The Penn's Grove record., 1921-05-20
The Last Connecting LINK Win
the Days of the Stage
coach Abolished.
BANKERS FAVOR u. S. BUDGET
State Threatens Retaliation Unless
Pennsylvania Recognizes, Accord
Ing to Agreement, New Jer-
sey Motor Licenses.

u ana resorts VI NC" ~
This summer will be able to travel
everywhere over the public highways
without having their way barred by
a single toll gate. The last of the CD
toll roads to be abolished is the Glou-
cester-Woodbury turnpike, a snort
stretch of road on one of the mann
arteries of traffic In and out Of u
Jersey. The State Highway Commas
sion has purchased this road for StO'-
900. Toll houses at South Gloucester
or Pine Grove, and at North Wood
bury. which have taken tolls for nearly
th~ree-quarters of a century, are TO De
closed and the gates removed.
While the last of these toll roads Is
in itself rather insignificant, its abol-
ishment marks an epoch in h good
roads movement. With it there passes
in New Jersey, a system that gave the
first real impetus to the Improvement
of highways in the then youthful n
none too prosperous colony OF the
United States, at a period when paying
for road service as it was used was
preferred to a scheme of general tax
alton for constructing better highways
and maintaining them.
New Jersey was among the first OF
the original 13 states in the Union to
establish toll roads in the early part
Of the nineteenth century as a means
Of facilitating travel between the then
upspringing m]etropolfses of New York
and Philadelphia. In the first quarter
of the nineteenth century there were
more than 80 turnpike companies
chartered and about so plank and
gravel toll roads constructed in New
Jersey.
Just as In this day when license
tags of every state may be spied ON
motOrcars at some season Of the year
on the much-traveled routes laid
across New Jersey to the country's
great Metropolis, or to Atlantic city.
80 in the day of the stage coach the
currents of colonial commerce and i'm
~tercourse flowed back and forth across
this state. In no other quarter was
the building of better roads of so much
Importance to the progress of the new
nation as here. New Jersey then bed
more than 1000 mills, large supplies
of lumber, cattle, grain, wool and fax
and sufficient iron ore to supply the
needs of all the country in that day.
As long as horse-drawn vehicles had
the monopoly of the ton roads, the
rural landscape was dotted with toll
houses and gates. which the young
bloods of that day, who drove fast
stepping nags to their cutters, found
bobbing up at a~ggravating intervals.
Then the toll gates were accepted as a
necessary evil. No very successful
agitation was carried ont against them
except on some of the principal high
ways, where drivers and farmers
finally began to realize that it was
just as economical and much more
convenient to pay out their money in
a lump in the form of annual taxes
for road improvements as to dole out
their pennies on a mileage basis when
ever they used the roads.
Then along came the automobile and
toll gates began to be smashed figura-
lively as well as literally. Motorists
chafed over the nuisance Of being stop
ped every two or three miles and re-
quired to pass out their pennies or
nickels for the use of the road, espe-
cially when many of the toll roads
were kept in none too good repair. A
tour of - or 80 miles through the
country in the days when toll gates
iouriShed required that an auto party
he well supplied with coppers before
they started.
With the development of the auto
mobile, the traffic upon the highways
became much greater. Toll gates,
where it previously had been no trou-
BILE to pass through teams as fast as
they came up, began to be damned
with cars and wagons. When these
toll gates got to he mere clogs to traffic
the original purpose of the turnpikes
passed and there was no longer any
excuse for their existence for the bet
terment of road travel.
No better illustration of this con
gestion could be found than in the
conditions that have prevailed in re-
cent years on this last toll road in
the state. Here the toll-takers squat
ted at the very gateway TO South Jer-
sey. The turnpike is a part of the
very first routes aid out by the early
settlers in the colony of West Jersey.
and over 1t passes all Of the farm
traffic and many of the motor cars
bound in or Out of the lower counties.
ON holidays and during other periods
of heavy travel, thousands Of cars had
to pass through the single width drive
ways. During the rush hours long
lines of machines were held up for
many minutes waiting to get through
the gates.
On the big days thousands of pen
MES and nickels clinked into the cups
of the t%OlI-takers. Why the toll gates
were permitted TO stand as long as
they did on this sprig Of road when