Highways and Highway Transportation

by George R. Chatburn

There is no doubt that the diffusion of knowledge in regard to the good construction of roads will be of immense benefit to all the people. —John A. Noble, Secretary of the Interior.

I think the people of the United States are taking more interest in the improvement of good roads than in any other non-political matter. —O. H. Platt, Senator from Connecticut.

I have often thought that the people, speaking of them generally, have never yet understood the value of good roads. They are not only matters of convenience, but they are really matters of great economy in every community. The farmer with one team of two horses is able to move on a good road more than he could move with four horses and a wagon of much greater strength on a poor road. This I have tested personally many times. Farmers are constantly in need of the use of highways to transport their property and to move themselves from place to place. The average farmer is five miles distant from the nearest railway station and his surplus produce must be moved that distance year after year. If he were to compute the saving that he and his neighbors would have by reason of first-class roadways, they would discover that it would amount to more than the expense of putting the roads in good condition and keeping them so. Our road system is miserably deficient. —William A. Peffer, Senator from Kansas (Populist).

Aside from the benefits that good roads bring to the people in times of peace I do not know of a great city in this country that is provided with such highways as would admit of the expeditions marching of a great army in times of war. Washington City is a fair example in this regard. The highways leading to this city through Maryland and Virginia are both narrow and crooked. There is not a single public outlet or inlet that can be called a great national highway. —H. C. Hansbrough, Senator from North Dakota.

In the old Roman days all roads led to Rome, and they were good roads. They built roads for military and commercial purposes, and the wisdom of their enterprise was apparent even in that early day. European nations to-day regard road-making as one of their economic questions, and it does seem that our Government in its honest endeavor to benefit the agricultural classes, should have thought of good roads long ago. We want and must have splendid highways, owned not by corporations but by the people. They will be an economical investment, and an untold comfort to the traveler. —James H. Kyle, Senator from South Dakota.

The country could spend no money so economically and enlist no genius so usefully as in making better roads for communications between one neighborhood and another. —John W. Daniel, Senator from Virginia.

I esteem good roads throughout the country to be as necessary as railroads. —Francis E. Warren, Senator from Wyoming.

The prosperity of our country depends so largely on the prosperity of our farmers that everything possible should be done to render life in the rural districts agreeable as well as profitable and nothing could conduce more to the comfort and happiness of our people than the improvement of the roads. —Joseph Wheeler, Representative from Alabama.

That good roads in good condition are always of great value in a military point of view is plain enough; for any section of active operations the prompt transportation of material and the moving of an army would demand it. —Major General Oliver O. Howard, United States Army.

The importance of good roads has been brought to my attention most forcibly on many occasions when my wagon trains have been forced to move at a snail’s pace over almost impassable roads, and when every hour’s delay might mean untold disaster. The expenditure of animal force on such occasions was fearful. In times of peace good roads are no less important; the general condition of country roads is a very good index of the civilization and prosperity of the community. It is not difficult to show by mathematical deduction that money expended in constructing good roads is economy from a financial standpoint, while from a social standpoint the benefits are incalculable.