72 \\ KXPERIMENT WITH A STEAM DRIEE 



where most of the road work for several years has been done 

 by a single team, sometimes with and sometimes without an 

 extra shoveler. It would be hard to say which combination 

 was worse for the town. While this is an extreme case, indi- 

 vidual instances of such wasteful work are of daily occurence. 

 Perhaps equally important is the size of the load drawn. It 

 was found that an average team ought to draw on a main road, 

 not too hilly and free from mud, at least forty feet or thirty-two 

 bushels of earth. Yet twenty bushels or less than a yard is 

 nearer the average load hauled by teams working for our towns. 

 Failure to attend to these details frequently triples the neces- 

 sary expense. In this experiment, the cost of hauling earth and 

 rock was less than the average cost to contractors and consider- 

 ably less than the average cost to towns for road work. The 

 clay moved from under the college barn had dried and hard- 

 ened into an exceedingly compact mass, every inch of which 

 had to be picked or otherwise broken up. Dynamite was 

 tried several times quite successfully, but on the whole muscle 

 and picks proved cheaper. With less effective muscle, how- 

 ever, the result might have been reversed. 



A STANDARD GRADE 



In reducing the grade of a hill to a standard of one twentieth 

 or a little less, it was not expected that much additional light 

 would be thrown upon the question of what a standard grade 

 should be. It was a single example, and whether the college 

 or the people of Durham thought this particular grade the 

 most profitable or at all better than the old, is of little moment 

 to outsiders. Towns, however, will go on cutting down their 

 grades to about the proportions that the experience of Europe 

 and of the more thickly settled portions of this country advises 

 as fast as they get round to the point of making good roads, and 

 this experience has been followed in the case under considera- 

 tion. 



It may be profitable, however, to notice some of the argu- 

 ments employed by a few individuals to show that the new 

 grade was no improvement over the old. It will be seen by 

 Plate I, that formerly the grade was concentrated largely at 

 two points, and it has been argued that this concentration 



