284 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
While the New England town usually performs the functions of 
both township and village government, the tendency even here is 
toward larger areas of local administration and State supervision of 
the local authorities. This movement is noticeable in school manage- 
ment, public charities, sanitary affairs, and most recently in road 
building. Thus several towns are often united into a school super- 
visory district, and the towns are aided by the county and State in the 
construction and maintenance of highways. There are numerous 
instances now where shifts in population have destroyed the old 
equilibrium, and a consolidation of towns or a recasting of boundaries 
would probably be desirable. However, after a recent comprehensive 
survey of government in New Hampshire (123, pp. 11, 632-6388) it 
was concluded that consolidation of towns would be neither a sound 
nor an effective method of reducing local expenditures, but that 
certain major functions should be transferred from the town to the 
county, and that there was need of improvement in town financial 
administration. 
The township has been quite generally used as a unit of road ad- 
ministration, and it served very well in horse-and-buggy days and 
when roads were maintained in large part with free labor. But 
the average township cannot afford the machinery and engineering 
required to build roads suitable for automobile traffic. President 
nooer ay when discussing this subject as Governor of New York, 
said: 
I know of no business reason, and can think of none, why the town as a unit 
of administration of highway expenditure should longer exist (156, p. 324). 
An Oregon commission (153) created for the purpose of seeking 
means of bringing about property-tax relief, points out that the 
roads of that State are built by about 650 local road districts, dis- 
tributed among the 36 counties, and urges centralization. 
Centralization of road administration is in line with the general 
movement over the Nation to eliminate township road districts as 
they were originally organized. The present multitude of local road 
districts results in inefficiency, extravagance, and duplication of 
expense and effort. Roads no longer serve only the neighborhood 
through which they run. They serve an intercommunity and inter- 
state purpose and should be administered and supported by a larger 
jurisdiction than the township. 
The town or township is the unit of school administration_today 
in all of the New England States, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, 
Indiana, and in parts of Michigan, Iowa, and South Dakota (119, 
332). 
a As the consolidation of schools has progressed, the township has 
often been seized upon as a convenient goal, and hence in many in- 
stances now constitutes a school district in other States than those 
mentioned above. Both school authorities and tax authorities are 
agreed, however, that the township is an unsatisfactory school unit. 
Both favor the county as a unit of administration and, to some extent 
at least, as the unit of taxation. The abolition of the township 
would either not affect the schools at all or would make it easier to 
establish the county-unit plan. 
In certain States the administration of poor relief remains partially 
a town function, but the tendency is to transfer the work in this 
field to the county and the State. The county is recognized as a 
