PERFECT, INSTEAD OF MULTIPLYING ROADS. 81 



two of road through the forest, where there is no gravel fit 

 for the purpose of road-raaking. It is no light matter to cart 

 gravel to that spot. 



I think that until we can get a law through the legislature, 

 which will entirely revolutionize this whole system, we can do 

 something in our several towns. And the first thing we should 

 do is to use our influence to get the control of the roads out of 

 the hands of the surveyors. In our town we have about three 

 hundred miles of road, I think, and I don't know but more, and 

 the practice is for those who are surveyors, or who desire to be, 

 to form a ring almost every year and vote that the town shall 

 choose highway surveyors, and then vote themselves in ; but 

 once in a while we get through a vote giving the selectmen 

 power to appoint a surveyor of the roads. A year ago we passed 

 a vote that the town should own a horse and cart, and keep a 

 man employed all the time on the roads. We have tried that 

 system a year, and there is not a citizen in the town who will 

 not tell you that the roads anywhere within three-quarters of a 

 mile of the village, are in a better condition than ever before, 

 and we have saved thousands of dollars by the use of that one 

 horse and cart, and the committal of the oversight and repair of 

 the roads to one man. T only speak of that as an illustration of 

 what may be done by a little change ; and I do think, that now 

 that our State has become so thickly populated, and our towns 

 so near together, that it is for the interest of every man that the 

 roads of the town next to hira should be as good as those of his 

 own, and that we have a right to call upon the State to adopt 

 some general system of engineering, constructing and repairing 

 our roads. And upon this point let me say one other word 

 — I think that the effort should not be to multiply our roads. 

 1 think our county commissioners make a great mistake in 

 giving a road to almost everybody who asks for it. Let them 

 perfect the roads we have and there will be no trouble about 

 those who come after. 



Now it is almost universally the case (and this is another 

 difficulty in our present system), that you find the highway sur- 

 veyor has no sort of engineering knowledge, and takes no 

 engineering advice whatsoever, and anybody who watches a hill- 

 side road from year to year, for a series of years, will soon 

 notice improvements which might have been made and which 

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