produce
marketing, it is necessary to have heavy, thick, substantial roads,
while in more rural districts and along the seashore, where the travel
is principally by light carriages, a lighter roadbed construction is
preferred. In rural districts, where the roads are used for immediate
neighborhood purposes, an inexpensive road is desirable. The main
thoroughfares have to be constructed with a view to considerable
increase of travel, as farmers in the outlying districts who formerly
devoted their time to grazing of stock, raising of grain, etc., find it
more profitable to change the mode of farming to that of truck raising,
fruit growing, etc.

The road engineers of New Jersey find that they cannot follow old paths
and make their roads after one style or pattern. Technical engineering
in road construction must yield to the practical, common-sense plan of
action. An engineer with plenty of money and material at hand can
construct a good road almost anywhere and meet any condition, but with
limited resources and a variety of physical conditions he has to "cut
the garment to suit the cloth." We start out with this dilemma. We must
have better roads, and our means for getting them being very limited, if
we cannot get them as good as we would like, let us get them as good as
we can.

Let me give a practical illustration. Stone-road construction outside of
turnpike corporations in West Jersey was begun in the spring of 1891. I
was called on by the township committee of Chester Township, Burlington
County, to construct some roads. Moorestown is a thriving town of about
three thousand inhabitants in the center of the township. The roads to
be constructed, with one exception, ran out of the town to the township
limits, being from one-half to three miles in length. The roads were
generally for local purposes. There were ten roads, aggregating about
eleven miles. The bonding of the township was voted upon, and it was
necessary, in order to carry the bonding project of $40,000, to have all
these roads constructed of stone macadam. The roads to be improved were
determined on at a town meeting without consulting an engineer as to the
cost, etc., so that the plain question submitted to me was, Can you
construct eleven miles of stone road nine feet wide for $40,000? The
conditions to be met were these: There was no stone suitable for
road-building nearer than from sixty to eighty miles; cost of freight,
about seventy-five cents per to