FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 465 



The problem before us is to get the excess water out of the grounds 

 You can not properly drain the field without benefit to the roads, nor can 

 you properly drain the roads without benefit to the fields nearby. We now 

 confront more cltosely the problems of field drainage, in view of the fact 

 that the legislature now sitting will beyond question pass a new drain- 

 age law. Because of our inability to produce paying crops in many por- 

 tions of the State without drainage forces, the vital importance of this 

 question is before us, whether we will or not. I know that many mem- 

 bers of the legislature are looking to the results of this drainage con- 

 vention as a very much needed guide for what shall be done in the 

 legislature this winter. A large number, at the time of the passage of 

 the Townsend bill, were seeking not very accurately for information, 

 but when the question was brought before them they sought to know 

 just what was needed. Perhaps any drainage bill is necessarily some- 

 what voluminous. It seemed to us; at least, those of us located in the 

 more rolling sections, that the Townsend bill wa& very voluminous. A 

 bill that would adequately meet our Vv^ants might possibly fail wholly 

 to meet your wants. I spent considerable time for thirty days two 

 years ago on the drainage problem, but I was handicapped at the time 

 as to what you. folks required in other parts of the State. We are' 

 looking to you to indicate and demonstrate to us what is required in 

 your section. 



As to this road problem, proper, for I must talk to you a little 

 on' that question, it divides itself into two divisions. First, the 

 surface drainage; second, under drainage. Under the old road law. 

 you remember that we worked the roads not because the roads needed 

 it, that is. not lohen they needed it. We did not go out at any particular 

 time because the roads at that time needed our attention, but because 

 the time had arrived when we usually worked out our road tax. When 

 a class of men engaged in any particular line or avocation, have any 

 side task that is imposed upon them, that side task has to abide its 

 time. We worked the roads not when the roads were in best condi- 

 tion to be improved. Consequently, when the roads were seamed and 

 gashed with the wheel tracks, when it -needed leveling up, we were 

 often in our fields and the roads waited. When the rain came these 

 seams held the water in the road and forced it into the roadbed. Under 

 the present system one of the fortunate features, as contemplated, is 

 that the roads would receive attention when they needed it. not when 

 it suited the convenience of road laws to work them. In the rolling, 

 districts in the southeastern part of the State our roads receive incal- 

 culable damage by reason of the water on the hillsides going down 

 the center of the road instead of down the side ditches. There is a 

 little rivulet down the wheel track and on down over the expensive 

 grade. It was left to continue for weeks and months. To my mind a 

 very much more important side of this drainage question is not the 

 surface, however important that may be, but it is the under-drain. the 

 tile drain that takes the water out of the sub-soil. It is simply mar- 

 velous to me that there is such wonderful benefit from the underground 

 drainage of highways. You get that surplus water out of the roadbed 



