42 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



existing laws cannot readily provide the funds for executing. Again, 

 no plans for improving our roads that do not provide for utilizing to the 

 fullest extent the work already done should ever be tolerated. Accord- 

 ingly, in the following discussion I shall keep in view the fact that, for 

 many years to come, the majority of our roads must be of common 

 earth and that no money can possibly be wasted in constructing the best 

 kind of earth roads excepting that they will some day be utilized as the 

 foundations for better roads and covered with gravel or stone. In short, 

 it is safe to say that no better earth roads can be made than well graded, 

 properly and thoroughly drained road beds made ready to receive the 

 metal which would convert them into first-class gravel or macadam 

 roads. 



Notwithstanding what has been s'aid regarding present laws and exist- 

 ing roads, it is quite apparent, even to the casual observer, that lack 

 of well defined plans results in doing piuch needless work and doing 

 over time after time work which would have been finished at the first 

 attempt and never again disturbed, had the first officer been working 

 in accordance with plans and specifications which clearly outlined to 

 him just what must have been done to make the job complete, satis- 

 factory and permanent. 



While many counties in Michigan are now working under the county 

 road law and producing excellent results, the road district here re- 

 ferred to, so that it may be more general in its application and more 

 easily undertaken, will simply comprise an ordinary township. 



Plans should consist of maps showing the location and width of all 

 roads in the township, the nature of the material composing them, the 

 location, kind, and size of all drains, covered or open, as well as cul- 

 verts and bridges and should include a system of profiles of each road, 

 showing where and just how much cutting and filling will be required 

 to reduce the steepest grades to about six feet in one hundred. There 

 is little excuse in Michigan for grades exceeding that limit and where 

 such grades cannot be secured on old road lines at reasonable cost, new 

 locations should be made. 



It may be urged that such plans will be expensive. This is easily 

 answered by saying that the cost would not be so great as might be 

 supposed. It would, at least, be within the reach of an ordinary town- 

 ship. Even if such plans were to cost |1,000, it would be found 

 cheaper to buy them and follow them than it is to do work in an un- 

 skilful and unsatisfactory manner and continue to repeat failures and 

 make over again old experiments, year after year at great expenditure 

 of money and labor in attempting to do road work for which, a few 

 months after it is done, there is little or nothing to show. 



That many road districts in Michigan do excellent work cannot be 

 denied. In fact, there are districts that could not do much better with 

 the various kinds of earth and gravel roads, under the most approved 

 system that could be devised. Such districts, however, are the excep- 

 tion and not the rule and their location is so checkerboarded over the 

 State, that but little real good is derived from them. No road fulfils 

 its mission unless it is all good. A good mile here and a bad mile there 

 is of but small value, for every farmer in starting for market necessarily 

 loads for the bad mile. 



While it is impossible, under any system, to make all roads good at 

 once, with suitable plans to work from on which each road was not 



