FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 47 



many teams pass to and fro lieavil}' laden, will accommodate the travel 

 if the ballasted section is sixteen feet wide. There is no necessity for 

 roads to be ballasted twenty and twenty-four feet, outside of city streets. 

 It is useless expenditure of public money, altogether unnecessary, and 

 not required for the accommodation of the traveling public. An eight- 

 foot road, ballasted six inches with finely crushed stone, all of which will 

 pass through a one and one-half inch ring, can be constructed where the 

 stones are easily accessible, for about |500 a mile. This will not be an 

 ideal road, but it will be far superior to the roads that commonly exist, 

 and will serve the public about as well as if the construction cost from 

 $1,500 to $2,000 per mile. A good road, therefore, must be solid at all 

 seasons of the year. The most economical method of securing this must 

 be determined by the circumstances that exist in each individual locality. 



The third essential feature of an ideal road is that it shall be of "easy 

 grade. ■' A single elevation of twenty per cent, grade, on a road other- 

 wise satisfactory, is fatal. The number of pounds that a team can haul 

 is determined by the steepest hill over which the load must pass. Hun- 

 dreds of dollars have frequently been spent in the effort to make an un- 

 usual gi-ade passable when a slight change in the location of the road 

 would have given a satisfactory solution to the problem at scarcely any 

 cost. 1 have in mind three localities in my home township in which 

 the public roads pass over the points of hills requiring grades that are 

 greatly in excess of any other in the entire distance that the roads 

 traverse. These roads were laid out by a commission appointed by the 

 Court, presumably chosen because of their superior qualifications in the 

 matter of locating public roads. One of each commission was a civil 

 engineer, and yet if you had taken a boy of twelve years of age and had 

 placed him upon the highest point where any one of these roads cross 

 the hill, and asked him to indicate where the road ought to go, would 

 instantly have pointed out a level route around the hill. The road was 

 placed in the location it occupies by reason of the fact that the line 

 between properties passed over the points of these respective hills and 

 the owners would not permit the road to encroach upon their prop- 

 erties so as to cut off' a fraction from the main body of their farms. It 

 would have been far cheaper for the township authorities to have pur- 

 chased the entire acreage cut off, at the excessive price of |500 an acre, 

 rather than to have permitted the road to have passed over these hills. 

 The owners of these lands should have been given to understand by the 

 road commission that this highway was being constructed not for their 

 particular benefit, nor for that of the present generation alone, but for 

 the thousands and tens of thousands of citizens who were to use it 

 through all time to come. Easy grades are essential characteristics in 

 any road that is worthy of being called ideal. 



The fourth quality is that it shall be "smooth." It may be dry, it may 

 be solid, it may be of easy grade, but it may be so intolerably rough as 

 to be practicably impassable. If loose stones are in the way, or rocks 

 project, or if the ballast has not been well prepared, or if the road-bed 

 has been uneven in its construction, the road itself cannot be called 

 ideal. Examples of roads of the character here described can be seen 

 in many of the paved streets of our cities and larger towns where the 

 foundations have given way, and the ballast or paving has sunk in places, 

 making the street uneven and rendering it entirely unsuitable for public 



