miles. 



In 1861, the length of these was .... 630.0 " " 



" So that the State had, in 1861, in all, 1,820 English miles of 

 road to maintain, the towns helping to pay on six hundred and 

 thirty miles thereof.* 



* According to Chambers Encyclopaedia, Baden has an area of about 

 5,900 square miles, and had a population, in 1858, of 1,335,952. It is prob- 

 ably this, or a little less, at the present time. Massachusetts has an area 

 of about 7,800 square miles, and, according to the average of the computed 

 populations in the supplementary tables of the census of 1865, it is, in 1870, 

 1,343,604. 



Or, population per square mile in Baden, .... =226.43 

 " " " in Massachusetts, . . =172.26 



By the same tables, accompanying the State census of 1865, we find that 



