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Method Not Adequate to Promote Good Roads.

I also object to this bill because, although it will cost an enormous
amount, it is wholly inadequate for the purposes for which it
was designed. When you apply the maximum rental per mile to the
whole of any particular rural postal delivery route it will not be
discoverable. To spend $25 per mile per year will be, in my judgment,
sheer and inexcusable waste. It will cost the General Government
dear, but is not enough to tempt any locality to the development
of a better road system. It would be a mere suggestion to
the local authorities to apply for more, and would, I feel sure, lead
to a complete abandonment of local or State effort.

Mr. Chairman, that, to me, is one of the most deplorable features
of this bill. I believe it will paralyze the good-roads movement. I
believe that no State not yet equipped with an admirable and excellent
system of highways will undertake to do anything for itself,
can be inspired to do anything for itself, because, when they turn
their eyes toward Washington, they will see gentlemen here clamoring
for appropriations out of the Federal Treasury to do for them
locally what the obligation in honor and decency rests upon them
to do for themselves.