operation on the part of as many different
interests connected with the road question as possible. The local
community having the road built is most largely interested, and is
expected to furnish the common labor and domestic material. The
railroad companies generally cooperate, because they are interested in
having better roads to and from their railroad stations. They therefore
contribute by transporting free or at very low rates the machinery and
such foreign material as is needed in the construction of the road. The
manufacturers of earth-handling and road-building machinery cooperate by
furnishing all needed machinery for the most economical construction of
the road, and in many cases prison labor is used in preparing material
which finally goes into the completed roadbed. The contribution which
the General Government makes in this scheme of cooperation is both
actually and relatively small, but it is by means of this limited
cooperation that it has been possible to produce a large number of
object-lesson roads in different states. These have proved very
beneficial, not only in showing the scientific side of the question, but
the economical side as well.

In the year 1900 object-lesson roads were built under the direction of
the Office of Public Road Inquiries near Port Huron, Saginaw, and
Traverse City, Michigan; Springfield, Illinois; and Topeka, Kansas.
Since that time the object-lesson roads so built have been extended and
duplicated by the local authorities without further aid from the
government. The people are so well pleased with the results of these
experiments that they are making preparations for additional extensions,
aggregating many miles.

During the year 1901 sample object-lesson roads were built on a larger
scale in cooperation with the Illinois Central, Lake Shore, and Southern
railroad companies, and the National Association for Good Roads in the
states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, New
York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. In all of
these cases the cooperation has been very hearty on the part of the
state, the county, and the municipality in which the work has been done,
and the results have been very satisfactory and beneficial.

Hon. A. H. Longino, governor of Mississippi, in his speech made at the
International Good Roads Congress at Buffalo, September 17, 1901, said:

"My friends, the importance of good roads seems to me to be