this great road was wholly paid out of the United States Treasury, and though never fully completed on the western end, it is the longest straight road ever built by any government. It passes through the capitals of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and the cost per mile was, approximately, ten thousand dollars. It furnishes the only important instance the country has ever had of the General Government providing a highway at its own expense. The plan, however, was never carried to completion, and since its abandonment two generations ago, the people of the different states have provided their own highways. For the most part they have delegated their powers either to individuals, companies, or corporations to build toll roads, or to the minor political subdivisions and municipalities to build free roads. With the passing of the toll-road system, the withdrawal of the General Government from the field of actual road construction, and the various state governments doing little or nothing, the only remaining active agent occupying the entire great field is the local government in each community; and while these various local governments have done and are still doing the best they can under the circumstances, there is great need that their efforts should be supplemented, their revenues enlarged, and their skill in the art of road construction increased. The skill of the local supervisor was sufficient in primitive times, so long as his principal duties consisted in clearing the way of trees, logs, stumps, and other obstructions, and shaping the earth of which the roadbed was composed into a little better form than nature had left it; and the resources at his command were sufficient so long as he was authorized to call on every able-bodied male citizen between twenty-one and forty-five years of age to do ten days' labor annually on the road, especially when the only labor expected was that of dealing with the material found on the spot. But with the changed conditions brought about by the more advanced state of civilization, after the rights of way have been cleared of their obstructions and the earth roads graded into the form of turnpikes, it became necessary to harden their surfaces with material which often must be brought from distant places. In order to accomplish this, expert skill is required in the selection of materials, money instead of labor is required to pay for the cost of transportation, and machinery must be substituted for the hand processes and primitive methods heretofore employed in order to crush the rock and distribute it in the most economical manner on the roadbed. Skill and machinery are also required to roll and consolidate the material so as to form a smooth, hard surface and a homogeneous mass impervious to water.