"In 1893 the road expenditures in New Jersey were $778,470.82, or $43.24 per mile (about one fifth being for new broken-stone roads); in New York about $2,500,000, or about $30 per mile."t In Vermont in 1893 the expenditures for road purposes, includ ing culverts but excluding bridges, in country and cities, were $30.22 per mile; and in 1894, $32.134 In Connecticut in 1889 the expenditures for roads in the different townships averaged $34.04 per mile, the maximum being $201.22 and the minimum $7.911 "The public roads of Washington County, Md., have cost $20 per year." * In Champaign county, Ill., according to statistics collected by the author,f the expenditures for road purposes, outside of incor porated cities and villages, in 1900 were $34.86 (for details see § 220).
The roads and streets of the cities, towns, and villages are usually under the control of the municipalities, in which as a rule the labor tax does not exist; therefore the labor-tax system applies chiefly, if not wholly, to rural communities. Further, since a very large proportion of the roads are of earth, the labor-tax system is usually applied to the construction and care of earth roads.
It is common to assume that the labor-tax system is all wrong, and that its evils would be escaped by paying road taxes in money. The labor tax has inherent disadvantages, but many of the defects charged to it belong rather to defective administration and to the system that leaves the control of the public highways to a small locally governed community. Public work is seldom as economi cally done as private work.
The objections to the labor-tax system are: 1. The labor is in different and inefficient. 2. It is impossible to get the work done at the most suitable time. 3. The allows no selection of the laborer. All of these are important considerations.
The reply to the above objections is usually about as follows: 1. The farmer is willing to pay more in labor than in money, which compensates in part, at least, for the objections to the labor-tax system. This preference is not peculiar to the American farmer.
In France, if the road tax is paid in money, a reduction of 40 to 50 per cent is made; but still 60 per cent of the people prefer to pay in labor.* Farmers not infrequently give more both in labor and money than is exacted as road taxes, because they are interested in better roads. 2. In many rural communities it is impossible to secure any one to do road work at reasonable wages at the most suitable season. 3. If the tax were paid in money, there is no certainty that the labor would be any more efficient. Streets are maintained under the cash-tax system, but the labor is not ideally efficient. The authority that virtually wastes the labor tax will probably also waste the cash tax.
The labor tax is not necessarily the cause of inferior roads, nor the cash-tax system in itself the cause of improved roads. Townships under the labor-tax system often have better roads than adjoining townships under the cash-tax system. The one thing absolutely necessary for successful road management is effective supervision of the work. Without it neither system will accom plish much, and with it either system will do reasonably well.
Many townships have changed from the labor-tax system to the cash-tax system with a marked improvement in the condition of the roads—due chiefly, if not wholly, to better administration. For in many of these cases the so-called cash-tax system is practically only a change in the method of administering the labor-tax system, since farmers desiring to do so are given an opportunity to work out their road taxes under the cash system. Under the labor-tax system those working upon the roads receive credit on their road taxes, while in the so-called cash system the laborer receives an order which is accepted as cash in paying taxes. In these cases the public sentiment that demanded road improvement secured the change from the labor tax to the cash tax; and, consciously or un consciously, also secured a more efficient road administration.
The labor-tax system is more objectionable with broken-stone roads than with earth ones, since the construction of the former is more difficult and their maintenance requires intimate knowledge and constant attendance, and also since the former are built only where there is more travel and where the labor of maintenance is greater. This subject will be considered incidentally under Mainte nance in the chapters on earth, gravel, and broken-stone roads.