tageous refinements of order to be considered such as those which Marshall possibly had in mind when he put forward the factor of organization.
Let us group these refinements, springing from the creation of general facilities, under a word which has been a very convenient one for the physicist and which carries its own meaning to the layman,—namely conductivity, the assurance of free flow, or, in other words, the diminishment of resistance.
In the calculation of the total value obtainable from any power-plant, conductivity, the essential condition of free flow, is mathematically as important as the original impulse. This consideration is equally applicable to the vast human power plant which we call the United States. Because of our national desire for individual freedom we are ensured a flow of effort. Our logical task, then, is clearly the diminishment of resistance.[1]
The creation of general facilities such as roads not only benefits the producer in whose district the facilities are provided, but also benefits the consumer at the other side of the continent, and all intermediate consumers. We recognize the basic value of transportation facility—or conductivity—by placing our navigable streams, the Post Office and the control of interstate railroad rates under Federal authority.
The cost, therefore, of all essential highways should logically be borne by Federal taxation, thus deliberately removing an unreasonable share of the burden from the land-owner in thinly populated agricultural districts, and placing it upon the country as a whole in proportion to local population-density. This would have the effect of increasing the economic responsibility of the city land-owner who is now the chief bene-
- ↑ The Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Herbert Hoover, in an address delivered before the Commonwealth Club of California on December 1st, 1922, stated as follows: “Indeed, I think it one of the most lamentable things of our civilization that out of the one hundred units of our expenditure but seven of them are devoted to direct building up of the welfare of our people. This includes the public roads, the improvement of rivers and harbors, the promotion service in trade, science and education, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the Interior,—services that bring a thousand per cent of return to the American people.”—“Transactions of Commonwealth Club,” Vol. XVII, page 455.
