The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1913. THE MAKING OF ROADS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 18 November 1913, Page 4

The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1913. THE MAKING OF ROADS.

In the Wairarapa, as in other parts of the .North Island, one of the most pressing needs of the moment is the provision of good metalled roads to the backbloeks. The New Zealand Herald very truly points out that in the past the lack of national interest in roads lias led to an enormous waste of money. The State,' instead of taking upon itself the task of providing the roads so essential to settlement, to progress, and to the increase of public wealth, has delegated its responsibilities in this respect to local bodies, to county councils, road boards, road districts, 'town boards, borough councils, city councils, and the consequence is these local bodies have multiplied to such an extent that to-day the mere cost of tho several hundred local offices,, each with its' staff of clerks, engineers, overseers, supervisors, legal advisers, auditors, and other essentials, is almost enough to pay for a quarter of the roads constructed. This large number of local bodies, besides increasing the cost of road! work enormously, lias other serious drawbacks. It has by the very nature of things created a purely parochial and petty spirit in what should be an absolutely national work, and, moreover, it has heen illogical and unjust in its results. It has given to wealthy, cities and populous boroughs magnificent revenues and almoet unlimited Borrowing'powers, whilst it has given to sparselysettled districts where roads are an absolute necessity a chronic poverty which has been, paralysing in its effects. It has given to cities and boroughs where labour is plentiful and where railways and tramlines provide ample means of communication all the

most modern labour-savins appliamcs and it has reduced the country *is- i tricts where machinery could be so economically utilised the most expensive forms of primitive manual labour. This is a .state of things which the present Government or any other Government cannot afford to overlook. If Mr Massey desires to have large sums of money which he is providing for road-making purposes judiciously expended he must alter altogether the present wheelbarrow and long-handled shovel system so widely in vogue throughout the country districts of New Zealand. Whilst human labour can be so profitably employed in bringing the waste lands of the Dominion into productive use, tho State cannot or should not allow men to do work which machinery could perform a hundred times more efficiently. The wheelbarrow and shovel are essentially the tools of individualism or poverty-stricken communities. For a progressive, highwage country like New Zealand to allow roads and even railways to bo constructed without machinery is sheer waste of its two most valuable commodities, men and money, and it is certain that unless the present system or lack of system is altered our roads will cost at least twothirds more than they ought to cost, and, moreover, they will be bad roads instead of- good roads from, start to finish. It eeems almost impossible for back-country county councils to take upon themselves the cost of providing elaborate road-making plants, and it is scarcely desirable that expensive machinery should be duplicated. This is one great reason why the State should assume its true responsibility in the matter of roads. The State can employ laboursaving machinery and specially-skill-ed engineers; the State through the medium of its own railways andv waterways can carry road-making material; it can own quarries, rise beach sand, shells, river gravel in ways altogether out of the reach of local bodies. With steam or oil motorploughs, graders, metal-crushers, and rollers it must be acknowledged that roads could be made more quickly and more cheaply than by hand labour. Why, then, should the State, or the local bodies continue the extravagant and unsatisfactory eystem of making roads with the wheelbarrow and the long-handled shovel? It Is like putting eight-shillings-a-'day men on to cut crops with a sickle instead of a reaper aild binder; it is like employing men to cultivate the land with a garden fork instead of a double or a treble-furrow plough. It is not only that roads could be -made more quickly and more cheaply by '•machinery than by hand labour; they, ; could be made much better. There h no comparison between the character of a road properly formed:, with a i well-rolled foundation and well-rolled metnl, and one made under the present system, which is usually ruined before" it is completed by carting metal over it. If the Government really wishes to give the country good and cheap roads, it should introduce the machinery necessary to do this class of work, in the most efficient manner; Considering how fully-me-chanical appliances are used in every branch of private industry, and how necessary ■such appliances are to use high-priced labour economically, it seems absurd > that in the making of roads and railways the wheelbarrow and the shovel should be so popular with. Government engineers and with local bodies responsible for road workOne would think, at any rate, that in the construction of our most important 4nd costly national works the officials in cliarge would make use of all the aids that science and modern invention can give them, instead of using methods which! 1 were evidently considered primitive a hundred years ago.