While the former ways and means are inadequate or inapplicable to present needs and conditions, there are other means more suitable for the service, and existing in ample proportion for every need. The tollgate-keeper cannot be called upon to restore the ancient system of turnpikes and plank roads to be maintained by a tax upon vehicles passing over them, but there can be provided a general fund in each county sufficient to build up free roads better than the toll roads and with a smaller burden of cost upon the people. The statute labor in the rural districts cannot be depended upon, because it is unsuitable to the service now required and spasmodic in its application, when it should be perennial; but this statute labor can be commuted to a money tax, with no hardships upon the citizens and with great benefit to the highway system.
Former inhabitants of the abandoned farms or the deserted villages cannot be followed to the great cities and the road tax which they formerly paid be collected from them again to improve the country roads; but it can be provided that all the property owners in every city, as well as in every county, shall pay a money tax into a general fund, which shall be devoted exclusively to the improvement of highways in the rural districts. The state itself can maintain a general fund out of which a portion of the cost of every principal highway in the state shall be paid, and by so doing all the people of the state will contribute to improving the highways, as they once did in the early history of the nation, when substantially all the wealth and population was distributed almost equally throughout the settled portions of the country.
Having a general fund of money instead of statute labor, it would be possible to introduce more scientific and more economical methods of construction with coöperation. This coöperation, formerly applied with good results to the primitive conditions, but which has been partially lost by the diminution in the number and skill of the co-workers, would be restored again in a great measure by drawing the money with which to improve the roads out of a general fund to which all had contributed.
In many countries the army has been used to advantage in time of peace in building up and maintaining the highways. There is no army in this country for such a purpose, but there is an army of prisoners in every state, whose labor is so directed, and has been so directed for generations past, that it adds little or nothing to the common wealth. The labor of these prisoners, properly applied and directed, would be of great benefit and improvement to the highways, and would add greatly to the national wealth, while at the same time it would lighten the pressure of competition with free labor by withdrawing the prison labor from the manufacture of commercial articles and applying it to work not now performed, that is, the building of highways or preparing material to be used therefor.