2 BULLETIN 1279, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
visualize the vastness of our present highway activities and to realize 
more fully the ever increasing demands that modern traffic is making 
on our highways. 
But while the above totals speak of great accomplishments they 
also speak with equal force of the vastness of the work still to be 
done, of the urgent need for still greater efforts which much be made 
before our highways shall be fully adequate to meet even the present 
traffic requirements. They voice a call for more funds and for better 
direction and control in their expenditure, for more definite planning 
for the future as well as for the present, and for the more general 
employment of our ablest talent for terms of office which shall be 
conditioned only on integrity and ability. 
Furthermore, while our rural roads amount to the tremendous 
total of 2,941,294 miles this is only an average of ninety-nine one-hun- 
dredths of a mile of road for each square mile of land area, less than 
1 mile of road for each 640 acres of land. If our 387,760 miles of 
surfaced roads were equally distributed over the 48 States they would 
only amount to thirteen one-hundredths of a mile for each square 
mile of land area, or but slightly more than 1 mile of surfaced road for 
every 8 square miles of land area. And while our total rural road 
expenditures in 1921 amounted to $1,036,587,772, this is an average 
of but $348.57 per square mile of land area, $352.43 per mile of road 
and $9.85 per capita of our 1920 population. 
In 1904, the year for which the first rural road survey was made 
by the Bureau of Public Roads, the motor car had not been seriously 
thought of as introducing a road problem. Now, only 19 years 
later, we have about 15,000,000 motor cars and trucks on our roads, 
although more than 2,000,000 miles, or over two-thirds of the total 
mileage of our rural roads, is little or no better than it was 20 years 
ago. These facts tell us most emphatically that the job of building 
the nation's highways has been but little more than begun. How 
soon and how well the work will be completed depends entirely on 
how intelligently and resolutely we dedicate ourselves to the task. 
While we still have much to accomplish, the rate of progress during 
recent years has been gratifying. In 1904 the total income for all 
rural-road purposes amounted to only $79,623,617. This included 
the estimated value of all statute labor or taxes paid in labor, which 
at that time amounted to slightly more than $20,000,000 leaving 
only $59,527,170 as the actual cash income for rural roads during 
1904. By 1914 statute labor, always inefficient and unsatisfactory, 
had become an almost negligible part of the total highway income 
which in that year amounted to $240,263,784. This was an increase 
of 202 per cent over the total income of 1904, or an increase in the 
actual cash highway income during the 10-year period of 304 per 
cent. The increase during the following seven years from 1914 to 
1921 has been even greater. The grand total of income for all 
public road purposes in 1921 amounted to $1,149,437,896, an increase 
of 378 per cent in seven years. 
In 1904 the Bureau of Public Roads adopted the policy of con- 
ducting at intervals an investigation to determine the mileage of 
improved and unimproved roads, the revenues for road purposes, 
and other related data. In accordance with this policy investiga- 
tions were made in the years 1904, 1909, 1914, and 1921. Partial 
data, secured for 1922, are published as a part of this bulletin. The 
