456 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



and it is compact. When the rains cease and the sun and atmosphere 

 dries the surface you have a smooth track to use. Because you have 

 the smooth track, it is leveled up hy the next rain. That is to say, 

 you have a very much less part of the water going into the roadbed 

 bed. 



I have in mind several stretches of road in my neighborhood 

 that were so bad as to be absolutely impassable in every wet season. 

 For weeks and weeks we would have stretches of road that would be 

 practically impassable. There would be parts of wagons and other 

 vehicles strewn by the side of the road where effort had been made to 

 get heavy loads through. We got our road commissioner to put a stretch 

 of four-inch tile along that road, and it has improved to what is now 

 one of the best roads in that section of the country. It is an elegant 

 roadway. Below the surface a little way in many places we have an 

 impervious clay, that is, so nearly impervious that the water percolates 

 down to that and flows along on it until it comes out on a side hill. 

 It so softens the soil that it will be cut into by the wheels and become 

 miry. In several instances we have put in surface tile, and in every 

 instance they have absolutely wiped the muddy place out of existence 

 and transformed that miry place into one of the best of- roads. A rural 

 mail carrier was unable to get through with the mail on the highway, 

 and had to pass through the fields at the side 'of the road. A few of us 

 appealed to the trustees, and finally we got a line of tile down that 

 road. In two days after that tile was laid the carrier was back on the 

 road. It was one of the finest pieces of road in that section after the 

 tile was placed. What does it do for the fields? I have in mind a field 

 that was situated between my home and one of my own lands. Conse- 

 quently I passed it almost daily. Two years ago one half of that wet 

 field was tiled. Two lines of four-inch tile were put through one eighty. 

 The east half of the eighty was in corn. The man farming this land 

 started to plow, and when he got out about the center of the eighty he 

 was stopped by the mud. He then planted the east half while waiting 

 for the west half to dry. The corn was eighteen inches high in this 

 part of the field while water would be showing in every furrow and 

 every depression on the west half. Now if it will do that for the field, 

 you will see what it will do for the highway. It will do more for the 

 highway than for ihe field, because it makes the surface suitable for 

 drainage. The tile not only takes care of what water goes into the 

 sub-soil, but it keeps the surface in shape to shed the water off into 

 the side ditches. One of the favorable features of this tiling question 

 is this. In the road question in Iowa, of course we are necessarily 

 cutting and trying. We are yet using the natural surface with but 

 very little change, — simply putting in our culverts and bridges where 

 they are needed. We are facing this road question. You can not 

 mak€?> a mistake in tile draining. If you put in your tile right it is 

 money well spent, no matter what you put on after that. No matter 

 what kind of surface you put on if you use macadam, your tile drain 

 is not thrown away. I am firm in the conviction that there is no kind 

 of surface improvement that ought to go on until you have first thor- 



