Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1919 — Like Prohibition, Movement for Good Roads Now Sweeps the Country [ARTICLE]

Like Prohibition, Movement for Good Roads Now Sweeps the Country

By W.G. EDENS.

Pres’t Illinois Highway Improvement Association

Just as prohibition, once started, spread so quickly over the nation that the states rushed to get on the "dry” bandwagon, so the good-roads movement is sweeping over the country. The vigorous manner in which the states have taken up the cry to pull themselves out of the mud indicates that at last the public has come to a realization of the sound economic basis of improved highways. Illinois, once the most backward of states, has come suddenly to the forefront. Illinois, in its $80,000,000 bond issue project, solved a question that has puzzled good-roads enthusiasts from the beginning of their propaganda for better highways. This was the question of a sound, economical and fair method of financing a state Bystem of main highways to which all other roads could be tributary. The taxation problem always is with us, and if an attempt were made right now to levy a general tax for good roads it would be met with very serious and powerful opposition. But Illinois got around this question through the expedient of the application of the automobile license, fees to the principal and interest olU# bond issue. Motorists generally co-operated in advocating this method of taxing themselves, realizing that the saving in depreciation and running expenses would more than meet the burden. Thus the "Illinois plan” was evolved and today we have dozens of sister states looking into it and preparing to adopt it all, or so much of it as their constitution or other local conditions will permit. There is-a general disposition to await price readjustment-before ambitious construction plans are put under way for 1919. , I believe that broad-visioned business men will go half way in meeting public officiala