22 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 



fourth year that you can tell the distinction. The point I want to make, 

 there is an increasing benefit; the longer you keep this thing up the 

 better the road will be. Now, it don't get any nicer to drive over, but 

 it will stand more hard travel. 



There has been mere or less argument concerning the time that a road 

 cared for in this manner will remain in good order. But here is the one 

 thing that we should bear in mind; we should bear in mind that it is 

 better under all circumstances than it would have been if it hadn't been 

 dragged. Men come to me with special cases and they say to me, would 

 the split log drag fix that road, so that I could haul loads as much again 

 over it under all circumstances? I say, that I don't know; I will say, if 

 you use the split log drag over any kind of a road, you can haul that 

 kind of a load over it longer than if you don't use it. 



Now, it may interest you to know how we happened to get on to this 

 way of taking care of the roads in Missouri. I have told you I was accus- 

 tomed to Macadam and stone when I moved to Missouri. Well, the first 

 year or two I was very much bothered, because most of the country laid 

 out. Do you know what that means? You older men know what it is 

 for the country to be unfenced. At that time we used to go across the 

 ridges. We did occasionally have a bad place. The only implements we 

 used at that time were an ax and a spade We took the ax and cut 

 willows and threw into those places, and then we spaded on enough earth 

 to keep the horses from hurting themselves. After a while the railroads 

 came through; then a few miles of land was fenced, and the travel concen- 

 trated between the fences; then came our. trouble. ,1 have seen it so 

 bad, that I would leave the horses and go on foot. There was a clay hill 

 over a half mile up which many times I found it necessary to rest my 

 team hitched to a buggy. I think I have seen that hill in such a condition 

 that it would pretty nearly stall a team going down hill. All this grated 

 on my nerves; it made me impatient. I sought some way out. In the in- 

 quiries I made one result was the sending to use of a big grader; in Ne- 

 braska they call them blade machines. That made a very great improve- 

 ment with us. There were still times when it was better to go down 

 horseback than in a buggy. For years I carried a spade or hoe in the bug- 

 gy. I found I could prevent a great deal of damage by just opening the 

 side of the road. You all know, and I remember particularly a place where 

 my land corners with my neighbors, two hedges came together. There 

 was a place there where the snow lodged, and unless somebody went there 

 and turned the water to one side, it would remain there. Somebody used 

 a word here a while ago that I thought applied to me. He said he "stum- 

 bled on to something." I stumbled into the matter of dragging roads. I 

 went out one morning and hitched my team to a contrivance that had been 

 made by one of the hands. The contrivance was made out of a pump 

 stock and a piece of oak; three pieces of six inch fence boards had been 

 nailed on' ttj it. I hitched on to that thing, so that when the team was 

 driven with one horse each side of the wheel track, this pump stock busi- 

 ness followed at an angle of 45 degrees. Driving along in this manner, 

 the tops were broken off and a great many low places were filled up with 



