MICHIGAN 



ROADS 





FORESTS 



DETROIT, MICH., FEBRUARY, 1910. 



Michigan Road Makers' Association 



W. W. Todd, Jackson, President; P. T. Colgrove, Hastings, First Vice-P resident; C. C. Rosenbury, Bay City, Second 

 Vice-President; E. N. Hines, Detroit, Secretary; E. B. Smith, Detroit, Treasurer. 



Board of Governors: Royal T. Taylor, Cheboygan; D. L. Case, Detroit; Frank F. Rogers, Lansing; W. W. 

 Traves. Hancock. 



WORKING CONVICTS ON ROADS. 



<; F^r fnrmpr Staff Hifrhwav 



Jl UltllHJ O. -1 -A 1 J C, 1 Ui lilt lJLllt.l..I.*gl"J 



, - , r 



the National Convict Labor Good Roads As- 

 sociation, takes issue with the attitude of 



Judge I W \dams of Kalamazoo. on the 



T , , j j 



question ct convict labor. - 



clared that utilizing prisoners as road builders 

 impracticable and worthy of no consideration, 

 that he "wouldn't consider the preposition i r 

 a minute." and that "in the south a majority 

 of the men are negroes, and f you feed a 

 nejjro and give him a place to sleep he is 

 :led." The learned judge said a gocd deal 

 more quite as unequivocal. 



Mr. Earle fays: "Judge Adams ignorant 

 f the blessings derived by utilizing convict 

 labor in improving cur roads. Truth will pre- 

 vail and Judge Adams will ride over convict 

 made good reads in Mic 

 practicable, and men just as good and just 



P- 



rg - AiH iSv'nf vSia" Is- 'f 



rthe-cL?cra 0t q nVr? n '^"-d 



t alked privately with a number of the pris- 



oners about how they d camp life with 



aid 'We 

 lie'r carnal: Sfeven^ we'l & 



W0fk , iTf' < l X'V V't T bettCr sur r 

 them and better for the state, but I was sur- 



to hear them say t . 



s U hat e th n ev"f r e" S be n tter CO a? thf camp" 



Judge Adlm tens us that the con'vict, in 



the' south are negroes, he will acknowledge 



will he not. that they are not mostly negrces 



in the state of Washington. Ex-Gov. Albert 



rock bluff along the bank of the Methow riv- 

 er this class of work, involving the handling 



,* . _ - _ - . 



by convicts of a large amount of dynamite, 

 The character of the rock encountered was 

 extremely hard, making drilling very slow, 

 Nevertheless, the average daily work accom- 

 plished by each man amounted to 2.42 cubic 



yards of solid rock moved, and 1 cubic yard 

 J, eafth and , oose rock moved Ag tfae best 



bids we had f or mov i ng t hi s rock was $1.50 

 per cul} j c yardj and f or i oose TOC k an( j eartn 

 com bi n ed was 40c, it will be seen that the 

 aver age value of the daily work of a convict 

 was $4 03 W ork accomplished in 2,403 days 

 exc i us j ve o f Sundays and holidays, 5.820 cubic 

 yards reck excavation at $1.50; $8,730, 2,425 

 "cubic yards loose rock and earth excavation 

 at 40C; $ 970j near ] y fifty per cent profit over 

 contr act price. This is just a sample of what 

 ; 5 being done with convicts in a state where 

 negro pr i sone rs do net predominate. 



, <Xow . f usi convicts ; Virginia and 



possible, profitable, practicable 



and beneficial to them and the public it can 



be made so in Michigan and if the men on 



necessary coming from the state, the board 

 last year following the good roads institute. 



- - " _ '-*'- * J 1 1 t 



unanimously decided to build the thorough- 

 fare, which cuts off several miles of travel to 

 the nearest railway station. 



"It is a fact that the roads of the upper 

 peninsula are on the whole better than the 

 lower peninsula," says State Highway Com- 

 ^j^^ Ely . Th ^ is due to the fact that 



the stcne is much harder and contains an ex- 

 tremely small portion of limestone, in corn- 

 parison to that of the southern peninsula. But 

 stone is not the only material with which the 

 upper peninsula's great roads are made. Scme- 

 time ago I was told that the county board of 

 Houghton county, purchased a large amount 

 of quartz rock containing lew grade iron ore 

 and with it constructed a road that is wearing 

 like steel. They secured the quartz by paying 

 a royalty to the mining company but the board 

 members told me the road was one of the 

 cheapest ever built." 



CORDUROY ROADS EXTINCT. 

 All of the state highway reward checks have 



an they change the names of 



th men c risi these boards This mat . 



ter is 8 oi "g to be fou g ht to a finish whether 



^min^or toi "we" ^v^Tt^E 

 That he is Ste^fS th'e peopkTn- 

 & of orderin them it is his business t o 

 fe or(]ers frQm them The men ted in 



this article s P k [ r m ! x P erie " ce ' nct f - rom 

 theory. It ^ might be we 1 for the committee 



*' ^o n^tiga.t e to go ^ f c ^ 

 wh< m ^' ct lab< 



that Michigan could 



according to State Highway Commission- 

 e r Ely, the department was forced to refuse 

 Awards on just two miles of road in Michi- 



<*" "*"< " ^ ^- 

 This road was in one ceunty and the state 



commissioner declares that it failed to come 

 fc standard more because of the 



inefficiency of the county road commissieners 

 ^ cheat the ^ 



and people of the county. Nearly 60 per cent 

 of the county road commissioners are men 

 who are new at the business or who are serv- 



unemployed. This condition is costly to the 

 state and inhuman to the prisoners, utterly 

 at variance with the dictates of common sense 

 and sound business methods in the manage- 

 ment of a penal institution. Work of this 

 character in the open air and sunshine, away 

 frcm prison walls will have a direct return 

 to the public in the value of the reads con- 

 structed. but society at large will reap a richer 

 reward indirectly from the reformatory mflu- 

 ence on the prisoners.' 



"The message met with the approval of the 

 Matures and they passed an enabling act. 

 so in Washington state they build good roads 

 with convict aid It is practicable, and has 

 proved a success, at state camp No. 1, the 

 w. rk selected was the building of a wagon 

 road along the face of a nearly perpendicular 



rp n f 



en t- a " d * e r . f " 

 crete tlle to be uged '" 



,,nW,.H in de the 

 making portlaSd 

 ? con 



-.-, -,. , 



ALGER COUNTY ROAD COST $14,000 A 



MILE. 



The costliest two miles of road built in the 

 state c f Michigan last year and one of the 

 cleverest bits of engineering performed in 

 many months was in Alger county. In the 

 v i c i n "jty o f Munising. a road was cut directlv 

 through a dense swamp at the cost of $14,000 

 a m jie. 



Several years ago the project was put up 

 to t ], e coun ty b~ard of supervisors and it was 

 i augne d at. With but $2,000 of th? amount 



department has learned and many rods of 

 old corduroy have been torn up in the con- 

 strnction of new gravel and macadam thor- 

 oughfares. The state specifications demand 

 that this be done as nothing is allowed in 

 road foundations that will rot. Nearly 99 

 pef cent of the roads bujlt in Mic hi ga n last 



year were made of macadam or gravel. 



Frank N. Ccokson is a candidate for the c 

 fice of county road commissioner of School- 

 craft county. Cookson has been a resident 

 of Schoolcraft county for twenty years and 

 for the past sixteen years has been one of the 

 county's heaviest individual taxpayers. He is 

 a man of keen business judgment, ^ is con- 

 servative. and has had many years' exper- 

 ience in road building and road repairing. 



