Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1916 — FOR STATE HIGHWAYS. [ARTICLE]

FOR STATE HIGHWAYS.

The Hoosier State Automobile association has made an early beginning to its statewide campaign in the interests of better roads. It has not, ol course, beets inactive in the past, but it proposes in the future, in view of next winter’s legislative ! session, to be more active than it | has been heretofore. It is in favor of of a state highway department and asks support from good roads advo- . cates throughout the state to the end that the campaign now begun J’’ iy be carried successfully to the doors of the legislature, j It may be unfortunate from one point of view that the organization I is known as an “automobile association.’’ minds of some, the ( idea still lingers that the movement is fostered mainly by automobile owners and for their especial benefit. Apd those who hold this conception |of the purpose and motive of the association are inclined to oppose it. Automobilists, however, are only supporting this movement. ThouI sanas of men—ana women, too—who never owned 1 a car are to lie found in every section of Indiana ready to lend their encouragement to the establishment of a more practical and less clumsy and less costly system of road improvement. “Our whole good roads plan,” says the association, “is ridiculous. Indiana has 4,500 road officials with 4,500 different ideas—no state organization, no head, no standards, no uniformity. We have scores of good roads officials, seriously handicapped for lack of system and standards. Every state in the Union has a good roads department with the exception of South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Indiana.” The association might have added that among the "4,500 road officials” there are some with no ideas at all, some

with ideas and no initiative, Wine more with ideas that are bad and still others with ideas mo small to meet the demands. It is a bad system. What it has cost the people of the state since the state outgrew it and what it is costing the people touay may be easily determined. Nearly every township in Indiana can produce testimony to its futility and wastefulness. Each year, $18,000,000 is expended on Hoosier roads. To a good many of us it would seem that at least half of this is wasted. Examples are numerous—take the roads from Indianapolis to Broad Ripple as a striking instance—where large sums have been spent annually for nearly half a century only to result, in the long run, in- roads that are a disgrace to the community that has patiently supported them. Against the campaign of the automobile association will be aligned many interests. Not the least of these will be the “4,500 road officials with the 4,500 different ideas.” The public, however, has a good champion in the association and it ought to lend it generous assistance.—lndianapolis News.