The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-11-20
A CONTRADICTORY POLICY.

A CONTRADICTORY POLICY
 Journalistic opinion would appear to be reliable, only when 1t is consistent and founded on tested facts. For this reason 1t is difficult to believe that the opinion of the Birmingham Evening News on the question of highways could have the weight it might otherwise have if it were consistent opinion. For example, in October the Evening News took this position:
 Certain it is that the cost of perma
 nent or surfaced road construction Is
 too high. It may be that the costs of
 constructing these types of roads are in
 escapable; but, are we absolutely bound
 to continue to build types of roads that
 will absorb about all the money the
 people can rake and scrape and which
 are expensive also to maintain? The
 News is no advocate of any particular
 type of road; but it does believe at the
 present cost of permanent roadways 1t
 will be beyond the power of the state,
 even with federal aid, to give the state
 thorough system of roads of the per
 manent type and which can be main-
 tained cheaply.
 The News earlier in the editorial de- clared that construction costs of high ways are eating up the state funds at a sickening rate" Now, of course, nobody would advocate paying more for roads than they ought to cost, but the real ques- tion is not whether the people can afford roads of high type, but whether they can afford not to build such roads. For an answer to this, let us turn to an editorial in the News just one year old, namely, of October 28, 1928: "A permanently paved road will pay for itself in less than fif- teen years, according to exact figures worked out by several state highway bureaus" After detailing the manner in which, through ''the saving in fuel alone on this basis, per day per mile, would amount to $6.45, or the saving per year per mile in fuel alone would amount to $2,354," for the average traffic over paved roads of 1,282 motor vehicles a day, the Evening News concludes:
 This simply means that at the end of
 ten years time the saving in fuel and
 maintenance alone, without taking into
 consideration the additional depreciation
 of the motor cars driven over a gravel
 or dirt road instead of over a concrete
 road, would be sufficient to pay the en-
 tire cost of building the concrete road.
 When we take into consideration that
 there is one automobile in the United
 States today for every ten persons, we
 realize that most of us are paying
 premium when state highway commis-
 soners inflict on us an inferior type of
 highway.
 And although year later the Evening News declared that it was "no advocate of any particular type of road," it is in- teresting to observe that, on the thirty first of October, 1923, the same newspa- per said:
 One thing is absolutely certain: The
 thinking people of Alabama want
 roads that will "stay putt" that will not
 become impossible without constant at
 tention, seraping, shaping, repairing and
 the addition of more material whirled
 off by the corrugated wheels of wood-
 en motor vehicles. For light travel
 and not very constant use the chert
 and gravel will do very we'll, but
 on main-traveled roads it is abso-
 lutely certain that there must be some
 thing very much more substantial.
 With Alabama one of the greatest
 cement-producing states in the Union;
 
 which may be crushed and screened near
 the job, it does seem as though there
 might be substantial economies effected
 in the construction. of concrete roads
 with sufficiently heavy foundations to
 withstand the modern traffic, and not
 require heavy outlay for constant re-
 pairs.
 In sharp contrast to the above en- frightened discussion, it is somewhat in- applicable to find the Evening News of November 16, last, advising that "Ala- bama should go slow," about the proposed of additional highway sums, and gives this contradictory exhibit:
 While good roads are desirable and
 greatly needed, such a colossal sum in
 interest to fix upon the people of the
 state ,or upon one portion of the popula-
 tion-automotive owners-ls something
 to be pondered over and considered care
 fully. There is serious doubt Ii the
 electorate would authorize such an eX-
 penditure at this tme.
 And the above after the Evening News had previously been assuring it's readers that "the saving in fuel and maintenance alone of the motor cars driven over gravel or dirt road, instead of over a concrete road, would be sufficient to pay the entire cost of building the concrete road" It is noteworthy that the Mont gomery Advertiser, under the same ad- ministration as the Evening News, ap- provingly in a column-length editorial on last Tuesday, quoted voluminously from Golfers article which takes the opposite view from that apparently now held by the Evening News.
 What a different and more hopeful view was taken by the Evening News a year ago, compared with its present gloomy belief that the people of this state cannot afford to build high-type roads The Manufacturers Record in a recent issue says that the roads of North Carolina are not costing the people of that state one cent, because the automo- bile people "find that the consumption of gasoline using good roads as compared with bad roads is so much lessened that they are saving money paying the tax on