24 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



ground, and the larger chunks and clods were carried over and deposited 

 in the middle of the road. When I got to my neighbor's front gate I 

 turned and came back over the other wheel track. I kept that up that 

 summer, and the next winter I didn't do anything. It took me two 

 years to learn I could accomplish as much in the winter as summer. The 

 next spring I started again. I didn't go half way down the first hill 

 until the thing spread. I remember, I felt very much provoked. How- 

 ever, the results I had secured the year before gave me so much satis- 

 faction that I immediately set about for another apparatus. It just hap- 

 pened we had a box-elder cut down, a shade tree which laid out at the 

 wood pile. It was a crooked tree, and when it split, it split with a wind 

 in it. Nevertheless I succeeded in making use of it, the picture of which 

 you have seen so many times, and which has done more than anything 

 else to make the road famous. 1 used it for five years and when it did 

 break it broke right off like a cob. I mention these facts in order that 

 no man may think he doesn't have anything to do it with. 



A gentleman down at Mt. Ayr, Iowa came to town; he had made his 

 piece of road famous; he made it out of a willow log. He said to me it just 

 cost him twelve cents. Presently the neighbors began to take notice; it 

 was however not until the end of the fourth year that any of the neighbors 

 began to drag the road. At the end of five years, as I recall it, just 

 about six weeks after this time, the farmers institute was held in our 

 town, and at the suggestion of Mr. Geo. B. Ellis, a corps of interested 

 lecturers came out to look at this road; that resulted in my address at 

 Chillicothe, and that was the beginning of the split log drag work. 



I am so well satisfied that I am talking to a great many men who have 

 tried the log drag, that I hesitate to say many things. There are three 

 things absolutely necessary in order to have a perfect earth road. Now, 

 it doesn't make any difference which one of these things I mention first, 

 because, they are, as near as I can tell, all of equal importance. You 

 cannot take any one of the three away without destroying the road in the 

 end. These things are, smoothness, hardness and convexity. It must 

 be hard, smooth and oval. If it is not oval, it will soon go to pieces. It 

 may be oval, smooth and not hard, and you know how they are when 

 there is about a foot or two feet of soft earth in the middle of them; 

 when it is comparatively smooth and not hard. If you have them smooth 

 and not hard, as I suggested a while ago, they won't stay in order. Under 

 all circumstances they should be given the three qualities. The reason 

 why we haven't had these qualities in our roads before are two. One is, 

 we didn't know that these qualities would bring results; the other 

 reason is, we didn't know that these qualities could be given, except by 

 the use of expensive means. By the split log drag we have learned a 

 very cheap way of improving the roads; a cheap implement; an imple- 

 ment which only costs one, made, from 75 cents up. A gentleman in cen- 

 tral Missouri made a dozen or more of them and they cost 75 cents a 

 piece. It isn'^t so essential that the drags shall be made out of any 

 particular stuff, as it is that they should be made in a particular way. 



Now, while I am speaking about drag, I hope you and your neighbors 



