r*7 -HA :* I I « Mimrc 111 ■ 'j — _ Road Making and Maintenance ; The latter wrought into the texture and structure of the road A return -to first principles. LECTURE BY James Bradford Olcott, OF ' SOUTH MANCHESTER, CONN. WITH ACCOMPANYING DISCUSSION AND AN ILLUSTRATED APPENDIX PREPARED BY MR. OLCOTT. From the Report of the MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, 1891. 1892. DEPARTMENT OF W £..L5,!1 Q.I.\ LIBRARY OF THE Agricultoral Experiment Station, * UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. If Books are not to be taken from the Library Room. M Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/roadmakingmainteOOolco ROAD MAKING AND MAINTENANCE. - THE LATTER WROUGHT INTO THE TEXTURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE ROAD. A RETURN TO FIRST PRINCIPLES. BY JAMES BRADFORD OLCOTT, SOUTH MANCHESTER, CONN. The truths of stone-road structure are as old as the hills. Every road that runs over a knoll of good gravel reveals to the industrial student the highway science of pulverized rock in unequal sizes, compacted and fixed solid in their own matrices. These naturally perfect bits of road are never wet or loose, because their granulated substance cannot be softened by water, and broken by frost ; they are rarely dry because of capillary moisture ; they are always smooth, because the pebbles composing them are hard enough to endure friction, and because there are no stones large enough to jolt the wheels of vehicles. Hence gravel knolls in the road are full of instruction for the artificial road maker. His endeavor will be to manufac- ture a gravel and a bed for it as good or better than the best natural products. A coarse gravel is wanted, that will knit and set in a clean masonic structure, nearly or quite as solid as the original rock, and in the form of a floor convenient for travel. This floor will be a roof, also, repelling the water of rains and snows from its dry earthen foundations. All theories, doctrines, systems and principles of stone-road making that are good for anything originated among ob- served facts in nature, like the road texture of the gravel knolls above quoted, and may be brought back to them for correction and strengthening. That isolated stones will settle in the earth by their own superior gravity, and without the aid of Darwin’s angle- worms, was known to man as long ago as when the cities he 1 24 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. hated were levelled so that not one stone remained upon another. Gardening and farming tribes in the earliest ages must have seen that scattering stones would sink in the soil by their own weight, and prehistoric log-rollers — the first broad cart wheels — were doubtless used by the ancients to settle the pebbles rooted up by the plough. This leads us to the idea that dislocated stones, wandering from the road-bed, are so much lost to the body and cohe- rence of the fabric ; and that any intrusion of earth or clay in the substance of a stone-road is a divisor, an enter- ing wedge of decayed material, mud-mortar, scamped mason- work, an element of disintegration, and one of the earliest symptoms of the total destruction of a highway. Our roads are wretched, and, while road literature is of the same muddy structure and texture, our endeavors to amend practice must be largely experimental, and, till we get our heads clear, should be entered upon with extreme caution. It will be far cheaper to study the blunders already before us than to make a new spread of our own in search of expe- rience. In union there is strength. This should be the stone- road maker’s motto and law. He must see to this in preparing a place for his road materials. Let it be a drained concave bed in the earth he has to make a road over. Where the bottom is more loamy than sand or gravel, there may be occasion for artificial drainage. The road principles hinted at in the accompanying engrav- ing are too various to be conveyed on paper. The art of road making, like the working of metals, comes only by thought, practice, experience and labor. Grass, earths, sand, gravels and rocks are all manageable by methods in strict accord with their great variety of natures. Skill results from the personal handling of road materials. The children of a generation that has built fifteen hundred thousand miles of iron and steel roads on wooden foundations , should enter the field of common road making modestly and with caution. The writer has no local road advice to offer to places and persons he has not seen and examined. His words are to be applied at the reader’s risks and charges. The turf-gutters in the picture will shed water from road No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 225 foundations as mud will not. That concave road-bed might need to vary in depth from ten to forty inches, or more, according to local conditions. Whoever is not familiar with the study of roads may need to turn to the engraving in the progress of this essay, or refer to the accompanying Appen- dix, with illustrations, and should give much time also to the structure of old and new highway work beneath the surface. The road-bed of the picture may be of any width, with or without foot-paths. In the worst situations the triple drainage will be necessary ; in others, one or two lines of pipe will do ; in still others, natural drainage may be trusted. Truth is unfit for us till it is fitted to our circum- stances. In villages, city suburbs and the open country, wherever the friction of travel is not too severe, gutters of fine grass over gravel will utilize what else would be dust or mud, in producing merchantable turf. The flattened ellipse is the strongest and most economic form of stone in the road-bed. Well filled, these road arches never “kick,” and the stone of them do not sink or break loose from one another. The bottom of clean, coarse sand, or fine, clean gravel, of a dry, loose quality, that would be entirely unfit for the surface of a road, is, when puddled solid in the clay bed, admirably fit to hold a stone-road up, while preventing the clay of the subsoil from rising. Gillespie* says of sand: “This material, when it fills an excavation, possesses the valuable properties of incompressi- bility, and of assuming a new position of equilibrium and stability when any portion of it is disturbed.. To secure these qualities in their highest degree, the sand should be very carefully freed from the least admixture of earth or clay, and the largest grains should not exceed one-sixth of an inch in diameter, nor the smallest be less than one- twenty-fourtli of an inch.” The above description answers for coarse, sharp, masonic sand, suitable for heavy stone- work ; every expert mortar- man or farmer is a judge of it. There are banks of fine gravel, equally good for the foundation of broken-stone * “Roads and Railroads,” New York, 1858 226 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. roads. It is not too much to say that, for adding depth and security to the best road work, sands and gravels devoid of all suspicion of loam or clay-producing material are fully equal to any possible quality of stone, when bedded below all chance of wheel-friction. This value of sand and gravel for the best roads over clay, brings them well within the line of profitable railway commodities. The reason why cobble-stone and granite-block pavements so frequently settle out of shape and make a rough, jolting road, is because the sand used is dirty, rarely or never com- pacted by trampling or puddling, and in cities is often dug deeply in holes and ditches for pipe repairs, etc., just before and while the pavement is being laid or relaid. In such cases cement finds opportunities that would not appear if the sand were faithfully and intelligently treated. Beginners in road making may need to be told that fresh deposits of sand shrink in settlement, and how the shrinkage can be hastened by rains, artificial waterings and the tramp- ling of horses and cart wheels in a concave road-bed. A boy and one horse will do the work of many paving rammers. The firmness of sand under water is well shown by the fine wheeling on some sandy beaches while the tide is out. Where neither sand, gravel or coal ashes is to be had, and a solid road of broken stone is desired upon a clay subsoil, the drainage of the clay must be thorough, and the most scrupulous pains taken to have the stone fine enough to fill its own crevices perfectly, and resist the ingress of the insinuating clay. Not only the bottom of the stone-road body, but the whole substance and texture of the crushed- stone structure, must be impermeable to clay or mud in any form, and the water of rains also, that might else wash sur- face filth and clay silt among the broken stone. The per- manence of the road depends on absolute faithfulness in these particulars. In tjiis light the value of the bottom filling of sand will be seen, because is is so much easier than stone to handle, and in its place even more effective. It is impossible to pass, in this connection, the modern doctrine of painstaking ‘‘porosity” in stone-road structure, without condemning it as a ruinous fallacy, chargeable with ninety-nine one-hundredths of our costly failures in pro- .No. 4.] COlINTliY LOADS. 227 ducing either durable or smooth roads of broken stone. It puts a weakness in theory just where the carelessness of workmen is most liable to be fatal to the integrity of the road. Quoting or condensing from Penfold, a contemporary of M’Adarn, Gillespie well describes the behavior of broken stone in “even sizes,” with open joints, as we have been laying them for years in sight of everybody : — “If a thick coat be laid on at once, there is a very great destruction of the material before it becomes consolidated, if it ever does so. The stones will not allow one another to be quiet, but are continually elbowing each other and driv- ing their neighbors to the right and to the left. This con- stant motion rapidly wears olf the angular points and reduces the stone to a spherical shape, which, in conjunction with the amount of mud and powder produced, destroys the possibility of any him aggregation, and the road never attains its proper condition of hardness.” The above scrap was published in London in 1835, but it will pass for recent American road history, and can be read in the unsound structure of our broken-stone roads almost anywhere. European malpractices, discovered at home, are played on American cities and villages. It is not the road-mender alone who needs to be taught, but our whole people. The road-mender has grand chances to learn from his own and his fellow’s blunders ; but who is teaching our people ? Boards of education have robbed us of the picture in the spelling-book showing the superior “ virtue in stones,” but boards of health ought to save us from street-tilth leaching through “ porous” roads into our cellars. Stone road work that is “porous,” while at the same time “unyielding” and “solid,” seems to have been first advocated in the vicinity of Boston, on whose dry bottoms fabrics of that peculiar description may .have the air and water arrangements crushed and ground out of them in time by dint of heavy travel ; and this without other loss than by bruising the heels of taxpayers over rough surfaces, and costs for maintenance. Many other cities — used to cubic yards of ventilated stone — admit the honeycomb impeachment. They tried the 228 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. hollow structure because it was said to be “ scientific.” It made a show of rough road quickly, and was much less trouble than mixing the different sizes of stone together, for really solid work, after they had been assorted according to municipal orders at the crusher. But no thoughtful city with a clay subsoil, considering the money it has sunk in stone gone wandering amidst the mud of its rough and dirty thoroughfares, can regard that porous doctrine with anything but disgust. It won’t hold water. Hadn’t we better go into asphalt? Is it worth while to try playing that porous swindle on the country at this late day, even in the compound form of “ Telford-Macadam ? ” Telford was a shepherd’s son, who learned the stone- mason’s trade in his youth, and became a great engineer. He believed in setting large cobble stones, points upwards, to stay the middle of his track. That gave employ to the paving fraternity, and strengthened his gangs with men who loved stone. This was good, but where is the evidence that he contrived hungry open-work in the bottom of Holyhead Pike to swallow all his surface finish? Nobody who studies the slow geologies of the holes in stone-roads to-day, can believe the eminent engineer gave his name to a hollowness that every common laborer of that time would detect. He must have filled that with sand or gravel. The magnitude of M’ Adam’s job, with thirty thousand miles of abominable stone roads, accumulated by centuries of mismanagement, and waiting his revolutionary hand, compelled him to say to the committee of Parliament that he was not lifting but four inches of their horrid old highways, and breaking the stones of them over again. That was as deep as he dared let government know he was thinking at that time. The dirty bottoms of stone he left underneath might be construed into evidence that he approved that way of building a road, if he had not expressly denied it. Yet that is all the foundation we have for coupling the names of Telford and M’Adam together in a compound “system.” He saw the cover for defective work in the use of large stones in the road- bed, and in theory and practice would have none of them. Break the stone into homogeneous rock gravel, No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 229 and allow no earthy