Finance
and
Economics
During the early days of the Republic, road management was amateur in most rural areas, and little money changed hands. The “statutory labor system” prevailed in most States. Under this arrangement, a “poll” or per-capita tax was usually levied. The rural citizen could pay it in cash or work it out either by laboring on the road himself or by hiring a substitute. If he provided a team and wagon, his credit for work done went up.
On the other hand, the average town or city dweller was not his own boss. Unlike the farmer, he could not arrange to set his own work aside to work a specified number of days on the road. Consequently, in most municipalities, the residents were taxed for the improvement, maintenance, and management of streets through property taxes, poll levies, or some other form of local tax. In the downtown areas of some of the larger places, businesses were taxed or they contributed voluntarily to the more highly improved streets.
During most of the 19th century, the chief source of funds for financing city and town streets was some form of real estate tax, which fell into three major classes:
- Property taxes levied against all real property for general purposes, the proceeds going into the general funds, from which appropriations were made for highway and other purposes.
- Property taxes levied against all real property specifically for street purposes.
- Special assessments of many kinds levied against specific parcels of real property for street purposes.
In many places, taxes were also imposed on various types of personal property, a portion or all of the proceeds being applied to street purposes.
The level of total annual expenditures on rural roads by all governmental agencies seldom, if ever, exceeded $75 million before 1904. By far the largest portion of this money came from property taxes, although a considerable amount also came from poll and “labor” taxes.
The so-called labor taxes were those imposts adopted to replace the requirement of a labor contribution. Actual labor contributions remained important in the building and upkeep of rural roads in some sections of the country for a long time. In 1914, 18 States reported considerable use of statutory labor. Although only four States, all in the South, reported the use of convict labor, it is known to have been more prevalent than this. The practice is still in use in a few areas today, but the cost of such labor is not eligible for Federal-aid reimbursement, although it can be used in the case of emergency construction following a disaster without disqualifying the entire project.
At the beginning of the automobile era, the street networks of the incorporated places in the United States were in a much higher state of development than were the rural roads. It has been estimated that in 1906, when annual expenditures on rural roads were at the $75 million level, expenditures on city and village streets were averaging about $300 million per year. Borrowing to finance large construction projects of all kinds, seldom resorted to in rural areas at that time, was a common practice in cities, es-pecially in the larger ones.
For highway purposes, borrowing in anticipation of future tax revenue was a local practice at first, but in 1893 Massachusetts became the first State government to contract debt to finance highways, although the territory of Idaho issued wagon road bonds as
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