1902.] GOOD ROADS. 43 



stone in piles in the different districts and have it ready for 

 the crusher; then the town officials, with the assistance of the 

 farmers, could take their own time and opportunity in placing 

 it upon the roads. As I have been around this last year I 

 have become more and more convinced that if we are to con- 

 duct the system of State highways, the State will have to 

 own its own crushers. We cannot produce this stone at a 

 low cost without a traction engine to draw the crusher and 

 the necessary tools. A portable crusher can be set up in- 

 side of two or three hours, and these machines can be used 

 to crush the stone where it is needed, leave this stone in lieu 

 of an appropriation, and then proceed to another town and 

 do the same thing there. I believe that the whole question 

 of improvement to the highways of the State will be much 

 simplified by something in this direction. 



Perhaps I ought to say in case there may be somebody 

 in this audience who has assisted in the building of gravel 

 roads, and is not acquainted with our method of construction, 

 that the system employed by this State is to lay our best 

 gravel road in three courses, two three-inch courses and one 

 two-inch course, putting the larger stone at the base, a 

 smaller grade of stone on the next course, and then a layer 

 that will go through a one-inch ring on the top. Every 

 course should be graded up, with the first and second courses 

 of eighty per cent, gravel and twenty per cent, bonding ma- 

 terial. The top or finishing course should be sixty per cent, 

 gravel and forty per cent, bonding. A good, firm rolling 

 should be given to each course. Unless care is taken in 

 properly constructing your road you will have one of those 

 gravel roads which walk up to the buggy and shake hands 

 with you. A good rule to observe in the selection of all 

 gravel from the bank is found in taking only that gravel from 

 the bank which requires a pick to dislodge it. 



We spend a great deal of our State money for Macadam 

 roads. I have often thought if John Macadam had the op- 

 portunity we have in la3dng stone roads what a happy man he 

 would have been. It generally took three months to get a 

 road which John Macadam built, in the early days of Mac- 

 adam construction, in a suitable condition for travel. He had 

 no crusher or screens to properly reduce the stone to the size 

 required, and the only way that he had of reducing the stone 



