Thus the public good demanded that the time of the freeholders and the money of the government be expended upon the highways. Of late years in the United States the “working out” of road or poll taxes has been practically abolished and the taxes are collected in money which is expended in road construction and maintenance by persons regularly delegated for that purpose. With the increased use and the building of better types of roadways more and more money is demanded so that the financing of highway improvements has become a matter of vast importance. The money must come from either private sources or from the public. If from the public it results directly from taxation or is borrowed and the obligations paid off by taxation. =Private Financing.=--A few persons of wealth have built roads as a benefaction to the public. Perhaps one of the most ambitious projects of this sort is the DuPont Road, which is located through the state of Delaware from north to south. The intention of the DuPont family is to make this road eventually one of the finest in the world. It has been very carefully laid out and constructed. Later it is to be widened and beautified. Some $3,000,000 have already been expended, and it is contemplated to spend $1,500,000 more. It might be well if more men of wealth would commemorate their names by constructing and endowing roads. In spaces about wharfs and depots, although on privately owned ground and privately constructed, the pavement is often used generally as a highway. Such places are of course primarily for the convenience of the steamship or railway companies and they are maintained at their own expense. However, all such expense forms a part of the cost of operation and no doubt is charged to the patrons in the overhead, or it is intended to be a means of advertising in the hope that it will increase business. In timbered and rough mountainous countries, roads have frequently been built and maintained by the companies interested in lumbering, mining, or other enterprises therein, and thrown open to the general use of the public. Here the companies figure that the benefit to be derived by them more than balances the expense. Furthermore, the use of them by the public, while a minor consideration as far as the road itself is concerned, is a means of maintaining a friendly feeling with the inhabitants.