tons of produce every day. The cost of hauling this produce over bad roads averages twenty-five cents per mile and over good roads about ten cents per mile, making a difference of fifteen cents per mile per ton. For five hundred tons, hauled from farms averaging ten miles distance, this would be seven hundred and fifty dollars per day, or a quarter of a million dollars a year—enough to build fifty miles of macadamized road a year. The farmers shift as much as they can of their heavy tax on the city people—the consumer pays the freight. Everybody is concerned in the "mud-tax" of bad roads.

And so what is known as the "state aid" plan has become popular. By this plan the state pays a fixed part of the cost of building roads out of the general fund raised by taxation of all the people and all the property in the state. Under these circumstances corporations, railroads, and the various representatives of the concentrated wealth of the cities all contribute to this fund. The funds are expended in rural districts and are supplemented by money raised by local taxation.

The state of New York, which has a good system, pays one-half of the good roads fund; each county pays thirty-five per cent, and the township fifteen per cent. Pennsylvania has appropriated at one time six and a half millions as a good roads fund. The new Ohio law apportions the cost of new roads as follows: The state pays twenty-five per cent, the townships twenty-five per cent, and the county fifty per cent. Of the twenty-five per cent paid by the townships fifteen per cent is to be paid by owners of abutting property and ten per cent by the township as a whole. In New Jersey, which has a model system of road-building and many model roads, the state pays a third, the county a third, and the property owners a third.

A more recent theory in American road-building which has been advanced is a plan of national aid.[1] This is no new thing in America, though it has been many years since the government has paid attention to roadways. In the early days the wisest of our statesmen advocated large plans of internal improvement; one great national road, as we have seen, was built by the War Department from the Potomac almost to the Mississippi, through Wheeling, Columbus, Indianapolis and Vandalia, at a cost of over six million dollars. And this famous national road was built, in part, upon an earlier pathway, cut through Ohio by Ebenezer Zane in 1796, also at the order of Congress, and for which he received grants of land which formed the nucleus of the three thriving Ohio cities, Zanesville, Lancaster, and Chillicothe. The constitutionality of road-building by the government was questioned by some, but that clause granting it the right to establish post-offices and post roads "must, in every view, be a harmless power," said James Madison, "and may perhaps, by judicious management, become productive of great public conveniency. Nothing which tends to facilitate the intercourse between the states can be deemed unworthy of the public care."[2] But the government was interested not only in building roads but in many other phases of public improvement; it took stock in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; Congress voted $30,000 to survey the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal route, and the work was done by government engineers. When railways superseded highways, the government was almost persuaded to complete the old National Road with rails and ties instead of broken stone. When the Erie Canal was proposed, a vast scheme of government aid was favored by leading statesmen;[3] the government has greatly assisted the western railways by gigantic grants of land worth one hundred and thirty-eight million dollars. The vast funds of private capital that have been seeking investment in this country, at first in turnpike, plank, and macadamized roads, then in canals, and later in railways, has rendered government aid comparatively unnecessary. In the last few years the only work of internal improvement aided by the government is the improvement of the rivers and harbors, which for 1904 takes over fifty millions of revenue a year. The sum of $130,565,485 has been well spent on river and harbor improvement in the past seven years. Not only are the great rivers, such as the Ohio and Mississippi, improved, but lesser streams. A short time ago I made a journey of one hundred miles down the Elk River in West Virginia in a boat eleven inches deep and twelve feet long; a channel all the way down had been made about two feet wide by picking out the stones; the United States did this at an expense of fifteen hundred dollars. The groceries and dry goods for thousands were poled up that river in dug-outs through that two-foot channel. I doubt if a two-wheel vehicle could traverse the road which runs throughout that valley, but I know a four-wheel vehicle could not.

The advocates of national aid urge the right to establish post roads; "I had an ancestor in the United States Senate," said ex-Senator Butler of South Carolina, "who refused to vote a dollar for the improvement of Charleston Harbor; but almost the first act of my official life was to get an appropriation of two hundred and fifty thousand for that purpose. There is as ample constitutional warrant for the improvement of public roads out of the United States Treasury—as large as there is for the improvement of rivers and harbors, or for the support of the agricultural colleges."

"But few judicial opinions have been rendered on this subject. In the case of Dickey against the Turnpike Company, the Kentucky court of appeals decided that the power given to Congress by the constitution to establish post roads enabled them to make, repair, keep open, and improve post roads when they shall deem the exercise of the power expedient. But in the exercise of the right of eminent domain on this subject the United States has no right to adopt and use roads, bridges, or ferries constructed and owned by states, corporations, and individuals without their consent or without making to the parties concerned just compensation. If the United States elects to use such accommodations, it stands upon the same footing and is subject to the same tolls and regulations as a private individual. It has been asserted that Jefferson was opposed to the appropriation of money for internal improvements, but, in 1808, in writing to Mr. Lieper, he said, 'Give us peace until our revenues are liberated from debt, ... and then during peace we may chequer our whole country with canals, roads, etc.' Writing to J. W. Eppes in 1813 he says, 'The fondest wish of my heart ever was that the surplus portion of these taxes destined for the payment of the Revolutionary debt should, when that object is accomplished, be continued by annual or biennial reënactments and applied in times of peace to the improvement of our country by canals, roads, and useful institutions.' Congress has always claimed the power to lay out, construct, and improve post roads with the assent of the states through which they pass; also, to open, construct, and improve military roads on like terms; and the right to cut canals through the