EDITORIAL

Arizona Highways

Published in the Interest of Good Roads by the ARIZONA HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT

EVERY CENT FOR LABOR

Arizona is entitled to receive $1,760,771 as her share of the $120,000,000 provided by the Emergency Relief and Construction Act for expenditure in emergency construction on the Federal Aid Highway System. The funds allocated under the emergency relief act are available only for work on federal aid highways performed before July 1, 1933.

It is provided in the act that all contracts involving the expenditure of emergency funds shall contain provisions establishing minimum rates of wages, to be predetermined by the state highway department, which contractors shall pay to skilled and unskilled labor. Such minimum rates shall be stated in the invitation for bids and shall be included in proposals on bids for the work.

The Engineering News-Record, in a recent issue, points out that "Every dollar that is spent for construction under this relief bill goes in full amount into labor, whether of the shirt sleeve or white collar worker. This fact needs emphasis, not only because many people believe that a large part of the money will leak away in waste, but also because a flood of false assertions on the subject has been spread over the land.

"The facts are simple. Roughly, half of the construction dollar goes to labor on the job. Most of the remainder goes to pay for material, tools and fuel, whose cost in turn is due to labor, as the intrinsic value of the ultimate raw materials in the ground is too small to count. The residue goes to pay for supervision, planPaying wage payments. Profit is non-existent under present day business conditions, for every one is bidding at or below cost. Even capital investment is disregarded, as is shown by the accounts of numerous corporations, whose plant investment has shown no earnings for months past. The price of steel, for example, is wholly made up of labor wages, in mine or on railroad or at the mill."Beyond this, however, the same dollar works more than once to create employment, since the wage payments are promptly turned over for food, clothing and shelter, and in this process give new employment to mill hands, store clerks, and transportation men, whose wage earnings again put others to work supplying their needs. Thus, not only is it glaringly untrue that the construction dollar reduces to a small fraction of wages, as the Secretary of the Treasury recently tried to induce congress to believe, but after every cent of the dollar has gone to the wage earner many additional dollars of employment, wages, and new production are brought into action as the result of its expenditure."

A little bit of whisky, A little bit of fun: A little bit of gasoline To make the old car run.

A little bit of wreckage, A little bit of glass, A little plot just six-by-three Beneath the churchyard grass.

COUNCIL PREPARES PEDESTRIAN'S CODE

In view of the fact that more than 50 per cent of street and highway accident victims last year were pedestrians, a safety code for walkers has been prepared by the National Safety Council. There are six things to remember in the safety code for pedestrians, as follows:

TREES CLOSE TO HIGHWAY

I think that I shall never see, Along the road an unscraped tree With bark intact, and painted white, That no car ever hit at night.

For every tree that's near the road Has caused some auto to be towed.

Sideswiping trees is done a lot By drivers who are not so hot.

God gave them eyes so they could see Yet any fool can hit a tree.