In my grandfathers papers I found some blank State of Alabama arrest warrents. No, he was not arrested, as Mayor, he issued these. The preprinted date is 191_ so they are for the early 1900’s.
The warrants are for “Failure to Work Public Roads”. This is for someone who “is liable for road duty” and who “did wilfully fail or refuse, after legal notice, to work a public road … every part of which road is not distant from his residence more than six miles, either in person or by substitute, without a sufficient excuse”.
Since this allows the roads to be worked by a substitute, it does not look like this road duty was a punishment.
In the old days before state paid road crews, were people required to maintain public roads within six miles of their homes?
According to the text of the opinion in Butler v. Perry (240 U.S. 328) 1916, many states had such laws on the books that mandated people work on public roads. In that case, a man tried to appeal his conviction for failing to work on the roads near his home.
The Supreme Court said, “Sorry, that’s the way it’s always been and it’s your job just like jury duty and the military draft” (Except the Court was more formal.)
I don’t know if this is still precedent. I would hope a lawyer could shed more light on this.
I vaguely recall a reference to this in a novel I read many years ago. It was an alternative to paying road taxes. A lot of folks didn’t deal with cash the way we do now, I guess.
Please, don’t let the libertarians hear about this. They’ve got enough odd notions as it is.
Peace,
mangeorge
mangeoge’s idea of it as an alternative to paying a tax makes sense. That would explain the “liable for road duty” phrase. You could either mow ditches and fix potholes or pay a tax and the county would use the tax money to hire someone to do it. Now the states just eliminated the option of doing the work yourself and everyone pays the taxes.
I think that states realized that it was probably better if they had people who really knew how to build roads to work on them rather than just pulling us all out of our homes to do it.
