234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



time, that we ought to give hand labor a better chance. "VVe 

 must make better tools, furnish more thorough training, con- 

 tinuous employment and higher wages for precision and 

 skill, that will attract expert hands and acute minds into the 

 stone-road business. Men are wanted who can appreciate 

 M'Adam's principles, and apply them to the highway. It 

 is hard telling whether our roads suffer most from ignorant 

 leaders and labor, or inattention of the public. 



To read the claims of our steam-roller brethren for their 

 machines, makes one wonder how either Telford or M'Adam 

 ever made a decent bit of road before steam traction was 

 invented. And nothing needs to be more fully explained 

 at the present time, to raise the hopes of our people, than 

 the fact that with dump carts running on broad tires, having 

 ten or fifteen hundred-weight on each wheel, the stone itself 

 can be made to roll its own road solid without any 

 additional expense whatever. "Wheelmen should see to it 

 that factories for broad cart wheels are established in every 

 State right away, or arrangements made for importing them 

 free of duty. 



The pamphlet circular of the Aveling & Porter steam 

 roller, in its certificate of award from the international jury 

 of our Centennial Exhibition, endorses the sterling princi- 

 ples of the broad-tired cart wheel in these terms: — 



"The principle of dividing the rolling surfaces as much as POS- 

 SIBLE IS Of GREAT IMPORTANCE IN ROAD MAKING, since the Weight 



thus distributed penetrates, so to speak, beneath the surface, finds 

 out the weak spots, and causes an even, uniform condition under- 

 neath, while the inequalities of the surface can be overcome by 

 the addition of metals in the holes." 



It is a pleasure to recognize this brilliant common sense 

 among the higher engineering circles of Japan, Spain, Great 

 Britain, the Argentine Republic and the United States, rep- 

 resented on the international jury. 



In an immense country like ours, where millions of miles 

 of quagmire roads and streets shine with thick and slab mud 

 in the sun of every open winter ; where our skeleton of a 

 population is scattered over vast surfaces by railway, it 

 makes the owner of valuable stone-crusher patents (capable 



