No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 397 



road construction that will have an approach to permanency and 

 durability. 



I simply direct your attention to these questions, for, in my judg- 

 ment, as long as the township has to be consulted and has to pay 

 a part of the expense, we cannot possibly succeed in establishing a 

 satisfactory system of permanent road construction, and what I 

 have said corresponds very much with the judgment of the Road 

 Commissioner on this point. 



MR. FEN'STEMAKER: I would say relative to taxing automo- 

 biles, that there is nothing in this report directly recommending a 

 tax of fifty dollars. 



MR. McCREARY: We in Lawrence county were fortunate enough, 

 or unfortunate enough, I don't know yet which it is, but we will 

 know better perhaps towards spring, after the frost comes out. We 

 had half a mile of this new road built last summer; I believe it is the 

 only half-mile in the county. I presume that we must have had 

 some pull. I don't know how that is, but I think we just happened 

 to ask for it before anybody else; I think that was the reason we 

 got it, and we got it on a certain road. I drive over it every time 

 I drive into New Castle. They hauled limestone to make this road, 

 and it cost a few dollars less than |4,000 for half a mile, and we think 

 it cost too much money. This feature of the case may rectify itself 

 further along; of course it was new business, and there didn't seem 

 to be any bids, hardly, for this work. The only man that bid for it 

 got it, and he certainly got it convenient to material, and he ought 

 to have made plenty of money. There's another thing. While it 

 has not been in use only two or three months, three months perhaps, 

 I noticed the last time I drove over it, that there was quite a de- 

 pression where a single horse walked in the middle of the track, 

 and you can see the depression where the wheels run, and it looks 

 to me — of course I don't want to condemn it until after it is tried — 

 but if we get as much freezing weather as we had last winter, it does 

 look to me as though that it will all be cut up in holes. Perhaps there 

 v/as not enough stuff put on. The finishing stuff had to be shipped, 

 and a carload of it would go a long ways, because there was very 

 little dusted over. I notice that there are pieces of limestone as 

 big as eggs and larger, and when a buggy would strike them, they 

 seemed to be kind of working up on the surface. The cost to the 

 farmers of the township was pretty heavy; and that is not all. Our 

 township runs in a peculiar shape; it is long and narrow. It abuts 

 down against the city limits of New Castle, and there is another 

 main road, a road south that is fully as much traveled as our road 

 is, and those people over there of course have to pay just as much 

 as wC'do, and they never use our road, because it don't run where 

 we want to go. I think there is an injustice in that; these people 

 who live down there had to pay the bulk of that money for this road 

 and they get no benefit from it, while we are benefited, and the main 

 half mile of our township runs pretty near to the Mercer county 

 line; and since this piece of road is built there, it drains the whole 

 of the northeastern part — that section of the country. There is an 

 injustice in this which it looks to me, ought to be remedied in some 

 way. 



