This is the only complete solution of the good roads problem. It is
one that all farmers or other rural residents should insist upon. It
is the one practical way of gridironing the states, old and new, with
good roads. It is especially vital in the newer states, where the
absence of good roads is the heaviest tax on industry that individual
communities must suffer.
It is far better for the criminals themselves that they should
be employed in this useful outdoor labor. The greatest clog on
the science of criminology is the aversion to breaking away from
traditions. The housing of criminals in penitentiaries, where
expensive idleness alternates with desultory forms of industry, has
ceased to be a method abreast of the times. There is enormous waste in
the orthodox prison systems.
Get all able-bodied convicts into road-making for a single generation,
and what would result? The productiveness of agricultural states would
be vastly increased. Markets, for the average farmer, would be easier
of access. Instead of virtual isolation for three or four months of
the year, agricultural life would be more evenly balanced.
The actual financial benefits to farmers would aggregate a vast total.
In European countries, it took several generations to solve the
good-roads problem. But they have solved it. The rural roads in the
average European state or principality are a national blessing. They
are not only a joy to transient travelers, but form the bulwark of
agricultural industries. European governments have wisely considered
no cost too great for good roads.
As distances are immeasurably greater in America than in thickly
settled European states, the good roads problem takes on a different
aspect here. American roads are, on the average, worse than in any
other civilized country. Therefore, they must be built up, slowly and
patiently, perhaps, but with increasing energy as population grows
denser.
With European methods it would take a hundred years to give the
western states good roads. With the convict labor, the problem would
be solved in twenty years or less. This would suffice, at least, for a
great national system of highways.