Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 183, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1919 — Road Work Is Nationwide [ARTICLE]

Road Work Is Nationwide

Concrete Construction Is Well Under Way; No Wait for Lower Prices

Full speed ahead! This is < the slogan that is putting the pep in highway construction all over the country. Especially is this true of concrete construction. A survey of recent concrete highway lettings discloses a marked tendency toward full speed ahead in road work; While the tendency was not so apparent a short time ago it is no more than might be expected, and bears out. the repeated assertion of those qualified to speak from a definite knowledge of material costs that waiting for a drop in prices would result only in a waste of time and a shortening pf the construction season, to the great disadvantage of the public at large. Contractors who have permitted themselves to be affected by thia policy of delay and who have as a result lagged in organizing their equipment and labor forces for the season’s work will be surprised to learn the extent to which concrete joad work is contracted for or already under way. Awards have been made for concrete roads in the District of Columbia, Connecticut, West Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and other states. The scope of territory reporting contracts shows that the resumption of highway work is not confined to any particular territory—hence based upon purely local conditions and necessities —but is, in fact, nationwide. The to tqU yardage to date so? the first three months of the year 1919 was approximately 3,500,000, more than three times the amount of yardage laid during the entire twelve morfths of 1909, when concrete road construction first began to get under way. Also of great significance to the highway contractor is the fact that the movement for permanent hard-surfaced trunk-line highways throughout the United States is an impersonal one. That is to eay, it is a movement that has back of it primarily an economic force seeking an outlet to market that will not place such a heavy drain upon the product in transit as to lessen the net profits to the producer and increase the cost to the consumer by reason of excessive and altogether unnecessary hauling costs in reaching that market.#