They Cost, but They Pay.
The California State Automobile Association has been looking into the actual value of good roads. It got a university professor and the State highway engineer to measure the pull required to move, on different kinds of roads, a standard farm wagon with a load of 6,000 pounds. Sometimes horses did the pulling, sometimes an automobile truck.
On un-surfaced concrete roads the needed pull was only from 27 to 30 pounds per ton of load; on surfaced concrete, 50 pounds; on macadam, 65 pounds; on good gravel roads, from 65 to 82 pounds; on earth roads with an inch and a half of loose dust, 92 pounds; on a muddy earth road, 218 pounds; and on loose gravel, 263 pounds. Thus the farmers who must do their hauling over the poorest type of roads have to use and pay for about ten times as much energy as the farmers who have access to roads of the best type. The same is true of all users of horses and carriages and of automobiles. The figures ought to convince all tax-payers that it pays to build and maintain good roads, in spite of their admittedly high cost.
Now a method is a road. "Method" comes from the Greek word which means road. A method is the highway over which our activity passes.
We are likely to think that any method is good enough, provided it "gets there," provided it reaches the desired terminus. But there are methods and methods, just as there are roads and roads; and it is far from immaterial to a worker whether he chooses a method that means an expenditure of 27 pounds of energy or an expenditure of no pounds.
There is a short way to do everything, and a long way; there is an easy way and a hard way; there is a way that brings permanent results, and a way that gives only temporary results; in everything there is a concrete method and a loose-gravel Method, and you can take your choice. If you choose the wrong method, do not complain of big expenses and a small account in the bank of life.