Publications of Office of Public Roads, U.S.  Department of Agriculture.  Write also to Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, for price list of documents relating to the subject of roads.

Farmers’ Bulletins relating to marketing and transportation facilities, U.S.  Department of Agriculture.

In lessons in community and national life: 

Series A:  Lesson 26, Concentration of control in the railroad industry.

Series B:  Lesson 27, Good roads.

Series C:  Lesson 25, A seaport as a center of concentration of population and wealth.

Lesson 27, Early transportation in the Far West.

Lesson 28, The first railway across the continent.

Consult the public library for magazine literature on the subject of roads, railroads, river transportation, etc.  For example, in the review of reviews, February, 1918, there are the following articles: 

“Uncle Sam Takes the Railroads.”

“The World’s Greatest Port” (New York).

“New York Canals a Transportation Resource.”

“River Navigation—­a War Measure.”

Hart, actual government, chap.  XXVII.

CHAPTER XVIII

COMMUNICATION

Roads and other means of transportation are important not only as a means of transporting products, but also as a means of communication among the members of the community.  Team work is impossible without prompt and effective means of communication.

Tell what you know about the value of signals in getting team work in a football or baseball team.

Discuss the importance of means of communication in conducting military operations.  What means were used for this purpose in our Army in France?

How were military movements reported and directed in the Revolutionary War?

Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans was won a month after the War of 1812 was officially ended.  How did this happen?

What were some of the methods used by the American Indians to convey information between distant points?

LANGUAGE AS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

One of the most interesting chapters in history is that relating to the development of means of communication.  Language itself is the most important of these means.  It is not altogether clear what the first steps were in the development of spoken language; but we know that among uncivilized peoples conversation is aided, and often largely carried on, by signs made with the hands.  Written language certainly developed from the use of pictures, which were gradually curtailed into hieroglyphics, such as were used by the ancient Egyptians, and finally developed into the alphabet, each letter of which was originally a picture.