admixtures, is the key-note of his testimony. In a time of general depression, with road management cut into small “trusts,” administered by the inefficient and dishonest, he gave starving cottagers work at their own doors, and for the first time in English history made easy communication possible throughout the kingdom. That small middle-men, contractors, local ignobles, and even engineers, whose trade he was giving back to the people, were jealous of and misrepresented such a figure in road history as that, cannot be doubted. As for a “ system,” M’Adam had none. He looked at his work, and did the best he could for it in each case. His son James, — who afterwards accepted the baronetcy the father refused, — when asked by Parliament if he worked under his father’s “system,” preferred to say, “on my father’s principles for making roads.” M’ Adam’s road-principles were new road-brooms of fresh ideas for sweeping every corner of the Commonwealth, displacing the venal agents of an ignorant government. His youth was spent in America, and he seems to have carried the best of our revolution home with him. M’ Adam’s own statement was this : — “ In every road I have been obliged to alter the manage- ment, according to the situation and sometimes according to the finances.” He tried to break existing systems, and to induce road- men and governments to look at things as they were, and do whatever was necessary. It was the printer’s title to his col- lected pamphlets that gave him the repute of a “system.” For the much-mooted question of the size of road-stone he had this settlement, as applicable now as then : — li If you made the road of all six-ounce stone it would he a rough road, hut it is impossible hut that the greater part of the stone must he under that size” Six-ounce or egg-sized stone were as large as he wanted the largest stones to be in the top four inches of the roads he mended. In breaking all to that weight, or below, there would certainly be plenty of stone chips. No thought of a porous texture could have been in his mind. That any 230 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. one could seriously entertain such an absurdity as intentional 4 4 porosity ” in a 44 solid” road of broken stone, would have been incredible to him. His gangs of men, women and children, — whole families sometimes, — wrought by the side of the way, lifting two or three yards of the old road out of the mud at a time, breaking stone at ten pence per ton by measurement, and immediately replacing them hand- somely on the highway. The shining contrast between the old and new work was a powerful argument in its favor, and the welcome idea spread like wildfire. He reduced the expenses of the road-trusts he consoli- dated ; but, as his figures showed three-fourths hand-labor, instead of three-fourths team-work, as formerly, we can see how the old road barnacles must have hated him for teach- ing the people. The most of M’Adam’s sayings we see quoted now-a-days are used in such a way as to make nonsense of them. His injunction not to break stone on the road referred to his wholesale treatment of rough road-work, which could not be done in the muck of old road-beds, without soiling the fresh fractures of his new-made material. But there are very many times when the hammering of cruel projections from the surface of our stone-roads would relieve men and animals from torment at a very cheap rate, — if M’Adam had not forbidden it. Considerable roughness is required in our practice to overcome the dread of 44 resurfacing,” and make the people cry out for another coat of rough stone, as well as to assist in producing what is called a 4 4 bond ” for it. M’Adam despised any form of dirt among his metals : — “Nothing is to be laid on the clean stone under the pretence of binding .” With his boulders broken fine enough to fill their own interstices, there was no need of that “pretence.” He did direct that broken stone, when applied to a road, must be carefully 44 scattered over the surface, one shovelful following another, and spreading over a considerable space” This was very sensible in M’ Adam’s roadside practice, where he was liable to find all sorts of stones — some softer than others — gathered from the land and dumped into the No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 231 old roads he was reworking, so that his broken rocks needed spreading widely to mix all sorts together. He feared that a shovelful of very hard or very soft rock, by wearing un- equally, might make a lump or a hole in his road. But the produce of our quarries is or may be so uniform in quality that the obsolete precaution has no reason in it for us ; yet we -see the slow-spreading motion surviving in our road- craft, while vital matters are forgotten. For once in the world there was a road-mender who actu- ally made the wheeling better. People drove out of their way to see it done, and were happy to assist in testing and trampling the new work solid. While every neighborhood wrought before its own doors and was making its own roads clean and sound, fit for any woman or child to walk upon in muddy weather, we may be sure there was generous rivalry between the different sections, and many merry challenges and blithesome rallyings as the good work went on. Precisely when the salt of M’ Adam’s example was lost, and greed and craft got possession of the roads again, appears in no history. But a change is noted in one of Mary Russell Mitford’s English sketches. She describes it as a “misfortune” that “has befallen us underfoot. . . . For the last six months some part or other of the highway has been impassable for any feet except such as are shod by the blacksmith ; and even the four-footed people who wear iron shoes make wry faces — poor things! — at those stones, enemies to man and beast. ... I never wish to see a road-mender again.” We only need to be reminded here how the rough road- menders, in every form, from pig-pen sods, tracks of excru- ciating rocks, spruce and granite blocks and the smoke of coal-tar torment, have run riot over this American land, till the people are driven again to learn to mend their own roads. Never reprinted in this country, the scarce writings * of M’Adam are still our best resource for the genuine science of broken-stone roads. With nothing whatever to sell, he could afford to tell the truth, as follows : — “Having secured the soil from under-water, the road- * Thanks to Prof. W. H. Brewer, of Sheffield Scientific School, for the use of one of them. 232 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. maker is next to secure it from rain-water, by a solid road made of clean dry stone or flint, so selected, prepared and laid, as to be perfectly impervious to water ; and this can- not be effected unless the greatest care be taken that no earth, clay, chalk or other matter that will hold or conduct water, be mixed with the broken stone, which must be so prepared and laid as to unite with its own angles into a firm, compact, impenetrable body.” Find room for a “ porous ” spot in that, if you can. In the accounts of the road-trusts he overhauled, M’Adam saw well enough how figures could be made to lie, and so preferred to avoid giving mathematical color to suspicion in his writings ; yet his meaning is plain. He had unbounded faith in wrought stone over dry earth. But who has seen his ideas exemplified in any quarter of the world ? Let him repeat : — “ The thickness of such [stone] road is immaterial as to its strength for carrying weight; this object is already obtained by providing a dry surface over which the [stone] road is to be placed as a covering or roof, to preserve it in that state; experience having shown that , if water passes through a road and fills the native soil , the [stone] road , whatever may be its thickness , loses its support and goes to pieces.” “Encyclopedia Britannica,” while admitting “road-scrap- ings ” among “ binding material,” declares that “ The name Ml Adam often characterizes roads on which all his precepts are disregarded.” That broken-stone road may be a “ roof,” shedding water from its own foundations, as well as a “smooth floor,” affording pleasant wheeling at all seasons, were among M’ Adam’s principles and practices, and are what we want to-day ; but we can reach no such result as that in the way of porous, crumbling bottom-work, a ventilated mid-struc- ture, and the chip-stone which should fill its crevices reserved for top-dressing. Our modern way of screening and assorting road metals — so abundantly illustrated in rock-crusher circulars — has left our roads open at the top to water and filth, open at the bottom to clay, and open everywhere to the question No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 233 whether the taxpayers are being blundered or cheated out of their money. M’Adam complained bitterly in his time of the misappro- priation of road funds. He found those in authority too ig- norant to govern properly ; and men are saying now that our streets furnish fields for the expert politician rather than for the expert road-maker. The records of boodle governments could never be so black without engineering sharpers to figure for them. And the worst of our predicament is, we are often led to hound the honest man to death, while we let malefactors go free. The only remedy is for the whole people to study the highway to the bottom, so that bogus operators may be restrained or detected on the spot. The art of road making in common schools would make a good foundation for political economy in high schools. The amateur road student will not understand the forces that are moving us, without considering the rise of road machinery, and a keen study of its trade circulars. While metropolitan cities are discovering — by the shrewd obser- vations of some common laborer — that the broad tread of the weightiest steam roller will not pop toads in a sixteen- inch mass of ‘ ‘ even-sized stone,” — ^half cubic air, — it dawns upon the minds of sharp road machinists that the stones must be applied in layers so thin that they can be rolled separately or crushed flat, and partly in powder, for which the steam roller is said to be indispensable. At the same time, the maiden village (with a lot of suspi- cious farmers in her composition), beginning to think of being a city some day, requires a different treatment to make trade good. There a single thin layer of broken stone, in the form of “an arch over the clay,” is recom- mended. This looks “ scientific,” makes a better road for a little while, — till the clay begins to break up, — and “ pays well” for the beginners of the “resurfacing” business. But every one should remember these are no fair tests of the principles of M’Adam, or of the far older truths in geologic deposits, always open to the study of peasant and scholar. Without detracting at all from the just deserts of enter- prising road machinists, it is evident now, as in M’ Adam’s 234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. time, that we ought to give hand labor a better chance. We must make better tools, furnish more thorough training, con- tinuous employment and higher wages for precision and skill, that will attract expert hands and acute minds into the stone-road business. Men are wanted who can appreciate M’ Adam’s principles, and apply them to the highway. It is hard telling whether our roads suffer most from ignorant leaders and labor, or inattention of the public. To read the claims of our steam-roller brethren for their machines, makes one wonder how either Telford or M’Adam ever made a decent bit of road before steam traction was invented. And nothing needs to be more fully explained at the present time, to raise the hopes of our people, than the fact that with dump carts running on broad tires, having ten or fifteen hundred-weight on each wheel, the stone itself can be made to roll its own road solid without any additional expense whatever. Wheelmen should see to it that factories for broad cart wheels are established in every State right away, or arrangements made for importing them free of duty. The pamphlet circular of the Aveling & Porter steam roller, in its certificate of award from the international jury of our Centennial Exhibition, endorses the sterling princi- ples of the broad-tired cart wheel in these terms : — “The principle of dividing the rolling surfaces as much as pos- sible is of GREAT IMPORTANCE IN ROAD MAKING, since the Weight thus distributed penetrates, so to speak, beneath the surface, finds out the weak spots, and causes an even, uniform condition under- neath, while the inequalities of the surface can be overcome by the addition of metals in the holes.” It is a pleasure to recognize this brilliant common sense among the higher engineering circles of Japan, Spain, Great Britain, the Argentine Republic and the United States, rep- resented on the international jury. In an immense country like ours, where millions of miles of quagmire roads and streets shine with thick and slab mud in the sun of every open winter ; where our skeleton of a population is scattered over vast surfaces by railway, it makes the owner of valuable stone-crusher patents (capable No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 235 of digesting a ton and a half of rocks per minute) feel rich, considering the enormous road fields requiring his kind of top-dressing. But he ought to be very careful about the pic- tures he circulates to illustrate his business. No people can make woful blunders and continue to pay. A narrow-tired prairie wagon backed up to his broken-stone elevator, with the screened coarse material dropping inside the schooner- body, to go loose and wandering in the mud, — in lack of the finer rock-filling spilling outside of load, — is