388 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



fragments, make the best road material known. In England they employ 

 the genus tramp at the work of breaking stone in pay for his lodging and 

 meals. In this country we have not yet got to that point where we dare say 

 the tramp must earn his living, and consequently have no such facilities for 

 getting stone broken. Yankee ingenuity has, however, furnished us a stone 

 breaker, fully equal to the tramp; armed with steel jaws and worked by 

 steam, it grinds the hard-heads into fragments as easily as you could crum- 

 ble bread with your jaws. The cost of breaking stone with this machine is- 

 about 25 cents per cubic yard. 



The method of constructing a broken stone road is exactly as described 

 for a gravel road. Broken stones require a longer time to consolidate than 

 gravel, but finally form a much harder nnd better road. I am fully con- 

 vinced that in many portions of the State it would be also a cheaper road. 

 [Note — At Jonesville, Michigan, large quantities of stone are being broken in 

 a stone crusher, and shipped to Ohio and Indiana to be used in making 

 macadamized roads.] 



OUR ROAD TAX LAWS. 



Our system of repairing and constructing roads, is, as well known, estab- 

 lished by the statute laws of the State. This system is so familiar that I 

 need waste no words in describing it. Neither will it be necessary to waste 

 time in any description of how the provisions of the law are enforced. 



The law has been bitterly assailed as being erroneous in its fundamental 

 principle of requiring or permitting the tax to be paid in labor. It has been 

 urged, and doubtless with a great deal of truth, that the labor required by 

 the law has not been forthcoming and that even when honestly put forth, 

 most of it was wasted through misdirection. Strong efforts have been made 

 from time to time to change the method of paying road tax, from labor to 

 cash, and with the idea of working the roads by contract. These proposed 

 methods have invariably met with a cold reception in the Legislature, and 

 every effort to change or revise our present laws, so as to make the payment 

 of our road tax in money obligatory, has met with defeat. 



This method of paying road taxes in labor no doubt originated in feudal 

 times, when one of the duties imposed on the tenant by the lord of the 

 manor, was to maintain the roads in a passable condition for the troops of 

 the domain. 



While the principle of paying road tax in labor has been abandoned 

 almost universally in Europe, since the beginning of the present century, it 

 has been retained by nearly every one of our States, and judging from 

 present appearances it is likely to be retained in our own State for years to 

 come. While the arguments that are advanced against our present system 

 are weighty and difficult to meet, still this fact remains, that there are 

 serious objections to be urged against any system of working our roads by 

 contract. Our system, even if not faulty in its underlying principle, has 

 not given us the results that might fairly have been expected from the labor 

 actually expended. In other words, a certain per cent — in some cases a 

 very large per cent — has been misdirected, misapplied or wasted. It is use- 

 less to give exanples of this, there being very few road districts in existence 

 but what have experienced such evils. This results largely from putting 

 in incompetent men as road overseers, and by adopting no general system 



