to furnish the common labor and domestic material. The railroad companies generally coöperate, because they are interested in having better roads to and from their railroad stations. They therefore contribute by transporting free or at very low rates the machinery and such foreign material as is needed in the construction of the road. The manufacturers of earth-handling and road-building machinery coöperate by furnishing all needed machinery for the most economical construction of the road, and in many cases prison labor is used in preparing material which finally goes into the completed roadbed. The contribution which the General Government makes in this scheme of coöperation is both actually and relatively small, but it is by means of this limited coöperation that it has been possible to produce a large number of object-lesson roads in different states. These have proved very beneficial, not only in showing the scientific side of the question, but the economical side as well.
In the year 1900 object-lesson roads were built under the direction of the Office of
