FAKMERS' INSTITUTES. 109 



The poor conditiou of our common roads is due almost entirely to the absence 

 of any general system, either of construction, repairing, or working. 



You are doubtless not only well acquainted with those portions of our laws 

 that relate to highways, but you know much in regard to their practical work- 

 ings. Summed up briefly, they are as follows : The general superintendency 

 of the highways and bridges is given in each township to the commissioner of 

 highways, who is elected for one year, by ballot, and whose duties consist in a 

 proper subdidsion of his townshij) into districts, and the general direction of 

 the work. He may be lined for any neglect of duty. 



At each town meeting an overseer for each road district is chosen, viva voce, 

 whose duty is to take immediate charge of the work in his district, and see that 

 each inliabitant discharges his road tax as provided by law. He is also liable 

 for any injury or damage occasioned by his neglect of duty. 



Tliis looks very well on paper, but you all knoAV how it works in practice. 

 The tax -payers are summoned to work on the road, not at the season of the year 

 Avhen their work will do the most good, but to suit their own convenience, be 

 that time early in the spring, in midsummer, or in autumn. The men fre- 

 ([uently act as tliough they had no taste for the work, and seem determined to 

 do as little as the overseer will accept ; and as he is from their own number, and 

 apt to be among them in another yeai*, he is satisfied with a very small amount. 

 The day's work done on the road would not generally be accepted by the very 

 man who does it, (if he had to pay for it) for more than one-half or one-third 

 of a day's work ; and it is little wonder that our roads are no better to-day than 

 they were twenty years ago. 



It is the general custom to change the overseers each year. The effect of this 

 is to keep the road district trying new plans and commencing improvements, 

 but finishing nothing, and frequently, instead of improving roads they are posi- 

 tively injuring them. For instance, one overseer determines to put all the work 

 of his district in filling up a hole now covered with logs. He removes the logs, 

 but the work is insufficient to finish the Job, and it has to lay over another year. 

 His successor, thinking something else needs more attention, — perhaps he is an 

 advocate of turnpiking ; at least he throws the whole force to work at something 

 else in some other portion of the district, so that among the different plans, and 

 between the different overseers, no one plan is carried into execution, but the 

 beginnings of many are worked out on the road, often entirely ruining and ren- 

 dering nearly impassable a formerly good thoroughfare. 



Again, our overseers are seldom if ever competent to superintend road -making. 

 The making of roads is a life study ; and if we expect or wish competent road 

 superintendents we must prepare to pay them ; and if we wish good, fair days' 

 work done, we must abolish this old feudal system of working out the road tax, 

 and have our work done by contract and pay for it in money. "There is no 

 excellence Avithout labor," is an old maxim, but as ajoplicable to road -making 

 as to any other jiursuit of life. 



It is useless to discuss the best methods of making broken stone roads or 

 gravel roads or Telford roads, until we feel we have within us a power that can 

 be made to "\\ork uji and develop any systematic plan of true road- imj^rovement 

 that may be adopted. That power will only arise when legislative action shall 

 have abolished our present system. 



Characteristics of a Good Road. 



The only essential thing, so far as the traffic is concerned, is the surface. Of 

 course tlie foundation has much to do with the durability of a road, and even 



