From the colonial period and well down into the nineteenth century, the construction and maintenance of roads was, in diminishing degree, a private enterprise, operated by turnpike companies primarily for the benefit of their stock-holders rather than that of the public. Gradually road making came to be regarded as a public function, at first in respect to the repairs upon the private toll roads and then in original construction. In the year 1913 the amount which counties of the country spent upon their highways had mounted to $55,514,891. To the fulfillment of this great function the county brought those weaknesses of governmental organization, that lack of equipment, that defective loyalty to the service of the whole people which have been described heretofore. The erection of a road system was a demand for broad, foreseeing knowledge and appreciation of the needs of the whole county, high technical skill in the art of road making and adequate financial arrangements. The county supplied none of these. What the county did supply and how it supplied it may be worth the recital, even though in these days of the “good-roads” movement the state government is constantly stiffening its hold upon highway matters. To begin with, the whole public road function is rooted, historically, in the tradition of the people’s infinite political versatility and infallibility. The true democrat of the nineteenth century never doubted his ability to select and control the human agents for executing a technical and difficult engineering problem, which has baffled the resources of modern specialists. And so, to this day, the management of road construction and care over a great portion of the country is entrusted to a farmer, a blacksmith, a plumber or some other species of layman who has sufficient popularity with his neighbors and the county chairman to get himself chosen as town supervisor. In some states the rôle of road manager is played by the somewhat better equipped county surveyor, who, however, like the supervisor, is picked in the majority of cases because of his vote-getting qualities rather than for any technical training.