78 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



knowledge of the best way to make a road, suppose tlicy have 

 had the time, materials and money necessary. For instance, the 

 other day, I saw a surveyor, in my own town, grading up the 

 road by the water side, immediately in front of Plymouth Rock. 

 He had to grade it up some two feet and he was actually filling 

 in chip dirt. 1 called his attention to it, and told him that 

 would not make a road. " Oh," said he, " I am going to cover 

 it over with gravel," and he did, some two or three inches deep, 

 and left the chip dirt to rot under it. That man thought he 

 was doing a good thing. He was getting rid of the chip dirt, 

 if nothing else. The trouble I find, is, that our selectmen and 

 highway surveyors, as a general thing, are ignorant of what a 

 good road is, and what would be the best way to make a good 

 road, if they had the material and the money. If we can teach 

 them how to build a good road, in the first place, we do a good 

 thing. In the next place, we have got to teach the people of 

 Massachusetts, that the road which costs the most, the money 

 being judiciously expended, is the cheapest in the end. Mr. 

 Flint does not propose, I do not propose, in calling the attention 

 of the people of Massachusetts to this matter, to lead the towns 

 into debt. We do not propose to ask tlicm to lay out as much 

 money, in the next twenty years, as they would lay out under 

 the present system. Why, Mr. President, it is the interest on 

 the capital that we have to lay out yearly w^iich creates the 

 debt. The capital which the taxes upon our road represent, 

 would more than suffice for all that the most sanguine desire 

 in regard to the improvement of our roads. 



As Mr. Flint says, what we want is highway surveyors whose 

 minds, in the first place, are upon the subject ; we do not have 

 them now. AVe leave this matter to selectmen, who have other 

 duties to discharge ; or to surveyors, w^io are farmers, or wood- 

 choppers, or engaged in different avocations, and when they 

 have spare time and can spend a little money upon the road 

 they do it. In the first place, we do not have officers with any 

 knowledge upon the subject ; and we do not have the minds of 

 the people on the subject except occasionally. That, it seems to 

 me, is the great and radical defect in the present system. I do 

 not care whether we undertake to make State engineers to have 

 the care of our roads, or whether we undertake to educate 

 every man in the community to know what roads ought to be. 



