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 in each community; and while these various local governments have done and are still doing the best they can under the circumstances, there is great need that their efforts should be supplemented, their revenues enlarged, and their skill in the art of road construction increased.

The skill of the local supervisor was sufficient in primitive times, so long as his principal duties consisted in clearing the way of trees, logs, stumps, and other obstructions, and shaping the earth of which the roadbed was composed into a little better form than nature had left it; and the resources at his command were sufficient so long as he was authorized to call on every able-bodied male citizen between twenty-one and forty-five years of age to do ten days' labor annually on the road, especially when the only labor expected was that of dealing with the material found on the spot. But with the changed conditions brought about by the more advanced state of civilization, after the rights of way have been cleared of their obstructions and the earth roads graded into the form of turnpikes, it became necessary to harden