WHAT A WASTE!

Southland Times, Issue 19395, 8 November 1924, Page 19 (Supplement)

WHAT A WASTE!

UNUSUAL ROAD MATERIAL. Down through the ages many odd substances have been used for the construction of highways. But it is unlikely that ever before in the long history of road building has a grade been constructed of pipe tobacco—and in cans at that. But that is what is being used to form the grade for the important Lincoln Highway feeder along the Hackensack River connecting the transcontinental road with the Harrison Turnpike. The 1,800,000 cans of tobacco which will go into the fill for the new highway were purchased with the contributions of patriotic citizens during the wat for overseas troops. Stored in French warehouses at the close of the war, the tobacco was recently purchased by a New York firm nad shipped to the U.S.A., where Government Customs inspectors condemned it as unfit to be sold. The condemned tobacco was valued at 150,000 dollars, and additional expense for destroying it was in sight when permission was obtained to dump the cans in the Kerney meadows as part of the fill for the new highway.