fully a hundred years behind the principles of M’Adam, and thou- sands of years behind the ancient lessons of the best gravel knoll described on the first page of this essay. If we allow these blind road machinists to lead us, we shall be as well off in the ditch as in the middle of the road. A word to the wise is sufficient, but something more is needed for the foolish. Let us bear in mind our grand dis- tances of wealthy farming country, whose only real protec- tion is the impassable nature of its highways ; where the traveller for long mud-stretches has to work his passage by frequently alighting from the vehicle ; where it is a constant chore to disentangle his wheels from the tenacious clay that has filled his spokes as solid as the paddles of a churn just before the butter comes ; where masses of the chafing material either lock his wheels or threaten to swamp his wagon-bed. Under these circumstances it is proper to make the sign of caution to those who so urge the claims of road machinery, as to aggravate the sticky situation, east and west, north and south, by filling the clay with loose, sharp rocks, even more treacherous in waylaying the traveller than the quaking mire alone. It is time to call a halt in highway talk for the best repute of road machinery. There are thousands and thousands of places, where narrow ribbands of unequally broken stone, laid really solid, and well supported according to the strict principles of M’Adam, with such local modifications as that naturalistic road maker would be certain to justify if he stood upon the spot, that would be perfect godsends for millions of people, indestructible and millennial thorough- fares, practically everlasting, better than perishable iron roads on wooden foundations, social bonds, liberal edu- 236 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. cations for the peoples constructing them ; but there is only one way to do the work. There must be teams of broad- tired carts driving over every inch of the self-filling material, compacting it as fast as it is dumped and nicely spread on the highway. This is the doctrine for country road making. Every good citizen may see, if he chooses, that the broad-tired cart for city use is the natural fore- runner of the narrow-tread steam roller and the traction engine. We must creep before we can run. We hear of much being done with thin coats of small stone, rolled into sandy or gravelly streets, where the drainage is naturally very good. This “ gospel of thinness ” is a pretty doctrine ; it gives us something to travel on, with the same cost for grading and finishing as if we had a road with a good deal more substance in it. The bottom of our four-inch work is in the dirt, and the top will soon be growing nasty with surface accumulations. It begins to appear, within a year or two, that there are exudations of mud from the subsoil we thought was sandy enough. At last the most sanguine friend of the experiment sees that it was a mistake, and that resurfacing is necessary ; but by that time every particle of the four-inch glaze is saturated and slippery with manufactured clay. Too late we recall that M’Adam recommended ten inches of solid stone for the climate of England, where frost is scarcely so severe as in Virginia. Good country roads, to cost little and wear well, must be narrow. In resurfacing with another thin coat upon the muddy first strata, we are liable to lose in two or three ways, besides the loss and disgrace of doing our work over again. If we do it in a wet time, we shall certainly crush our clean stone into the mud. If we do it in a dry time, we are liable to turn a heavy steam roller into a regular rock-crusher, grinding much small metal to powder between our upper and nether mill-stones. In either case we have incorporated a layer of filth in the heart of our road. Had we applied eight inches of solid stone with broad-tired carts in the first place, we should feel at least four times as secure from internal friction, with every particle of material slipping and sliding upon every other one, and grinding to destruction under No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 237 moderate city traffic. The sooner our steam roller and rock crusher brethren discover that the gentle pursua- sion of the broad cart wheel, delivering metal filled with its own hard binding, will enable us to lay down solid rock- road at one operation, complete for a life-time, the better it will be for all of us. The good stone man of this stone age will most intelli- gently consider the pockets of his masters when he minds least what they ignorantly say, and is most delicately sensi- tive to the durability of the metal he employs fn road making. He should never be satisfied with a road that changes at all except by surface friction, and the matter loosened by that should be washed away by every rattling shower. One of Telford’s few remarks was, that “ a good road will be so shaped as to clean itself.” To do this long in the busy main street of a city or village, everybody must say the new work is “too high,” at first; but they will presently get used to that, as they do to any new fashion, and employ themselves with some other nine-days’ wonder. The best road maker will feel, however, that he is but a necessary evil, and that the streets are not kept solely for his exploits and perambulations. Now, we hear much said, by those who have been abroad, of the fine roads that are seen there ; and we are invited to consider the European plan of keeping our roads up.* It seems to make no difference in Europe how the roads are constructed in the first place, because the “ maintenance ” is so thorough, being sustained to a considerable extent by American travel and cheap bread. Great gangs of men, with gypsy- wagons to live in, are continually moving about the country, doing something to the roads ; but the finest thing about the “system” is, that men are stationed at short intervals, to do whatever the great gangs forget or neglect. By the accounts we get, the roads in v some parts of Europe are lined with make-believe menders. If armies were being disbanded to starve, there might be * W. C. Oastler, C.E., New York, says: “In London, where there are 1,800 miles of broken-stone roads, and more than fifty steam rollers, the stone is brought 150 miles, and when it is delivered ready for use it costs $4.25 (17s. 9d.) per cubic yard.” If the measure is not quite half air, we can see that a road-stone quarry is better than a gold mine. 238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. some sense in giving old heroes a chance to glean a living on the highway, and road superintendents would be excusable, in a charitable point of view, for leaving small jobs of work for industrious old gleaners to pick up. But how about road making as a business, where the porous work shows most contrivance to make work? According to this European plan, American roads have places at the present time for several millions of government employees, — or will , when they are thoroughly organized on the Euro- pean plan. It may be observed in passing that a great many people are running away from that European system. Resident land-owners taking pride in their own roads might do the work much better and cheaper. Looking charitably at our Eastern cities, it would seem as if the gleaning plan was in full operation. Streets are opened and treated, not with a strong desire to show the best possible road making, of stone or anything else, but apparently, by constant changes of mismanagement, to leave as much as possible of the people’s substance to be gleaned under the head of 44 maintenance.” The question will arise, and will be presented sharply for reply : Is this legitimate business, applicable to the whole country, or are we spending our children’s patri- mony of good-will and the fruits of the earth for perishable extravagances in road making? Can the two Dakotas make a profit on 44 eighty-five-cent wheat at Atlantic ports,” that will enable them to lay down long lines of “Telford- Macadam,” with picturesque vistas of road-mending stations for maintenance ? Can we afford to make mistakes in letting precious road-stone go wandering through the mud of any part of our great mid-country ? What is good for Dakota is good for Massachusetts or Connecticut in this railway age. These questions answer themselves plainly enough in our own minds. Thoughtful Americans will perceive that, if we desire better roads anywhere, — as who does not? — it is our first duty to learn our road-making trades. Let us have State surveys and topographic maps in every house- hold, so that we can all see which way our roads should run ; and, while these surveys are being made and new model hand- tools, vehicles and machinery put in a state of forwardness, No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 239 let every town, county and State try to conceive and bring forth a quarter of a mile of road that will not require a standing army of road menders for its maintenance. Moun- tains of rocks are waiting to be fabricated into paths of peace and pleasantness. Let us begin with samples of road wherever fit workmen and material can be got together, with their keeping up, wrought into their solid foundations ; and let us have men engaged in the construction of roads who are not gainers by their early destruction. The field is large enough for all the world to work in. The American mind runs to monopoly as naturally as water runs down hill. Nature herself keeps road-stone where it is hard to get. But a State government that is good for anything ought to be good for opening and test- ing stone-road quarries. State chemists should have been ready, long ago, with the composition of the best country roads. Limestone quarries yawn with the tedium of wait- ing to be tested more intelligently than they have ever been. Who knows what a little dust of iron will do in a broken limestone road? In sight of an ignorant and heedless public, good quarries may be be beaten out of use by conniving officials, and replaced by inferior metal. A first-rate roadstone can better afford to give itself to be rightly used than to sell at any price for a blundering street. Last March, in Salisbury, England, where flints are plenty, I found a short, red-faced official, watching, with a steam roller, the crushing of limestone into the mud of a narrow thoroughfare. “ Better ’n flints?” I asked at his elbow. “We are trying an experiment. The limestone quarry people have influence with the Board.” 4 4 P’raps the flints have been mismanaged ? ” “Well,” — with a wink, — 4 4 there may have been some o’ that ! ” 4 4 But do you think the limestone a better metal ? ” “No,— I don't” That was good English for me. The ignorant taxpayers on that street were being worked for all they were worth, — whether with limestone or flints. The delicious harmonies 240 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. I had just before heard floating among the arches of the grand old cathedral had to be averaged with these street- discords in my Yankee mind. “Make ye your paths straight” is a good word for modern roads. Road making could be taught and learned much more effectively, were the real materials here present in the hands of experts. If a few barrels of fit earths, gravels and broken rocks were at hand, with water for tempering and means for manipulating them in trough-like road-bottoms in miniature, it would not be in the least difficult to make public exhibi- tions, over and over again, of every needful point in the business, so a child need not err therein. Every fair-ground should be utilized for that purpose, on larger scales than would be as easy under cover. We are being regularly educated now to let road mending be a lucrative business for others than ourselves. Available sources of this or that substance are owned by parties who can well afford to teach us to forget and forego the right use of our own materials, and give them a perpetual income. It is a wonder we are not importing material for country roads, as we do peat- bedding for horses. A grand object lesson for a sleepy farmers’ meeting, during the present phases of indoor road study, would be to have not a ray of light in the room for a moment, except what shone from an inch of tallow-dip, lighted on the speaker’s desk, with about a peck of “ even-sized” broken stone piled up around it. That would exceed any electric light, yet, in our business ! Every local road-job has its own laws and conditions to be studied, perhaps to break them. These are too many for this place. Often the wilfulness of some private individual is a snag to be avoided if possible. Once I found five hundred loads of village rubbish lying on top of the gravel I wanted. In that case after needful diplomacy, I made a special stretch of public road, where a till was advisable, to hold that rubbish. Forty big loads of old spring-beds, kitchen boilers, stove-pipe, iron-hoops, tin cans, umbrellas, etc., went into the bottom of a very good bit of wheeling, where it was miry before, — to the great astonishment of by-standers. The party of action requires some nerve in No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 241 such cases ; but all is well that ends well. The good road-mender must have a place for and be ready for any- thing. He is liable to be called to bury dead horses and receive a delegation of village women at the same moment, when highway, street and side-walk concerns become lively. We have run through the whole list of road-stuff, from native brush, sands, earths, gravels, wood in various forms, cobble stones and broken rock, furnace-slag, clinkers, and a great variety of pavements to railway iron and steel, — all good in their places, — yet never, as a