HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 333 
a sufficient quantity of suitable machinery we prefer to have it all 
crushed and make the road of small stone. 
__Mr. Henry. Do you think a road 12 feet wide is wide enough for 
all purposes? 
Mr. Dover. For a country road we think it is all right. 
Mr. Henry. Two teams can not pass abreast on aroad 12 feet wide. 
Mr. Doper. They can pass. Two single carriages can pass upon 
12 feet of road. 
The CuarrMan. Two carriages could just about do so. 
Mr. Henry. It would be close work. 
Mr, Grarr. How do you keep the road material from spreading 
out onto the sides of the road? 
Mr. Dover. We repair the roads by means of scrapers and other 
tools, so as to form a shoulder, before depositing the stone. The 
stone is deposited upon the roadbed, which is made to conform with 
the finished surface, so far as the curve is concerned, and that is rolled 
and made as hard as we can make it before anything is spread on it. 
Mr. Burteson. Do you think a deposit of 8 inches will stand upon 
a black, waxy soil 6 feet thick ? 
Mr. Dopcr. Well, probably it would. Of course, if this soil is 
fully saturated with moisture there might be, under great weight, some 
depression, but we are not troubled about the foundation, as a general 
thing, and I think 8 inches is quite sufficient in almost every case. 
The same question you ask me I remember was asked of Macadam 
when he was before the committee of the House of Commons. It was 
contended before his time that it was necessary to put in heavy foun- 
dation of large stone according to the Telford method, and he con- 
tended that large stone was unnecessary, and it was a waste to put in 
so much material. 
Mr. Burueson. Provided your road is waterproof? 
Mr. Doper. They asked him the very question, whether it was so in 
ordinary conditions in building over a bog, and he contended, in 
answer to that question, it was often preferable to have a little elas- 
ticity, and he could build with the small stone over any sort of bog or 
soft land. 
Mr. Apams. DoI understand you to say there are roads built in 
Ohio that cost from $12,000 to $20,000 a mile? 
Mr. Dopege. Yes, sir. 
Mr. Apams. Outside of corporation limits? 
Mr. Doper. All of the roads. In Cuyahoga County—Cleveland is 
the county seat of that county—they used, before, the plank road, built 
by companies and subject to toll. They were built only about 8 or 
84 feet wide, a sufficient width to carry single vehicles. Of course, 
the theory of these narrow roads is that the loaded wagon is coming 
toward the market, and the empty wagon returning can easily turn 
out and give the road. Although the road is, of course, not hard, 
it would be sufficiently hard to bear an empty vehicle. 
So in many places, especially about Cleveland, the roads were only 
built 8 feet wide. Afew years ago the county commissioners adopted 
the policy of buying these roads and making them free roads, and 
they soon took up the plank and put down other material, mostly 
brick. They only made these roads 8 feet wide, the same as the plank 
roads, counting on the fact that the empty returning teams would give 
