FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART I. 59 



Now, I am sorry to say that I am not able to give you the- 

 best detailed method of placing those tile; but, I think, any one who 

 has had a little experience in tiling fields can not make any very serious 

 mistake. In the first place, I would place along the road a single line 

 on one side, and if time developed that more was needed, I would place 

 another on the other side. Now, I do not care whether the water sinks 

 to the tile from the surfacei or not; it is the water that is below you 

 want to take care of; not the surface water. Your road boss should keep 

 the surface smooth, sufficiently smooth from time to time, so that this 

 surplus water would be shedded through the ditches. It is this surplus 

 water on a cut up road that makes it bad. I do not say that tile will 

 not take the water out better in some places than in others, but you get 

 the tile well laid, with sufficient fall, and then if one will not do it, put 

 in two, and if two will not do it, put in three, and then, my friends, you 

 will not have the batch of figures given us from the stage tonight, as to 

 the cost of the highways. 



Mind you, I do not want to disparage the work these men have done,, 

 nor the figures they have given; they have more experience; I am talk- 

 ing as a novice. But it matters not whether you are to do macadamiz- 

 ing or what^ you are to do by way of further improvement, there is no 

 question in my mind but what this under-drainage is the best part of the 

 improvement. We can do this draining, and it will not only benefit the 

 road, but it will benefit the fields. 



Now, I will hasten away from this branch of the subject to spend a 

 few moments on another, concerning which I feel a very deep interest 

 at this time, because here in Towa the question as to how we shall do it 

 is even a more serious question than what you shall do. The Thirtieth 

 General Assembly will meet now in a few days. There is a great deal of 

 serious talk over the State, looking to the repeal of the new road law. 

 Now, my friends, I want you to think what that means to us. If the new 

 road law is inadequate, and you have something better to put in its place,, 

 by all means repeal it and put it in its place; but, in the name of all 

 that is progressive, all that is desirable in the State ot Iowa, do not 

 repeal that law until you have something better to put in its place. Any 

 law, if it is carefully considered by your legislature, is entitled to a fair 

 trial. 



Let us look at it a moment. In the first place, any law that touches 

 the people directly, as a general road law does, can not be expected to 

 work smoothly from the start. Again, our trustees and road bosses of 

 Iowa were almost wholly inexperienced and without information gener- 

 ally as to its application, until they came right up to the time the work 

 had to be begun. The job was a new one and had not time to attract 

 eflacient and good men for overseers or directors. Again, this has been 

 one of the most difficult seasons in the history of the country to get 

 good men in any and all lines of work. Again, we had just passed 

 through a series of dry years and almost all of the small culverts had 

 gone out. and because of the dry seasons there was no need to replace 

 them. The excessive rains in the past season required this work to be 