whole people, thor- oughly understanding any of them. We allow ourselves to be rushed from one expense to another, as if road material was a matter of fashion, like the shape of a hat or coat. The city engineering plan of piling each size of stone in separate layers, is nothing but the old wood-chopper’s trick for making their cords bulky, and measure more by the air- spaces in them. Stone crushers by the yard gain by measur- ing their sizes separately. Laborers understand the trick. If they wink at our cheating, we must wink at theirs. When any engineer tells of these things, the rings maul him to death, and nobody minds. Road-stone should be sold by weight, or cubic measure, after it is well built, like brick or stone wall. We can show visiting strangers some fine streets, while they are new and fresh from the mud-starch and ironing of the steam roller. But why don’t they wear longer ? What makes these depressions after a few months or years ? Why do they shake us so? The trouble comes from “porous” road making. Our honeycomb arrangement of stone and air has caved in. Our road-cake has “ fallen from the crust.” Clay or street filth has pushed in among the rounded stone. The skim-coat of screenings has blown into people’s houses, or worked, as greasy mud, into the leaching foundation. Rains, freezing and thawing, the wringing pressure of wheels trembling under heavy traffic, have destroyed the admired steam-roller polish. Let us drive on some new street. Soon there will be a call for “ resurfacing,” and so the bad work goes on. The evil of dust, with its discomfort, dirt, and possible dissemination of diseases from streets, is greatly aggravated 242 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. during drouths by the 4 4 porous ” arrangement of stone in so-called “macadam” roads. Artificial waterings and the water of rains are wasted in the loose material that is never dampened by capillary moisture so as to hold its own dust from blowing. Dry stone is softer, crushes easier and more thoroughly under the wheels of travel ; while solid broken stone, firmly seated upon the cool moisture of the earth, would be liable to none of the mischances we are mentioning. Such broad 4 4 macadam ” streets as we some- times manufacture are but narrow Saharas, liable to fierce dust storms. It would be better to break the centres of some of them with lines of shade trees, shrubbery, flowers and grass. Old stone roads mismanaged in making are not even good foundations for new ones, albeit M’Adam had to use them. They are worth no more than dirty rock, free of cartage, and might well be lifted, rain-washed, broken over again, and relaid as M’Adam did in similar cases, with betterments as aforesaid, that he would approve to-day. When we have learned to build solid and smooth stone roads, wearing only from surface friction, fewer horse or other railways will be in demand. These live by popular ignorance of stone and gravel road making. We can see, better than we can describe, how a succession of stupid road- menders furnish tramways their opportunity. They and their gangs like porous stone-work to lay their frequent spruce sleepers in. Porous street substances furnish easy and continual diggings. The rattle and roar of business goes on, and the people pay more taxes in new forms. Sweet, springy and elastic earthen roads, as made by old- style New England artists and farmers, furnish the pleasant- est tracks man ever drove a horse on. Narrow, rounding and dry, with scarcely perceptible water-bars, in a delecta- ble hill country, the roads I have in mind — not too much travelled — are delightful to walk over, alone or in good company. There are thousands of places in the country, where, after constructing the best possible roads of gravel or broken stone, it might be well to dress the narrow highway every spring with plastic, fibrous loam, just for the use of driving on it in summer time. It is political economy, No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 243 as well as the highest art, for the country to make itself attractive to the town, in all gentle, graceful and natural ways. What is not forest should be garden and park. Not a single item of farm thrift hinders. Trees, shrubs and vines come by chance along many country roadsides, which may be more beautiful than anything we can plant there, if we clip obvious weeds, and show nooks and bays of green- sward among the low groups and towers of foliage. City people spend millions, yearly, to get a rest from the din of their own devices. Would not some part of the labor we spend in glutting far-away city markets over poor highways, be better expended in making rural roads and roadsides so lovely as to bring the best citizens to our doors? It may be a slow but it will be a sure speculation, if we go the right way to work. We need first to settle ourselves comfortably. Road making is but a subordinate branch of gardening, and we may make gardens of our roadsides. The Chairman. Secretary Sessions has a letter which he thinks is appropriate at this time, if you will give your attention. Tolland, Mass., Dec. 1, 1891. To the State Board of Agriculture. Gentlemen : — I should be very much pleased to attend your meetings this week if I could. I feel very much interested in the subject of country roads. We are eighteen miles from rail- road, over very heavy hills and mountains. Our roads could be very much improved if we had the money to do it. We are thinly settled, have a large piece of road to every man, to be kept in the best repair we are able. We can barely make them passable, with- out making any improvements on them. Our hills are steep grade. Many of them need the location changed, others can be improved by grading. One particular place I will name, in the town of Granville, on our mail route. After climbing up a hard mountain, over one-half mile, we then have to rise one hun- dred feet higher, over a very heavy grade of rocky, ledgy road, to fall down another steep grade. This might all be saved by a short change in the location, and one hundred feet of rise and fall. There are many places on our roads similar to this that greatly need work done. Our mountain towns are poor, our population decreasing, and our taxes are two mills on the dollar. We are not 244 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. able to do what very much needs to be done to our roads. Our roadways are so rocky that we cannot work road machines to much advantage. We pay our taxes to the State, and we feel that the State should help us to have at least one road for a mail route that is better than we^ are able to have ourselves. Our roads are now travelled mostly where they were located when the country was first settled, before the art of road making was known. Hoping that your meeting may lead to a betterment of our country roads, I remain yours, Fowler T. Moore, Road Commissioner. The Chairman . Gentlemen, you have listened to a very interesting lecture from the essayist of the after- noon. The Board has invited every road surveyor in every city and town in this Commonwealth to join with us this afternoon in the discussion of the question. It has also invited gentlemen connected with the carriage interest and the horse interest to he here and take part with us. I think some of them are here. The essayist has referred to the roadsides in the country. That is a subject which interests every community ; and it is our duty to consider the State as a whole, the future of the State in all its departments, the care of it not only for the present gener- ation, hut for all future generations, — to look after it, protect it and promote its interests. We have a gentleman here to-day who is extremely interested in the character of the roadsides of the Commonwealth, and we should be very glad to hear from him. He is a gentleman who is very much interested in the preservation of all places of historical interest, and all places of natural beauty and attractiveness. We should he very glad to hear from Mr. Charles Elliot of Boston. Mr. Elliot. I have very much enjoyed the talk which the lecturer has given us. It is true that I feel a very deep interest in the roads and roadsides of the State. I am familiar with many townships where the beauty of the roadsides is so much a source of attraction that one might say they are a part of the financial capital of the town- ship, drawing people from far and near on account of the beauty of the scenery, and the roadsides are part of the scenery. No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 245 It seems to me that a great many of the townships in this State would be consulting their best interests if they would pay much more attention than they do to that side of the subject. Not only should they make their roadways better, but they should take more pains with the roadsides. The town of Brookline, which is supposed to be the richest town in the State, shows something of what might be done. Those who are familiar with it know that the roadsides are in most parts of the town very charming, and those who are still more familiar with it know that the roadsides are cared for by special committees, who are empowered to plant trees, to cut the grass, and to do this, that and the other thing, as they may see fit. I only mention that town because it is a very conspicuous example of what our roadsides may be. The preservation of everything that is beautiful in the natural scenery of the State I believe to be a very important thing for this Massachusetts of ours. It is going to be, in a future time, if we are careful and look alive in these matters, a place of great resort for people from our Western country, — a country with by no means as much natural beauty as this of ours ; and those towns which look sharpest after this matter are certain to be the towns which will be chosen for the happiness and enjoyment of the people who come here. The people here present, if they care to hear something more on this subject, will be glad, I know, to listen to a friend of mine who has lately been making a journey through all the sea-coast towns of the State, to see what they are doing and to see how much they are making of this very thing, — because it is the sea-coast that will be most resorted to, undoubtedly, in this search for pleasant summer resorts. I hope, Mr. Chairman, you will call upon Mr. Harrison of New Hampshire, who happens to be here this afternoon, but has to go away shortly. The Chairman. I shall take pleasure in calling upon the gentleman, but before introducing him let me call the atten- tion of this audience to the fact, which I think is a very important point, that many of those shrubs which we find upon our roadsides, and which many of us are in the habit of cutting down, are to-day exported to England and other countries, where they are grown in nurseries as prized 246 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. things. I take pleasure in introducing to you Mr. Harrison. He is a gentleman who has been interested in the preserva- tion and protection of woodlands and forests as public reser- vations for the good of the people of New England. Mr. Harrison. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : A few weeks ago I was in the town of Manchester and over in the town of Essex, and I found a feature of the roads of that region which was very interesting to me. An arrange- ment was made some years ago by which a plat of land on each side of the road from Manchester to Essex was pur- chased, largely by the efforts of some public-spirited women in the neighborhood, and the deeds of the land deposited in the office of the town clerk. The title is in the town. These ladies, driving frequently along the road between Manchester and Essex some years ago, found that much of the beauty of the roadsides was in danger of being destroyed by cutting away the shrubs and bushes on each side of the road. They thought about it and conferred with each other until it seemed to them a very important thing for the sum- mer visitors to that region, and for the young people who were growing up in that neighborhood, that the growth of trees and shrubbery at the sides of that roadway should be preserved. They talked about it and thought about it and wrote about it, until they effected an arrangement by which the necessary funds were provided and this strip of land on each side of that highway was purchased ; and, the title being in the town, it seems a very effectual accomplishment in that direction. Everything indicates that the scenery there will be preserved permanently, and that that road, at least, is likely to be fora long time, or for all time, a beauti- ful place, a drive attractive to everybody with any sense "of natural beauty ; and I learned that so great is the interest in and satisfaction with the road that it is exerting a very favor- able influence upon the price of land along it, and the. general attractiveness of the region causes the land to be more and more in request. I do not know that that example can be very generally or widely followed, but certainly it is something that deserves an intelligent and respectful recognition that we have here such an example ; and it is interesting to observe, No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 247 as I have said, that it comes so largely from the thought- fulness of some of the intelligent women of that neighbor- hood. It appears to me that the need in this direction is largely that of public education and discussion, and that hardly anything adequate at all can be done in this State unless we begin to a very great extent at the beginning of things, as you are beginning here in this meeting to present the facts first and then the principles which obviously relate to these facts, so that