National and State Aid.
—The history of National and State Aid in the United States has been treated quite fully in [Chapter V]. It will not be necessary to repeat that here. Suffice to say that with possibly a few exceptions all the states in the Union now have some form of state aid—money, engineering advice, testing materials, convict labor, etc.; also the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippine Islands, and Porto Rico, or else the governments of these divisions directly take charge of the construction of a part or a whole of the roads. The acceptance of Federal Aid practically made it necessary for the states to have highway departments to distribute the Federal Aid money and the equal amount the state had to put up to match it. Several of the states like New York and California had raised by bond issues large sums of money before federal aid was available and distributed it to counties that would coöperate in the building of roads to be united into a comprehensive state system. New Jersey, the first State Aid state, and Massachusetts, a close follower, had already “paved the way” as an example for other states to follow.