The Cost of Poor Roads.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has not been satisfied with the general impression that poor roads are expensive, but has set itself to discovering just how costly they are. It ran ail electric delivery wagon over different roads at different speeds, and measured the varying amounts of power required. Thus it was learned that twenty per cent more power is needed to run at twelve miles an hour over a poor asphalt pavement than over a good one; one hundred and twenty-five per cent more power to run over a soft bituminous macadam pavement than over a good one; and from forty to sixty per cent more when the pavement is in various other stages of deterioration. With higher rates of speed the loss of power is even greater. If an automobile should run a thousand miles and half of them over poor pavements, it would need about ten dollars' worth of gasoline more than it would use if the pavements were all good.
The same principle holds with our life highways. By our crossness and injustice and selfishness we can make those roads very difficult to all our friends; by our kindness and helpfulness we can make them delightfully smooth and easy. And the difference in wear and tear is enormous.