yments and pleasures, and country people in some
communities suffer such great disadvantage that ambition is checked,
energy weakened, and industry paralyzed.

Good roads, like good streets, make habitation along them most
desirable; they economize time and force in transportation of products,
reduce wear and tear on horses, harness and vehicles, and enhance the
market value of real estate. They raise the value of farm lands and farm
products, and tend to beautify the country through which they pass; they
facilitate rural mail delivery and are a potent aid to education,
religion, and sociability. Charles Sumner once said: "The road and the
schoolmaster are the two most important agents in advancing
civilization."

[Illustration: TYPICAL MACADAM ROAD NEAR BRYN MAWR, PENNSYLVANIA]

The difference between good and bad roads is often equivalent to the
difference between profit and loss. Good roads have a money value to
farmers as well as a political and social value, and leaving out
convenience, comfort, social and refined influences which good roads
always enhance, and looking at them only from the "almighty dollar"
side, they are found to pay handsome dividends each year.

People generally are beginning to realize that road-building is a public
matter, and that the best interests of American agriculture and the
American people as a whole demand the construction of good roads, and
that money wisely expended for this purpose is sure to return.

Road-making is perfected by practice, experience, and labor. Soils and
clays, sand and ores, gravels and rocks, are transformed into beautiful
roads, streets, and boulevards, by methods which conform with their
great varieties of characters and with nature's laws. The art of
road-building depends largely for its success upon being carried on in
conformity with certain general principles.

It is necessary that roads should be hard, smooth, comparatively level,
and fit for use at all seasons of the year; that they should be properly
located, or laid out on the ground, so that their grades may be such
that animate or inanimate power may be applied upon them to the best
advantage and without great loss of energy; that they should be properly
constructed, the ground well drained, the roadbed graded, shaped, and
rolled, and that they should be surfaced with the best material
procurable; that they should be properly maintained or kept constantly
in good repair.

All the important ro