we can have a little advance in civilization in relation to these subjects. People have to do new things, and disuse some of the old ways of doing things. There must be some advance in popular thought and in popular intelligence, perhaps, before anything adequate can be accomplished. One thing presses upon me when I think on this subject, and that is the curious fact of so great a movement going on towards the shore region of New England, with, at the same time, so slight recognition of such a movement among the people. A little while ago, as my friend Mr. Elliot- remarked, I was , through the shore towns of Massachusetts, and everywhere I found indications of this movement. There is not a shore town in the State to-day, Mr-. Chairman, in which there is not going on a change in the ownership of land ; and yet very few people in the towns where this change is taking place recognize that there is any movement. When I visited the citizens along the shore and the town officers and the leading men, and asked them about it, very commonly the answer would be, “No, there is nothing especial going on here ; things are just about as they have been always.” Of course there are towns in whicn this is not the case, but in many towns I was told : “No, there is nothing particular here. Somebody nas bought this farm down here and a land company has taken up something of an area over on this side, and we have heard that in the next town there have been several places bought within a year or two.” But very few people put these things together, and many people in the State do not perceive that these changes in their towns indicate any general movement at all. They do 248 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. not exercise their imagination about what goes on, except in their own town or perhaps in the immediately adjoining towns which they have heard about. In every town along the coast of the State there has been during the last few years especially an incursion of people from outside, for the purpose of acquiring ownership of land. Some of the citizens tell me they are buying for men in New York, for men in Boston, for men as far West as St. Louis and Minneapolis, even ; that they have been employed by a company here or there to acquaint them with any opportunities for the quiet acquisition of land. Of course these purchasers do not wish to come into competition with themselves, they do not wish to have it known that they want to buy eligible places, they do not wish to have prices advanced upon them ; but in all the shore towns of the State there is something of this movement going forward, — in some, of course, much more than in others. If we could see all the people as far West as the western side of the Mississippi valley who are setting their faces towards the shore towns of New England, it would be a charming and impressive spectacle ; but of course we cannot see how many they are, and they are buying our land away from us almost without our knowing it. In several instances which came to my knowledge the old holders of the land were very much astonished that anybody should want their land at all, or offer any price for it. They found it very difficult to realize that it was worth more to anybody else than it was to them, and they were rather surprised that anybody should think of giving the sum of money that they were disposed to sell for. Instances like this exist in many of the towns of Massa- chusetts. People who own an acre or two on the shore do not think much of their ownership ; but when men come to own three or four miles of shore land they think it almost invaluable. The way in which we treat our roadsides is going to have much to do with this movement. If we can add to their beauty, we shall increase the attractions which we have here in this beautiful State of Massachusetts. The Chairman. We are very glad to hear from Mr. Har- rison ; and, if there is any other gentleman present who is inclined to speak from the same stand-point, we shall be very No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 249 glad to hear from him. A number of gentlemen have been invited to come here, and, if any of them are present, we shall be very glad to hear from them before I call upon any- body to speak. F. W. Sargent (of Amesbury). We have present with us Mr. Mann of Methuen, who I understand has just com- pleted a large contract for road making. Charles W. Mann (of Methuen). I will not speak about the work I have done ; perhaps it will show for itself. It is only a small job. In our town of Methuen we are becoming greatly interested in good roads. The beginning of that interest was perhaps two years ago, when our town warrant had an article in it calling for an appropriation of ten thousand dollars for pavement. That is likely to inter- est any small town. But there were some other articles, and they were referred to a committee of three, of which I had the pleasure of being one. After the committee was appointed we went down to Bridgeport, and, through the information obtained from Mr. B. D. Pierce, the street commissioner of Bridgeport, we have got started in a way of building streets at a very low cost. On our visit there he took us over some fifteen or twenty miles of streets which were in better condition than we had ever seen in any city of its size. His method of building is first to have a well-drained road-bed ; it seems to make very little difference to him what the material is. He will take any old road, and work it so that it will show a crown of from twelve to eighteen inches, which makes a perfect water-shed. Then he rolls it thoroughly with a steam roller, which gives a very solid, hard bed. Then one coating of two-inch crushed stone is applied, just so they will cover the ground, making a coat- ing two inches thick. That is screened stone of even size. Then upon that, when thoroughly rolled, is placed a layer of smaller stone, perhaps crushed to the size of an inch. Then the last coat is applied of screened stone, such as are used in this city for private walks and sidewalks. That coating is applied and thoroughly watered and rolled until the water will flush in front of the roller. If you can find sixty miles of driveway built for the sum which he told me those roads cost, which I think was less than two hundred 250 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. thousand dollars, I would go a great many miles to see them. The Telford-Macadam road which has been described here is built from two to three feet deep, at an expense of per- haps six times as much as the roads to which I have referred cost. Mr. Pierce showed me places where a Telford road which had been made several years had to be dressed up every year to keep it reasonably smooth, while for five years a four-inch road by the side of it was as smooth as need be . The repairing of these roads is a very easy matter. In five or ten years, if the top coating wears off, it is a very simple matter to break it up and then put on another coating of small stone and thoroughly roll it, when the road will be as good as new, and at very little expense. The result of our work in Methuen is, that in two years we have built half a mile of street about forty-four feet in width, macadamizing it in that way, and making a very fine avenue of it, at an expense of five thousand dollars. We think that to have paved that same amount would have cost over thirty thousand dollars, and this street is very much preferable to drive over. The expense of keeping it in repair perhaps will be a little more ; but the interest on the money that would have been spent for paving will be more than sufficient to meet the extra cost of repairs. This method perhaps would not be so well adapted to our country roads ; but take our common country roads, where they are only from twelve to twenty feet wide, round them up, roll them thoroughly, and then put on six inches or even eight or ten inches of stone, and roll it down well, and I believe it would give you a permanent road at very small cost ; for in many places there are almost stone enough going to waste by the roadside which can be very easily and cheaply worked into good material for a road-bed. I believe that the system of road-building and the character of the roads in our country towns are almost altogether wrong. It seems that the man who can get the most votes, whatever his knowledge or lack of knowledge is, takes the charge of the roads in our country towns ; and I know that in places very near Methuen there are two sets of men running from one end of the town to the other for three weeks before town-meeting day to get votes No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 251 for this man and the other for road commissioner, and oftentimes they peddle a good deal of hard cider to get them. I believe the man who is to have charge of the roads should be educated for his work as well as a high-school teacher should know his work. I think it would be a long time before we would elect a high-school teacher by popular election. There may be between two cities or towns a poor town, too poor to build and maintain proper roads ; and in such cases I believe it would be better for both of those cities or towns and for the intervening territory if the roads could be put under the charge of the county. We could then have good roads, such as the poor towns between cannot afford to build. Perhaps the time has not come for that yet ; but, if it has not come, I believe it is on the way or will shortly be on the way. Question. How long do you think Mr. Pierce’s road would stand the traffic between Quincy and Boston ? Mr. Mann. I do not know just what the travel is in Bridgeport, but I know that there are three hundred tons of freight carried over the streets every day. Question. In what kind of teams is it carried ? Mr. Mann. It is carried in heavy carts with narrow wheels, probably, as every man does and should not do. Question. Will they weigh six tons? Mr. Mann. I could not say as to that ; but Mr. Pierce told me that Barnum moved some of his ^paraphernalia that weighed something like twenty tons over one of those four- inch roads, and it stood up. Mr. . I have heard a good deal about Mr. Pierce’s four-inch macadam road, and I would like to get some facts about it. I do not believe such a road would be adapted to the requirements of a road between Quincy and Boston, for instance, where the loads will vary from ten to forty tons. Mr. Mann. There may be some places where the loads are so heavy that nothing will stand them but granite pave- ment. Mr. . This Telford road does stand it. Mr. Mann. It did not stand it in Bridgeport. Mr. . I can assure you that there is a Telford road in Quincy that was built four years ago, and it stands. 252 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. The Chairman. The great question seems to be how to secure good country roads. The cost of such roads bears heavily upon the country towns, not so heavily upon a city. How shall it be equalized ? How can we have good country roads throughout the State, and how shall we assess the expense of doing it? That question is before us, and we hope to hear from other gentlemen who are interested in it. Mr. Thurston (of Swanzey). There is no question but what we all agree to the necessity of having better country roads. The town of Swanzey the past year made a trial with one surveyor ; a year ago they had three ; before that they had ten. We have now got down to one, and we think that we are progressing in the right direction, and hope to get roads, if we can get the right kind of help, that will be satisfactory. We have the city of Fall River four miles from us on one side and the city of Providence fifteen miles from us on the other side, one having a population of eighty thousand and the other of one hundred and twenty thousand. We have a bridge and eight miles of street in our town, over which the traffic from those two cities passes ; and the question has been, how we can take care of that eight miles of road, and at the same time take care of the forty-four miles of other roads belonging to our town that are feeders to this main road. The people in the town of Swanzey want to have good roads. One-third of all the money, ten thousand dollars, that we raise on a valuation of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, is spent on our high- ways, one-third is spent for our schools, and the balance for our State, county and town expenses outside of our highways ; and yet our roads are in poor condition, and they never can be any better, I fear, unless somebody comes to our help. I think that is the condition of a great many towns in this Commonwealth. I have travelled over many roads in the neighborhood of Worcester, and from there to Boston. I understand the question before us this afternoon is “How can the country roads be improved?” We have been told it can be done through educational means. I think the State should come to the rescue of No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 253 those towns, as it has come to their rescue on the subject of education. Most of you know the laws that have been passed within two or three years to help the smaller towns in the matter of education, and a noble work is being done through them. I believe that if the State will come in some way, — I do not know how, but by a proper investigation the way will be found, — if the State will come to the assistance of the towns, and help them in maintaining those through roads, then in all probability the towns will take care of the local roads. I have a resolution which I would like to olfer, if I may. The Chairman. Any resolution expressing the opinion of those who are here present is perfectly in order. I see no objection to it. Of