ads in the United States can be and doubtless will
be macadamized or otherwise improved in the not distant future. This
expectation should govern their present location and treatment
everywhere. Unless changes are made in the location of the roads in many
parts of this country it would be worse than folly to macadamize them.
"Any costly resurfacing of the existing roads will fasten them where
they are for generations," says General Stone. The chief difficulty in
this country is not with the surface, but with the steep grades, many of
which are too long to be reduced by cutting and filling on the present
lines, and if this could be done it would cost more in many cases than
relocating them.

Many of our roads were originally laid out without any attention to
general topography, and in most cases followed the settler's path from
cabin to cabin, the pig trail, or ran along the boundary lines of the
farms regardless of grades or direction. Most of them remain today where
they were located years ago, and where untold labor, expense, and energy
have been wasted in trying to haul over them and in endeavors to improve
their deplorable condition.

The great error is made of continuing to follow these primitive paths
with our public highways. The right course is to call in an engineer and
throw the road around the end or along the side of steep hills instead
of continuing to go over them, or to pull the road up on dry solid
ground instead of splashing through the mud and water of the creek or
swamp. Far more time and money have been wasted in trying to keep up a
single mile of one of these "pig-track" surveys than it would take to
build and keep in repair two miles of good road.

Another and perhaps greater error is made by some persons in the West
who continue to lay out their roads on "section lines." These sections
are all square, with sides running north, south, east, and west. A
person wishing to cross the country in any other than these directions
must necessarily do so in rectangular zigzags. It also necessitates very
often the crossing and recrossing of hills and valleys, which might be
avoided if the roads had been constructed on scientific principles.

[Illustration: A STUDY IN GRADING

[_The old road had a grade of eight per cent; by the improved route the
grade is four per cent_]]

In the prairie state of Iowa, for example, where roads are no worse than
in many other states, there is a greater number of roads ha