A more recent theory in American road-building which has been advanced is a plan of national aid.[1] This is no new thing in America, though it has been many years since the government has paid attention to roadways. In the early days the wisest of our statesmen advocated large plans of internal improvement; one great national road, as we have seen, was built by the War Department from the Potomac almost to the Mississippi, through Wheeling, Columbus, Indianapolis and Vandalia, at a cost of over six million dollars. And this famous national road was built, in part, upon an earlier pathway, cut through Ohio by Ebenezer Zane in 1796, also at the order of Congress, and for which he received grants of land which formed the nucleus of the three thriving Ohio cities, Zanesville, Lancaster, and Chillicothe. The constitutionality of road-building by the government was questioned by some, but that clause granting it the right to establish post-offices and post roads "must, in every view, be a harmless power," said James Madison, "and may perhaps, by judicious management, become productive of great public conveniency. Nothing which tends to facilitate the intercourse between the states can be deemed unworthy of the public care."[2] But the government was interested not only in building roads but in many other phases of public improvement; it took stock in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; Congress voted $30,000 to survey the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal route, and the work was done by government engineers. When railways superseded highways, the government was almost persuaded to complete the old National Road with rails and ties instead of broken stone. When the Erie Canal was proposed, a vast scheme of government aid was favored by leading statesmen;[3] the government has greatly assisted the western railways by gigantic grants of land worth one hundred and thirty-eight million dollars. The vast funds of private capital that have been seeking investment in this country, at first in turnpike, plank, and macadamized roads, then in canals, and later in railways, has rendered government aid comparatively unnecessary. In the last few years the only work of internal improvement aided by the government is the improvement of the rivers and harbors, which for 1904 takes over fifty millions of revenue a year. The sum of $130,565,485 has been well spent on river and harbor improvement in the past seven years. Not only are the great rivers, such as the Ohio and Mississippi, improved, but lesser streams. A short time ago I made a journey of one hundred miles down the Elk River in West Virginia in a boat eleven inches deep and twelve feet long; a channel all the way down had been made about two feet wide by picking out the stones; the United States did this at an expense of fifteen hundred dollars. The groceries and dry goods for thousands were poled up that river in dug-outs through that two-foot channel. I doubt if a two-wheel vehicle could traverse the road which runs throughout that valley, but I know a four-wheel vehicle could not.