course it is not in order, if intended as an expression of the opinion of the Board of Agriculture. Mr. Thurston submitted the following resolutions : — Resolved , That the State Board of Agriculture, at its public meeting, held Dec. 1, 2 and 3, 1891, recommends such legislation as shall induce the towns of the Commonwealth to increase their appropriations for highway purposes. Resolved , .That it is expedient, and will conduce to the safety and better condition of the highways and bridges in this Common- wealth, that a State highway engineer and superintendent of bridges should be appointed. Mr. Thurston, continuing his remarks, said : I think these are two questions which have been before the Legisla- ture and have been investigated by legislative committees, who, however, have failed to make any recommendation on the subject. It seems to me that we need the last as much as we need the first. Secretary Sessions. I think it should be understood that the passage of the resolutions does not bind the State Board of Agriculture, because this is not a meeting of that Board. Mr. Bowker. I believe that Mr. Thurston is in earnest, and honestly endeavoring to have this Board accomplish something. I will move that the resolutions be referred to the State Board of Agriculture at its annual meeting. Secretary Sessions. If it is desired to get an expression of the opinion of the Board of Agriculture upon this matter, 254 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. that is the only way in which a legal expression can be got. This is not a legally warned meeting of the Board ; and, as you all understand, at this late hour of the closing session of the public winter meeting there is probably not a quorum of the Board of Agriculture present. I have no doubt the Board of Agriculture at its annual meeting will be glad to discuss this matter, and take action upon it in some form. The Chairman. The chairman understands that Mr. Bowker moves that these resolutions be referred to the Board of Agriculture. The question was put, and the motion of Mr. Bowker declared carried. The Chairman. Will the gentleman make any motion calling for an expression of opinion from the gentlemen present? The subject before us is a very interesting one. Does any other gentleman desire to speak upon it ? Mr. . I want simply to make one suggestion here to whatever representatives there may be present from the different towns in this Commonwealth. It is with reference to something to which very little attention has been paid in the past, as far as my knowledge goes ; and that is, that the towns have not been at all particular in the choice of the men whom they have placed in charge of their roads. When the citizens of the towns become so much interested in having good roads that they will see to it that they put the very best men they have in charge of their roads, they will have taken one step towards the solution of this question. I know of what I speak. We have had some experience in our town. The fact is, as has been stated here, that the man who can get the greatest number of votes gets the position of highway surveyor, and in nine cases out of ten it turns out that he is the very worst man for the place that could be found. Mr. Bowker. I think the gentleman has made a good suggestion. It seems to me that this Board might well take some of the money which it has been expending in Massa- chusetts, and use it in teaching practical road making to the road makers of the State, going into the field and making field demonstrations, if I may so term them. We have had a No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 255 great deal of talk about field work, and why can we not have demonstrations in the field of the practical work of road building, to which the highway surveyors may be invited and at which they can get the desired education? I have listened with a great deal of interest to the paper which has been read this afternoon, and, if we could have had before us on the platform a section of a road built as it ought to be built, with the required material shown, and then alongside of it a section of road built as it ought not to be built, it would have taught us more than page after page of the lecture. That is the kind of practical demonstration that we want in every department over which this Board presides. Now, I want to make one reference to the roadsides, because it is of interest to every citizen of the State who owns a farm and who may some time want to sell it, and especially if he owns a farm in one of our beautiful back country towns. I happen to have a farm where I live in the summer in a beautiful place kway up on the hills. A real- estate man came to me the other day here in Boston and said, “ I took a gentleman up to your town and showed him some farms there for sale, and I should have sold him one of them but that he was not pleased with the road- sides.” They had literally been ruined, and all because of the thriftiness of the farmers ; for the town is a thrifty town, and every roadside must be cleared of brakes and brush, as they are termed. Some of those very brakes and brush are what I saw this last summer in Europe, in some of the best green- houses and gardens which I visited. They were carried over there as rare specimens, and yet we are mowing them down ; and then, as a gentleman who came from the other side said to me, “We bring them back here and pay high prices for them.” I have always lived on a farm, more or less, and have owned one for a number of years. I have been guilty of recklessly mowing the roadside for eleven years ; I shall never do so again. I am going to let the little elms, the beautiful maples, beeches and birches which have started up, and got such a start as only a natural tree that comes from the seed can get, — I am going to weed out the rest, — and let these saplings grow into beautiful trees. 256 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. That is the way to plant trees by the roadside ; and, if we had adopted that plan twenty-five years ago, every road in this State would have been a beautiful avenue, protected in summer and sheltered in winter. There is still another point I want to touch upon, and perhaps I shall touch the manufacturers of road scrapers. I do not want to do anybody an injustice, but I do think that the road scraper in unskilful hands is the worst machine that was ever brought into a town. The idea of scraping back into the centre of a road the old worn-out dust that has been ground and ground for the last twenty years into an impalpa- ble powder, and calling it a road, is absurd. It makes that same kind of mud that we have been talking about this after- noon. Up in Concord, Mass., they do things pretty well. They teach us philosophy, and they have taught us something about road making. Up there they have got some pretty good roads, and they make them by carting the worn-out material away and then carting in fresh gravel, and their roads are among the best that you will find in the State. They employ as road commissioners three of the best men in the town, and one of them, I think, is an engineer. I think the suggestion of the gentleman on my left is one of the best that has been made here. Get the right men, and then, when we get the right men, this Board some day will help to teach them how to do their work properly. The Chairman. There are two speakers present, one of whom comes from the most beautiful locality, perhaps, that I know of. I enjoy it every time I see it, and I do not see it often enough. The roadsides have no fences ; there are beautiful trees and nice houses. I refer to the town of Greenfield. We have a gentleman with us who always entertains us, and we are always delighted to hear from him. 1 wish Mr. Grinnell would say something to us on the sub- ject of doing away with wayside fences. Mr. Grinnell. I am afraid, Mr. Chairman, that you have “ waked up the wrong passenger.” Doing away with fences is prevailing to a considerable extent. In a village where a house is as high or higher than the street, it does very well. If a house is not so high as the street, the aesthetic effect is very bad ; the house does not look so well and the road does No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 257 not look so well. Then there is another thing. If your house stands on a corner lot in a village you cannot remove your fence, because, if you do, every child and every dog goes over your land. I have never known any serious difficulty occurring from the removal of fences along the country roads. We have for many years been strict in regard to allowing cattle to run at large, and we suffer very little from that source. I constantly see cattle driven from one point to another, through streets and across the country, and very seldom is there any mischief done. The men who drive cattle are anxious, on account of the law or from the kindness of disposition which is inherent in every man who cultivates the soil, to take care of their cattle. The removal of fences is a most desirable thing ; it is more desirable than almost anything else in the management of our farms. If we could remove the interior fences, except those that are necessary to guard the cultivated land from our stock, it would be of the greatest assistance to us in our farming operations. It would be a very desirable thing to remove the fences so as to have clear fields, parallelograms or squares, where you can drive your horses right up to where the fence was, turn and come back, and cut a long, straight furrow. Plough with horses with such a- plough as you think best, harrow the ground with the Dow or Randall harrow, then follow it with the Thomas and make a good seed-bed ; plant your corn (I am talking about that particularly now) with a corn-planter and cultivate it with a horse-machine, never putting a hoe into it except perhaps to cut down any straff fflinff weeds. There is not a farmer who has an acre of cultivatable land in this State who cannot raise corn for thirty cents a bushel. I can prove that by better cultivators than I am. We pay sixty cents a bushel for Western corn, when we can grow it here for thirty cents ; but our trouble is that it costs so much for labor. On this roadside question there is much that might be said. Mr. Bowker spoke charmingly about having the roadsides lined with elms and the beautiful maple with its golden leaves, and I, too, admire to see them ; but I declare that if I have got to take with them the yellow daisy, the 258 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. wild carrot, and every one of those pestilent weeds or bushes that grow by our roadsides and ought to be mowed down, I hesitate. No, I do not hesitate. There is no doubt that the legislation in New York which makes it a penal offence for a man to allow weeds to grow by his roadside, like thistles and sedges and the wild carrot, which is one of the most pernicious things, is commendable. The cultivation of our roadsides is a beautiful thing. I have been president of the rural club in our beautiful village of Greenfield, and we take care of our highways. We keep them clean. We, by direct action or by personal influence, persuade the people who own premises by the side of the road to keep them nicely. During the summer season we do not allow any papers or rubbish of any kind to remain in the streets. Our trees are trimmed up. We set out every year two or three hundred trees on the streets leading from the village, — elms and maples; and at about this season of the year we engage a good, judicious man, with one or two assistants, to trim all the trees of the village streets, unless there be objection by the land owners, which seldom occurs. Our new trees that are six, eight or ten years old, were set out, as you know the custom is (and perhaps that is the true way to set out a tree), when they were two, three or four inches in diameter, simply saplings, and allowed to start from the top. In the course of time they make beautiful trees. The little branches that come out from the stalk twelve or fifteen feet high, growing in all directions, horizontally and often downward, should be trimmed off, and the tree gradually trimmed up until you get a regular form, not less than twelve feet from the ground. That throws the sap up into the top ; and it is astonishing how quickly you can make a beautiful tree if the trimming is properly done. That is what we do every autumn, as being the most convenient time. The Chairman. Gentlemen, we have invited here repre- sentatives from the carriage industries of Boston. Is there anybody here, from those industries, interested in roads? Is there anybody representing the horse industry, interested in roads ? Is there anybody here representing the popular machine of the day, the bicycle ? Apparently not. No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 259 Gentlemen, we have heard from Connecticut, we have heard from Massachusetts pretty thoroughly ; we have not heard from our sister State of Maine. Perhaps Dr. Twitchell may have a word or two to say on this subject. Dr. G. M. Twitchell. Mr. Chairman, I received with the programme of these meetings an invitation from the secre- tary of the State Board of Agriculture to come up if possi- ble and enjoy them with the rest, and I at once began to make preparations to come. I did not come to talk. I have a very good friend down in Maine who has lived with me almost twenty-two years, and her advice has never hurt me. About the last thing she said to me was, 44 Now, don’t bore them by talking.” If I do, Mr. Chairman, you must take the responsibility. I am going to ride nearly all night to-night, because I wanted to be here and hear this question discussed, and I remained this afternoon to enjoy it. It seems to me that in the last half-hour we have been getting down to the heart of things. Mr. Chairman, can I “talk plain?” An old man in our State said to us one day, 44 I have been having a talk with one of my neighbors, and I guess I talked plain.” ‘ 4 What did you say ? ” “I talked very plain.” 