24 
transactions Of the Texas academy of science. 
tickets signed by the surveyer. The price should be fixed on the basis 
of $3 per day for a man and a team. The idiosyncrasies of men, mules 
and horses vary very greatly. Let the data be arrived at from the work 
of an industrious man with an average team. By this method some of 
the profits of construction will be secured to labor, and the money will 
remain in the community. 
In conclusion, and bearing in mind the great variations which must 
necessarily characterize undertakings in different localities, such as the 
relative nearness of material, character of foundation, topography, and 
possible land damages, it may be said that good roads in Texas can be 
built at from $1500 to $2500 per mile for by-roads and from $3000 to 
$5000 per mile for the best highways. 
Let us say that a county can not do with less than four good arterial 
roads from the county seat to the county line, say 80 miles of road; then 
it seems clear that the sum of $300,000 can be profitably expended in 
good roads by any county of the first class. 
By the undertaking of public works on a large scale our court houses 
will become more than ever the seat of government, all the offices will 
be of more importance to the public. Everybody will acquire a new in¬ 
terest in “ politics,” or, to use a better word, in “county affairs,” and 
an important help to the thrift of the people will be inaugurated. 
A strong social bond, now only felt in cities, will be created—a pride 
in one’s county as such. Life in the country will be robbed of that intol¬ 
erable ennui that is ever driving the boy from the farm to the city, am¬ 
bitious to sell goods and to earn wages which for the most part are a toll 
upon his kind. And as the country life expands, and attracts youths 
from the city to the farm, to its healthier labors, and its more wholesome 
pleasures, surely the strength of the State is better nourished than by the 
growth of those vast aggregations of bricks and mortar which are over¬ 
shadowing the Republic with an ever-increasing spectacle of the terrible 
inequalities of life. 
