ARE NOT A LUXURY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3611, 16 December 1905, Page 4

ARE NOT A LUXURY.

Well-Made Highway# Are Really Among the Neoes#ltle#.

The road commissioner of New Jersey, Mr. Budd, points out that it costs three cents a bushel to haul wheat on a level road a distance of five miles, and at least nine cents to haul it the same distance on a sandy road, which goes to illustrate the practical economic importance of good roads. This is a point which deserves the serious attention of farmers. Sandy and rough roads are wearing out their horses and vehicles and increasing the actual cost of their farm supplies and of the marketing of their produce. Though little recognized, this, is a fact most potent to the careful observer, and most pointedly and truly expressed in Mr. Budd’s report. When this fact penetrates the minds of fanners more generally they will begin to realize that money and labor expended on road improvement will save money for them in reducing the actual cost of hauling and in saving vehicles and horses.

It is high time to dispense with the idea that good roads are luxuries, mere fancy frills, and to regard well-made highways ns among the necessities. — Easton (Pa.) Free Press.

Periods of Road Building?. In tin interesting article on “Ancient and Modem Highways,” by C. L. Whittle, in the New England Magazine, the writer divides the history of road-build-ing, as affected by various uses, into three periods: First, during the reign of the Egyptian and Assyrian Icings; second, beginning with the rise of Carthage, and continuing through the rise and fall of the Roman empire; three, beginning in France, with the roads “conceived by, Napoleon and executed by Tresaguet;” then by McAdam and Telford in England, afterwards on the ’continent, and now in the United