Thus the interest in the great question is beginning to forge to the front; through the Office of Public Road Inquiries a great deal of information is being circulated touching all phases of the question. There is a fine spirit of independence displayed by the leaders of the movement; no one plan is over-urged; the situation is such that the final concerted popular action will come from the real governing power--the people. When they demand that the United States shall not have the poorest rural roads of any civilized and some uncivilized nations, we as a nation will hasten into the fore front and finally lead the world in this vital department of civic life, as we are leading it in so many other departments today. [Illustration: SAMPLE STEEL TRACK FOR COMMON ROADS [_On the driver's right is seated Hon. Martin Dodge, since 1898 Director of the Office of Public Road Inquiries_]] FOOTNOTES: [1] See _post_, pp. 68-80. [2] _The Federalist_, p. 198. [3] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. xiv, p. 57. [4] Thomas M. Cooley, _Constitutional Law_ (Boston, 1891), pp. 85-86. CHAPTER II GOVERNMENT COOPERATION IN OBJECT-LESSON ROAD WORK[5] In a government having a composite nature like that of the United States it is not always easy to determine just what share the General Government, the state government, and the local government should respectively take in carrying out highway work, though it is generally admitted that there should be cooperation among them all. In the early history of the Republic the National Government itself laid out and partially completed a great national system of highways connecting the East with the West, and the capital of the nation with its then most distant possessions. Fourteen million dollars in all was appropriated by acts of Congress to be devoted to this purpose, an amount almost equal to that paid for the Louisiana Purchase. In other words, it cost the government substantially as much to make that territory accessible as to purchase it; and what is true of that territory in its larger sense is also true in a small way of nearly every tract of land that is opened up and used for the purposes of civilization; that is to say, it will cost as much to build up, improve, and maintain the roads of any given section of the country as the land in its primitive condition is worth; and the same rule will apply in most cases after the land value has advanced considerably beyond that of its primitive condition. It is a general rule that the suitable improvement of a highway within reasonable limitations will double the value of the land adjacent to it. Seven million dollars, half of the total sum appropriated by acts of Congress for the national road system, was devoted to building the Cumberland Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to St. Louis, Missouri, the most central point in the great Louisiana Purchase, and seven hundred miles west of Cumberland. The total cost of