4 4 What did you say?” 44 Well, I told him his women folks will steal.” Now, the trouble with us in the State of Maine is, that the very men who would be helped most by better roads are the men who prevent better roads. How? They go into town meetings, and as a unit they stand up and vote down any proposition to make the highway tax a money tax. Do you do that in Massachusetts? (A voice, — 44 No.”) Then what I was going to say will not apply to you. If you have got away from that you have got away from one of the greatest evils we have to contend with. They insist upon having the right and privilege of working out their highway tax, and we all know what that work so often amounts to. Then comes in the other evil to which the gentleman on my left alluded, and that is, the selection of men as surveyors who are not fitted for the work. Now, I never would hire a minister to go into a blacksmith shop and shoe my horse ; and yet I fancy that here in Massa- chusetts you have been hiring men to take charge of your 260 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. roads who were as utterly incapable of doing that work as a minister would be of fitting a shoe. We have in the State of Maine to contend with party ties and bonds. “Why,” men say, “ he belongs to our party, and we must turn the other man out, and put him in to make our roads.” We elect a man who has been disappointed in getting some political office that he wanted and thought he ought to have, make him highway surveyor, and give him twenty-five dollars a year to spend on the roads. There is the evil. When we put business into road making we are going to have better roads, and the only way to do it is to put a man at the head who understands his business. I was glad* to liear Mr. Bowker make the remark that he did in regard to having before us a section of road. I felt, all the time the speaker was giving his admirable address, that, if he had only come with a little section of road in a glass case, it would have helped greatly to an appreciation of good road- work. I believe in object lessons in teaching. That is what we are trying to do in our institute work in our State. We want to have the type of the animal or object before us about which we are talking. If we could have had a section of a well-constructed road and one of a poorly constructed road before us, we would have carried home a better impression of what we want than could possibly be given by any description. Now, we do not like and do not emphasize in the State of Maine the idea of depending so much upon the State government, and going there for assistance. We believe in the State fostering its interests and encouraging its inhabi- tants. I tell you, gentlemen, that we shall be better men when we have to depend upon ourselves more. Nothing of value in science or art has ever been obtained without labor, or ever will be. I believe that the policy of looking to the State government for appropriations to do this, to do that, and to do everything, is a bad policy. I like the law of New York, to which Mr. Grinnell referred, that makes it a penal offence for any man to neglect to do certain things, — cut the thistles and wastes, etc. I wish we could get such a No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 261 law through in the State of Maine, — and it would not hurt Massachusetts much. Now, on this matter on the removal of fences, I venture to say that the farms in Greenfield will sell to-day for from fifteen to twenty per cent more than they did before they took away their roadside fences and trimmed their trees. A gentleman came into the State of Maine a few years ago to buy a farm. I went with him into two or three sections, and found a few farms for sale, none of which seemed to please him. Afterwards I met him, and he told me he had purchased. I asked him why he bought there. He said, “ Come up, and I will show you.” Going into that section, I hunted him up and asked him again why he bought the place. Said he, “ I will tell you. The guide-boards at the corners of the roads, the school-houses and the roadsides brought me here.” There was hardly a fence to be found anywhere, and the cultivated fields came right up to the roadsides. Last year I drove with my wife through Aroostook County, and for miles and miles I could almost reach from the carriage and pick the wheat heads and the potato blossoms. The fields were cultivated right up to the driveways. There is a picture in my mind of a drive that I took with her a few years ago through another section of the State ; and those farms are not advertised in the papers as being for sale. We drove one day about the first of June, when for miles and miles the petals of the apple- blossoms were drifting down on our heads, and the air was sweet with their fragrance. I assure you it left a pleasant impression upon us both. Now, these are the things, gentlemen, which give value to our premises. Gentlemen of Massachusetts, I should tell the people of Maine, if I were down there, that I believe, if we had given a little more of our thought, a little more of our attention, to these questions, and not spent so much time telling stories around the corner grocery, or discussing the tariff, — if we had put our energies into making our homes more attractive and our roadsides more beautiful, and to securing better roads, as a natural result the farm would have been more attractive to the young 262 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. people. There is one of the great causes, to my mind, of the difficulty which we constantly meet, of young men objecting so much to remaining upon the farm. You see I come back, no matter what the topic of discussion may be, to the young men, because I have a good deal of sympathy for them. 1 am a young man myself, in spite of gray hairs, and hope I always shall be. But I tell you these things are of great importance to us who are interested in New England, believing, as we do, that there is a possible future brighter and better for us, and that we can secure more than we have in the past. In order to do this, we must come right down the a, b, c, commencing with our roads and roadsides, our dooryards and our homes, and then reaching out over our farms ; and in that way I think that the question will solve itself. Let us never forget that — “ God gives no measure unto man unless by meed of labor, And cost of worth has always been the closest neighbor ; Up the broad stairs that value rears stand motives beckoning earth- ward, To summon men to nobler spheres and lead them worthward.” Mr. Grinnell. Mr. Chairman, the time has about arrived for the close of this meeting. I beg to say, as one coming from the western part of the State, that I think it has been a most successful and agreeable meeting. I think the experiment of having it here in the city of Boston has proved a good one, and much of the pleasure and comfort which we have enjoyed here is due to the generosity of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. I therefore move that the thanks of the Board of Agriculture be hereby tendered to the officers of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, for their kind attention in giving us the use of this hall and the facilities appurtenant to it. This motion was carried, and the meeting then adjourned, sine die . No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS —APPENDIX. 263 APPENDIX TO LECTURE ON COUNTRY ROADS. Prepared by the Author, J. B. OLCOTT. * Illustrations are needed for a pumber of points in the fore- going essay ( and discussion ) , wherein the strictures upon modern and bogus engineering will apply only, let us hope, to the past. Roughness of execution may be excused in images which are not intended for models, but merely to suggest ideas that ought not to be unfamiliar to any citizen. To show progress, history is useful, and the inexpert reader may need to see some old forms of road making, designed to keep local labor busy, we may think. Those banks of earth were to be crowned with hedges, and the scheme for a road was a survival from the fortifica- tions of walled cities, applied to the highway borders of English farms. With laws made and provided, it is no new thing for engineers to contrive plans for wringing money and property from those who have such, for the benefit of those who have neither. The following more elaborate plan, from Gillespie, “ Roads and Railroads,” 1858, taken, probably, from some older book, — shows growth in grace, but the acute reader will see about nine troublesome angles on each side that are unnecessary. These are relics of the abolished feudal ages. Let us * Seventeen of these illustration's were shown to the convention in large cartoons. 264 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. beware of feuds from new feudalities. To show that engineering is not immutable, but will change, like other arts, for its bread and butter, this cross-section of Telford’s celebrated Holyhead road is given from Gillespie : — Whether Telford actually did line the road-bottom of Holyhead Pike with larger stones set up on end as above, without puddling and packing them solid in fine gravel or sand , over undrained clays , will not be known unless cuts across his old work are made to show exactly how it was done. But any one who thinks about it must see that, if the bottom course of stone was full of crevices, over wet loam or clay, the soil would be forced up to fill the crevices, and the stone would have to go down under the weight of wheels, leaving corresponding depressions on the finished surface, and making a rough road. Aside from the above question, Telford may have had two practical advantages in that bottom course of large stone. First, He could use hard or soft, tough or brittle rubbish stone from fields or quarries that had little value for any- thing else. Second, The chipping, trimming and setting up of rough stone in that formal way, if it enabled Telford to call in and pay a sort of skilled labor, paviors and the like, he thus secured a large following to sound his praises. The same conditions exist now. We have in some sections immense quantities of tough, laminate, quarry rubbish and field stones, that cannot be easily broken by hand or machine. These may be stuffed in the deep bottom of a road-bed or dumped in a slough- hole to get rid of them, no doubt, and, with plenty of sand and gravel filling, will help hold up a smooth road. But what needs to be dinned and repeated in the public, tax- paying ear, is, that, no matter in whose name or by what system these rubbish and waste stone are set up in a No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS —APPENDIX. 265 “porous drainage layer,” no smooth wheeling can result. Nature abhors vacuums in the foundations of a road, as the public will when it fully understands how the fine top finish slowly rattles into the open-work bottom, leaving a rough surface for travel. The popular mind is so confused concerning so-called “Telford” and “Macadam” roads, that some things are done which would be funny were they not so horribly serious in their consequences. We have seen “ Telford ” road tried with the big stone rip-rapped, sloping or “shingled” in this way, under the wealthiest municipal engineering : — The above section is, of course, lengthwise of the road. Seeing that “regular Telford stone” (as administered in New England), when struck by loaded wheels, would drop into clay, all that will give room for while softened by water and frost, some “ practical man ’’designed this scheme to prevent the trouble by friction. On this road maybe the travel should be all one way ! Some other “ practical man,” and a person of considerable energy and resolution, no doubt, discovering that neither of the above methods were good for anything as practiced , — though either might stand if built solid, — concluded it was just as well to throw the bottom stone down flat, and helter- skelter on the clay, since he always found them dislocated in his old street diggings. The following is a fair sample of his best work on this plan, after one open winter : — The surface of the above cross-section is too smooth. No doubt the steam roller would do such work as that much temporary good ; but can we afford to build roads or streets that are constantly settling, and give them up entirely to 266 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. steam roller perambulations? Yet it is believed some thousands of miles of that kind of road have been made in American cities and towns in their vicinity. The method has been very popular, and we have scarcely begun to look into it. In the country it is now being translated in real life, on precisely the following plan : — dJ&e iCo'/rid Yrwnde/o artid Ud> O — St(rri/ Lj J HuJbc/ = jxoy'r^ , ■ & • V ^QmxiT^tat Sterna feud, //rv 7 Tt iaxL !! -r c. -- The above picture is taken by permission from the report of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture for 1887. The town where that hopeless work was done, without local remark, is now afflicted by street railways. Engineers are giving us “ Telford-Macadam,” and popu- lar ideas of macadamizing roads are equally mixed. None of our great cyclopedias are clear on the subject of “roads.” Zell’s (Philadelphia) has this to say : — Macadamizing. ( Engin .) A method of road-making charac- terized by breaking the stone so small that they may form, when covered with a layer of earth, a smooth, solid mass, — so named after the inventor, Jas. MacAdam, a native of Scotland, 1756- 1836. How can a reading people know about road making while our books cram one sentence with so many misstatements as that sentence has? A State secretary of education, having some roads to make, addressed the writer in exactly these words : “ Your way of making roads, as I understand it, is to dig a trench, fill it with stones, and cover them with dirt.” Hence our pains in this “appendix” are not altogether idle. No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS —APPENDIX. 