The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-02-18

of the designing is done at Manila, the bureau furnishing plans and specifications for all bridges and culverts.
 Keeping Up the Roads These new roads are better maintained than those, of the United States. Each of the provinces has a road fund, taken ou. of the provincial treasury, and every mile of road has one or more men em- ployed to keep it in order The road man has shovels and picks. and he spends all his time on the highway.
 The people are now spending about $175 per kilofneter, or in the neighborhood of s290 a mile, a year in keeping up the first class roads. The head man of each division makes a special inspectio" of such roads, and the division engineers go over them every two weeks. As it Is, nearly 1000 bridges have been built since 1907.
 The most important of the new roads now under construction are in I.uZon. There are two principal projects. One Is wide automobile road running from Manila to the northwestern end of the | island. and the other is a second road | from the capital to Sorsogon, in Albay, at ] the southeastern end. When these are completed one will be able to travel in an | automobile posthaste from one end of Luzon to the other.
 l Already there is an excellent automo-
 bile road from Manila to Baguio. the ! summer capital in the mountains of 1 northwestern Luzon. and there is a reg | ular automobile service between the two | places. This carried 5000 or 9000 passengers l last year. The automobiles also trans 1 port mail and freight
 | l am told the new roads have greatly 1 improved the condition of the localities 1 through which they go, They are having the same effect as the building of new alroad in the United States, Villages Nre springing up along them, new farms
 have been laid out and blacksmith shops are put mp at the crossways, to mako | broad tired cart wheels
 The Railroad Movement
 As to the railroads. the government has been slow in granting concessions fcr them. Indeed it is a question whether i; | has not been too slow. We have now had the islands over l2 years, and at the pres ent writing we have not more than loN miles of railroad. This is true notwith-
 standing the population numbers sOOo,oo
 and that the country is about the richest 1 of the world.
 ! Tn this estimate I include both electric and steam roads. There are about ls
 miles of railroads being operated ii | I.uzon. There are 72 miles in Panay and 1 5q miles in Bebu. In addition something 1 like s00 miles more are in projection and | construction, and these when completed l will give lines converting the principal is- | lands. It would seem that electric roans might do well in the Philippines. The mountain strsamss should furnish cleo | tric power and many parts of the islands
 are so thickly populated that the roads will pay well.
 1 President Taft says that tho chief hope l for profit in the railways is the passenger traffic, but when one considers the enor- nous possibilities in tobacco, rice, sugar
 hemp and other heavy crops It is hard
 to see why the freight traffic would not 1 pay equally we'll
 When we took possession of the islands | the only road was q line ls0 miles long running from Manila north TO Dasupar through valley covered with rice and | sugar plantations. I rode through thai
 region keeping my head well away from l the windows which were exceptionally
 peppered by the shots of the bandits who | hid in the bamboo clumos here and there.
 The road was poorly built and poorly
 managed. being owned by the English, That read has been reropstructed and so
 extended that il opens u4 the northern
 part of I.uzon. It has 3 ,d{ traffic and l is said to pay well. lei
 It is now sending out nches into