Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1898 — For A State Highway Commission. [ARTICLE]

For A State Highway Commission.

Indiana pays through her counties the sum of $1,500,000 in money annually, for bridges and for repairs on free gravel roads. Through the townships, the State expends nearly a million of dollars in labor on repairs of township roads. The people of the United States are coming more and more to feel that it is the duty or the State to improve the roads; and in the near future Indiana will be called upon for appropriations. But the expenditure of these large sums of money requires careful supervision. It must be expended efficiently or it will do more harm than good. The advice of experts should control its use. The first step in that direction should be the. appointment of a State Highway Commission. composed of men that are experts of roads and bridges to advise the county commissioners, to induce them to adopt more efficient methods, to investigate and recommend better methods, to secure uniform and economical dealings with bridge building firms to collect statistics, and in every possible way to further the movement for good roads. They could save to the State annually a sum far in excess ,of the salaries they would require. AIL European countries have adopted such a method; the United States Government employs engineers for Harbor and River Improvements; our cities require engineers for streets and sewers; why should not the State have the benefit of expert advice in the expenditure of this fifteen hundred thousand dollars annually for internal improvements?