FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 543 



THE ROAD PROBLEM. 



Jas. Hearst, in Wallaces' Farmer. 



Each age has its own problems to solve. When I came into Iowa forty 

 years ago the things demanding our most serious attention were how to get 

 food and shelter for the growing fa rally, and what was true of one family 

 then was true of the entire community. 



Those pioneer days have passed away and new things claim our attention . 

 Today railroad discrimination, rebates and combines, extortion of coal 

 barons, Standard Oil infamy, the balanced ration, baby beef, and how to 

 raise it, the doctrine of heredity, audits function in the process of repro- 

 duction in both vegetable and animal life, are some of the things that con- 

 front the thinker on these opening days of the new century. 



Among other things the highway and how best to make it, is one of the 

 burning questions of the hour. In discussing the subject of good roads and 

 how to make them we must take note of the conditions and environments that 

 surround us. In a large part of our State we have very little available 

 gravel suitable for making highways. The sand along our creeks and rivers 

 is too fine to be of any large value, and if it was good there is not enough 

 of it to apply on a very large per cent of our roads. Crushed limestone for 

 many localities is an unattainable article, and when used is far from being 

 an ideal macadam. 



Our soil when wet and subjected to travel works into mud, the depth 

 determined by the character of the subsoil. I have in mind one of the 

 streets of my own town that was last spring fenced oflE from travel; and a 

 strip of road from Grundy county over which no travel was done for a 

 number of weeks. These places have a clay quicksand subsoil and last 

 spring became simply impassable. 



Now what is the remedy? Did you ever see any better roads than we 

 have had for the last four or five months? We all know the reason. There 

 has been no rain to wet them up, and nobody ever saw finer highways than 

 we have enjoyed this last fall and winter. Nature in this case did a fine job 

 and if we make a large success in the same direction we must imitate her. 

 In other words, get the water out of our roadways. Well, somebody says, 

 how are you going to do that; and now that is part of the question I wish to 

 answer. 



But first please let me give you a little of the philosophy of underdrain- 

 ing. The function of the tile is to remove the surplus water from the soil. 

 As the moisture is withdrawn from the ground the first part to become dry 

 is the top, and as the process goes on if no more water is added at the top 

 finally all the moisture above the tile is removed. These are facts which 

 nobody will think of contradicting, and as we accept their truthfulness let 

 us apply their action to a piece of bad highway. We go in about ten feet 

 from the ditch on one side of the road and put in a course of three-inch tile 

 not less than three feet deep, and then go to the other side of the road and 

 repeat. This in a sixty-four foot road brings the tile something like forty 

 feet apart, and the middle of road between them. Right here is where 

 these tile get in their beneficient work. As soon as the ground freezes in 



