=Matching Federal Aid Dollars.=--The main argument that brought the Federal Aid law into being was the need of farm to market roads and the fact that in the past the expense for building and maintaining roads fell most heavily upon the farmer. In an excellent report made by Senator Bankhead (Senate Report 250, 64th Congress, 1st Session) for the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, the statement is made that “it is probably conservative to say that at least 75 per cent of the money raised for road purposes” at that time, 1916, “is paid by the owners of country property.” He gives statistics to show that the owners of less than one-third of the real property of the United States were paying more than three-fourths of the cost of the public roads. This did not seem to be equitable, since the country people did not have a monopoly on their use. The burden of building and caring for the roads should be distributed among all who were benefited by them. There is no very adequate method of doing this, but inasmuch as all citizens, both city and country, share in the raising of national revenues, the result of federal appropriations would be to tend in some measure to equalize the cost of roads as between city and country. It was not thought wise to make a direct gift of money from the federal treasury, as that would favor too much of paternalism, would result in “pork barrel” scandals, and would stifle local initiative, energy, and self-help. If the federal government were to enter upon the building outright of a system of roads, there would be a temptation for the states and counties to cease building in the hope the government would eventually get around to them. Likewise the demand for “pork” would be enormous. The plan was therefore devised of requiring the state to pay half the expenses of road building, that is, of matching dollars, fifty-fifty, with the federal treasury. It was further decided that federal money should go into road extensions, leaving repairs and renewals to the states. If states refuse to perform the necessary maintenance the only recourse the government has is to withdraw future Federal aid. The object of the government was to add to the stock of good roads, and eventually secure the necessary 20 per cent upon which engineers state, 80 to 90 per cent of the entire traffic can be adequately accommodated.