AMERICAN INSTITUTE 6^^ 



to life and limb, certain injury to health, by dust and want of 

 ventilation, injury to clothing, furniture and goods, from dust 

 and mud, excessive wear of carriages and shoes, an inordinate 

 expenditure of motive power, and a wear of roadway proportioned 

 to the expenditure of power. Eut the most excessive and inex- 

 cusable of all defective appliances of this kind are the pavements 

 of cities — they exist notwithstanding that there is abundance of 

 capital actually expended upon them, and the only cause of their 

 continuance is the conceit of politicians, who have no idea that 

 they know less than such civil engineers as Telford, Macadam, 

 Macniel, and many in our own country who would have been 

 equally celebrated, had our rulers been wise enough to employ 

 them to direct the construction of roadways. It is therefore time 

 that men who understand these matters should protest against 

 the ruinous operations of ignorant and often fraudulent contract- 

 ors, employed by politicians to the injury and disgrace of the 

 community. And it is time that this institute, especially this 

 mechanical and engineering branch of it, should act in the spirit 

 of a liberal institution, as contradistinguished from the spirit of 

 trade, and should exert itself to show the public what is good, 

 and what is bad, in the structural arrangements that are necessa- 

 rily under the public control. This property of the institute may 

 be made fifty thousand dollars more valuable by scientific im- 

 provements in Eroadway. 



And first among these improvements is a clearly, noiseless, du- 

 rable and easy pavement. It is practicable to make a pavement 

 on which a man can draw more than a horse can draw on the 

 present pavement, and from which no dust or mud can arise. 

 The traction on the present pavement is not less than 3H lbs. 

 per ton ; but on a good iron pavement it would be but six lbs. 

 per ton — less than a fifth; and a man has full a fifth of the power 

 of a horse. But when we consider that the carriages might be of 

 less than half their present weight, if the pavements were good, 

 we can see that a man might work a carriage as easily as he works 

 a hand-car on a railway, if no better and cheaper power were at- 

 tainable. What I mean is, that all the transportation of a city 

 paved with iron could be done by man power, without extraordi- 



