remember the instance of the farmer who was asked to sell a narrow right-of-way through his farm for a main connecting highway. From an engineering point of view it would have been as feasible to build the new highway across the dirt road that ran in front of his house and barn. Actually the owner received from a jury an amount equal to the whole value of the farm. The road was built. The owner of the land thereby acquired two new frontages. He sold lots on one frontage for the former value of his farm. A year or two later he sold the other frontage for the farm value of his farm. The result was that he still had his house and barn and 90 percent of his original acreage, and in addition he had received in cash three times the value of what the whole place was worth in the first instance.
It hardly seems fair that the hazard of an engineering survey should greatly enrich one man and give no profit to his neighbor, who may have had a right-of-way which was equally good. After all, why should the hazard of engineering give one private citizen an enormous profit? If there is to be an unearned profit, why should it not accrue to the Government—State or Federal, or both?
The White House, January 12, 1944.