267 The use of broken stone in layers of assorted sizes over an arched foundation of earth has been recommended by engineering writers and practiced on an innocent public in various places. The theory seems to be that these assorted stones, smaller above the larger to the top, will shut into one another with a telescoping effect under the pressure of travel, and so become very solid. Let us see how this idea looks in a picture : — U * i ^ ****■ w % 1 tfir/c*.. C4 {j'CLcLaw* The foregoing plan, substantially as represented, was faithfully tried with screened broken rock by a city operator under my own observation, With barrows and planks each class of stone was nicely placed by itself in layers to the top. In the words of an eye witness, 4 4 The first four-horse load that ran over it knocked our whole summer’s work to smithereens!” It had been heavily hand-rolled, — that arch made the road weaker, more tottering ; but perhaps a steam roller, with sections as big as the moon, would have telescoped those stone or ground them to powder. Man is a terribly ingenious animal. In his pupae stages he builds, spins and surrounds himself with cocoons of devices which he may cast off and emerge with wings. Everything l^e does is temporary, but worthy of study. His deeds need not be worshipped except as that strengthens the understanding. Many of his works will be simplified if we consider that he is an industrious creature, and often don’t know what to do with his time or money. What he will do, when once his attention is fully turned to country roads, may surpass all his other enterprises. He scarcely realizes, yet, how wide and round the world is ; how many of him there are working, and how his labor, ever to amount to anything, must not be done at cross purposes. Mud on the top of stone is a common occurrence with ignorant and blundering “macadam,” as is the throwing of 268 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub.Doc. retaining walls from the swelling of clay by frost. The next picture is no fancy sketch. It fairly represents parts of the “elevated” road between Hartford and East Hartford, Conn., and is equally a criticism on the engineering of eithei* side or end of the Connecticut River : — O G C ' t 1 C (mXiV-ZIsLA, yrtJuo 'irrrffc , Lo^i^ axl/^ ' J t£j& ?r*£6 cloc^C rvcjtd &0T*>*d*+*t m /?W; The above instance is fully noticed in “A Move for Better Roads” (H. C. Baird & Co., Philadelphia), pages 111 and 112, and a remedy is suggested : “In this case sand is cheap and convenient, while stone must be brought long distances. What else can we do but plant a rock crusher on that causeway, lift the stones and break them fine enough to fill their own crevices, bedding them solid and rain-tight on sand enough to keep the clay still ? ” Coal ashes have been tried on that road since the quoted paragraph was written. Doubtless the trial was not thorough, for the mud continues to come up smiling in travellers’ faces. On long stretches of loamy land, hastily rounded up, without thorough drainage, to receive a coat of conventional “ macadam,” we see the same old foolishness working, as may be well shown in a couple of sketches, such as should appear on every common school black-board right away. No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS —APPENDIX. 269 The sequel — after a couple of freezing and thawing winters — is not so pleasant. Clg ctA*. Wo tlidJoUM , Pasj feenr jCooxA . The too common “ remedy ” for the conditions above is to dump in more stone and dig out the gutters to throw on top. After awhile the stones will begin to ooze out with the mud of the gutters, and by a foolish public they can be used over and again. Road scrapers would be more nearly adorable if once in awhile the men who run them did not destroy better foot- paths than they make, and if they were not so fond of their scraping that they can’t bear to leave a stretch of sandy road untouched, while they know well that flushing ruts with worn-out stuff, just fit for hens to dust in, only makes the poor-enough wheeling heavier. As we have seen three generations of the same family of road-menders, doing these naughty things, we put in a cartoon for their edification : — 270 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. When once such soils are nicely graded, what is left then but sand, gutter- wash or muck for the scraper to bite at ? Road scrapers work best where the soil bakes quickly in spring, and is hard, gravelly and stubborn ; not where the ground can be stirred easily in any open month ; there is the place for carting better road material. Forehanded and alert road-men used to keep two or three furrows of fresh soil or subsoil mellowing in the bottom or outside of gut- ters, to turn upon the highway after a month or two, and not bump themselves with tough sods in the road when they drove to meeting or market. There is a great deal of private road iniquity. Promising children of smart parents — in lack of clean brooks to play in — are spoiled for being good road judges when they are quite small, by sailing boats during showery weather in the gutter walk, constantly’ruined by the garden rake and water. U IHT . H, S' A J ’ T* y. \ ^ Ten two-horse loads of good foot-path or walk-gravel, of a red sandstone character, and without pebbles, were laid in the private road to the writer’s door, three years ago, for experiment. The worn, sandy loam and subsoil the gravel was laid on is about as fine as snuff for twenty feet in depth. For more than two years this fine gravel refused to pack. A rain would settle it hard, but directly it would work up mealy again, and was the cause of much local criticism. During last summer this short strip of road was ballasted at different times, with no more than five or six barrow-loads of pebbles picked from the garden. The most of these were as small as English walnuts. Some were so large as to need breaking on the spot after they were spread, and all were precisely the kind of pebbles that are often raked up and shovelled away, with weeds and turf-trimmings, by ill-trained gardeners, to make piles of rubbish close to their composts. The road has since become hard and smooth, and the grass edges are growing into the gravel. No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS — APPENDIX. 271 Private roads and avenues of the “ gutter- walk ’’pattern are out of place. In cities, with houses close together, gutter walks and roads may be unavoidable, and they should be paved ; but in the country, where there is room enough, walks and roads should be raised and rounded. This prevents mud, dust and ice. Instead of being lower, their centres and entire breadth should be higher, than the bordering grass. In the best private work the edges of roads and walks will blend imperceptibly in grade with the turf, which should take the watershed of the travelled ways at once. It is precisely so with the finished country road. Highway means high way. If we relieve our gardeners and road makers ,from their mis- chievous use of the garden rake on our gravel ways, they will have more time to kill weeds and nourish grass. Where so much is to be done, misdirected labor is simply wicked. In villages we suffer with dust, and handle too much worthless street mud. Except in crowded city thorough- fares, mud and dust might, with due knowledge of grass, be removed occasionally and nicely from rural and suburban gutters in the form of fine turf, and have the highest market value in that form. Instead of dusty and muddy street- fronts, adjoining residents might run their lawn-mowers on easy slopes quite to the verge of wheel tracks. We occa- sionally see neat and painstaking householders doing that already. We have only to be agreeable, and convene to make that a welcome fashion. Grass gutters shed water from the road. Mud does not. By the fine wash and occasional dust of ever so solid and narrow roads, bordering and gutter turf will gradually become too hiodi from the continual accretion of fine material. To O lift this turf handsomely and profitably turf-paring machines are needed. Perfect turf-cutters have been, can be and are made and sold. To enforce this idea, a contrivance of the 272 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. writer’s own — not the best — is introduced here. With the use of it he has cut, carted a mile and laid seventy-five two- horse loads of turf a day, at the cost of good loam. Broad-tired carts for making roads need special attention here, because the road making fraternity looks coldly at the idea, since broad wheels may add to the cost of their outfit. The public will count the cost of rolling work with its car- riages which the maker can’t drive over, and the discerning public will estimate the value and service of roads which are built on narrow tires at their true worth, — generally nothing, oftener less than nothing. But tow,ns and private individuals, who are able and see their way clearly, can and have taken up broad cart wheels, so that they are being slowly introduced. They were always known in parts of New England. Many neaps of ox carts have been cut off, the wheels furnished with wide rims and tires, a pair of forward wheels and tongue added for horses. Possibly fifty of these double teams can be mustered within five miles of the writer’s door. Ox carts are shorter and handier: but a still shorter rig for a pair of horses is shown here, as well worth our patron- age, where much road and earth work is to be done. A one-horse cart is often too weak, and a four-wheeled dump awkward and cumbersome in a gravel or stone pit. A single-horse cart should have five-inch tires. Tires for two- horse or ox carts should be at least six inches wide. No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS —APPENDIX. 273 With all-leather harness, the writer has shifted two horses from single carts to the plough or scraper inside of three minutes. This change is often convenient in road repairs, or any grading of earth whatever. At one time it is said fifty two-horse dumps, on single pairs of wheels, were in use in Canaan, Conn. With three shafts of tough, springy white oak, and all leather harness, dis- carding too heavy pads, the two-horse cart may be the short- est and most convenient strong road team in existence. Schools of design should proceed at once with fear and trembling to work out the details of this conception. The village cart, for one horse, sketched below, is built and used with satisfaction in South Manchester, Conn. The felloes and tires are five to six inches wide, and the axle- tree is bent to carry the body conveniently low for heavy or light loading. Flaring sideboards give capacity for strawy manure, leaves, etc. t 274 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. Surface water in crossing finished roads of the best charac- ter and workmanship may be conducted from grass to grass without any washing at all. The following sketch shows this, which we may well call “The American Plan” — adapted to a side-hill : — (J titJJA. G O-tA j P-tc tS?SLO-^sW\ Jj = rtAX»Xvv, VK*2*±. ht^\ We have plenty of iron pipes for almost every other pur- pose, but nothing with connections fit for this business. Iron men and pattern makers should study these points at once. It is a common thing to pay a hundred dollars for a stone culvert, where there is not room enough, so that a hillock is made in the road, or the culvert soon chokes with mud. Flat gratings clog with sticks and leaves, and, when cut into a flat stone over brick silt-basins, they cost much trouble as well as money. If removed for any reason, the labor is lost ; while, if we had several sizes of iron pipes and connections, the second-hand metal would be as good as new in some place. Cast iron doesn’t rot. It should be generally known that, for the surface drainage of sudden thaws, when the earth is covered with sposh, deep pipes in the frozen ground are good for nothing. They are too cold. Only cast iron pipe will endure being brought near the surface of a road where it can feel the warmth of the weather producing the thaw. Many of our wooden bridges over small streams and rivu- lets might well be turned under the road in pipes of suitable size, arranged as follows. The lips or flanges of cast iron, No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS —APPENDIX. 275 both turned in, would hold them in place, if thoroughly packed in gravel, after the wrought iron bolts are rusted out. For many culverts, inlets and outlets, flattened and divi- ded to fit the slopes of the road, would be smoother and more comely, requiring less to be hidden by garden or wild shrubs. The smaller sizes of these pipes would be much used in parks, cemeteries, private grounds and wherever it is under- stood that surface water causes more than half the expense of road repairs. Pipe-makers will do better to study the predicament our common roads are in, rather than these hasty sketches. The old iron lying unused about the country would furnish all the stock a founder would need to begin with. We fail to realize how destitute the country is of special hand implements for road making. For their needs our sires were better provided with tools a hundred years ago. In the craze of railway building and wholesale