The Daily Ardmoreite

Are We to Have National Highways?

There is no single road building project fathered by a road association in this country which is not good. Not a projected road but has merit, not a one for which there is not need. But the satisfaction of that need will not necessarily mean the greatest good to the greatest number. If congress were to decide to build three thousand miles of good road, which would the best serve the whole nation, the present and the future of road building—to divide it into fifty parcels and present each state with sixty miles of good roads, or to build one highway from coast to coast?

Obviously, the latter, yet there are a thousand hands pulling on congress, begging them to endorse, to aid, to help. this, that or the other road project, to the neglect of all the rest.

There is only one way in which satisfactory national action can be had on the subject. The seventy-five different road bills do not offer it. The congressional commission now sitting, with a totally inadequate appropriation, having hearings on a subject which is one for technical men and not for legislators, is not the solution. The lobbying of a hundred, a thousand road associations for as many plans—State Aid, National Aid Federal Aid, Federal Construction and State Maintenance, State Construction and Federal Maintenance State Reward, unrelated building of memorial roads and so on—these plans will not produce anything but some individual local good, Congress knowing this, is slow to act.—Press Bulletin, National Highways Association.