256 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



"The statistics of the road repairs are kept in the following 

 manner. The road-keepers are required to keep a record of all 

 draught animals that pass in either direction. Horses that are 

 being ridden, animals not before a vehicle, and teams going to 

 and from the fields, are not counted. These records are kept 

 only during the working hours. Likewise, not during the 

 whole year, but only four months in each year, so selected as to 

 give an average amount of travel. The travel on the road on 

 Sundays and out of working hours is taken from a few observa- 

 tions ; it is a very small percentage of the whole. At the end 

 of the year these records and observations are collected and 

 graphically represented on a map of the whole State. The dif- 

 ferent roads are drawn of a different thickness of line, according 

 as the amount of travel on them is greater or less. The quan- 

 tity of road metal used per yard of road, and the kind of metal 

 used, give the data for another such map, in which the different 

 colors of the roads represent the different materials used in 

 their repair, and the figures on them and their thickness show 

 the number of cubic yards per mile required to keep the road 

 in order. Finally, we have a third map, which indicates, by 

 the thickness of the several lines representing the roads and 

 by the figures on them, the total cost per mile of repairing the 

 road one year." 



With this picture of a country happy and prosperous, in the 

 possession of good and well-kept roads, it may be well to leave 

 the subject. 



Massachusetts wants, for her proper development, much bet- 

 ter roads than she now has ; and, reckoning for a period of say 

 fifty years, she can have these good roads, and have them kept 

 in order, at a less cost than that of keeping up the present poor 

 ones for the same time. Besides this, we should see in the one 

 case a healthy state of internal communications and trade ; in 

 the other an absence of both. Let each citizen so act and do 

 his part, that these benefits may accrue to the Commonwealth. 



the population per square mile of Massachusetts will equal that of Baden, 

 above given, somewhere between 1890 and 1891. It exceeds that of Prussia, 

 and probably equals that of France at the present day, both of which coun- 

 tries have systems of roads and road-repairing but little, if any, inferior to 

 those of Baden. 



