266 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
APRIL n 
steel wedges and feathers for splitting fast 
stones will be very useful. Roadside earth, 
containing sods and decayed vegetable mat¬ 
ter, is the worst material for repairing a road. 
It turns into fine dust in dry, and makes soft 
mud in wet weather. Ample provision should 
be made to remove surface water. Culverts 
made of square timber covered with heavy 
plank are far better than the common water- 
breaks, commonly called “thank’ee mar’ms.” 
These are evidences of a low condition of civil¬ 
ization. 
The surface of a road should be kept well 
rounded up so as to shed water on both sides 
where ditches should be made to receive it and 
carry it off. Culverts put in here and there 
where there is a long declivity help to reduce 
the velocity of the water and prevent wash¬ 
ing in hilly localities. Where turn-outs are 
made to carry water from the road into 
adjoining field, which cannot be avoided some¬ 
times, they should be made at short distances 
to avoid damaging the land. Farmers should 
not object to receive this wash which is use¬ 
ful to the land, but should make these turn¬ 
outs for themselves so as to get the most good 
from the water. The water should be directed 
along the slope with but little fall so as to dis¬ 
tribute it as widely as possible. The best 
grass I have cut for years past was in a field 
where a heavy wash pours in from the road 
in rainy weather. The Timothy stood five 
feet high where this water spread itself. 
Where the country is hilly the laying out of 
roads is a subject for useful study. The short¬ 
est road is not always in a straight line. It is 
sometimes shorter and always easier to go 
around a hill than over it. A dead level is 
tiresome to a horse and his driver as well. A 
slightly rolling road is more agreeable and 
easier, as it calls more muscles into play than 
a level road and so eases the labor of the horse. 
Hilly localities are mostly stony and the fre¬ 
quent stones may be most usefully disposed of 
in making the needed culverts. When a road 
becomes encumbered with loose stones the road 
master should turn out and clear it of them 
and if he neglects it any resident should insist 
upon his doing it. When ruts begin to form 
in wet weather, these should be filled and the 
travel directed by properly placed obstacles 
so as to avoid the ruts. When pools form in 
wet weather these should be drained off at 
once. Nothing else so damages a road as 
standing water. Where deep, soft places are 
made in clay roads in wet weather they should 
be first drained to let out the water and then 
filled with fine brush and gravel, if it can be 
procured,and if not with the driest clay mixed 
in layers with the brush. A mixture of sand 
with the clay improves clay roads and vice 
versa. Tile drainage improves a clay road 
very much and after the tiles have got to 
working roads previously impassable have kept 
in fair order. Dry weather is the best time to 
repair roads and a little work then will save 
much that would be needed after heavy rains. 
Road-masters should remember they are 
public servants, with important duties to per¬ 
form. The usual wasteful and really dishon¬ 
est methods of doing road work are a disgrace. 
Road work is a tax, and to waste time over 
this work, or to do it in the usual wretched 
manner is as dishonest as to pay the tax col¬ 
lector counterfeit money knowingly. Road 
work should be done with a view to perma¬ 
nence, and not merely to fill time and holes on 
the road in the easiest'manner. Every man 
should be kept close to his work and waste of 
time rebuked. Lastly, every man should be a 
self-appointed road-master, and as he finds 
time to do it, he should go over a selected 
piece of road and repair it as it may be 
needed—filling ruts with earth drawn in by a 
hoe, opening ways and generally doing all he 
can to keep the road in good condition. I 
know of a man who would have been an ac¬ 
quisition to any locality, a man of > apital 
and enterprise who was looking for a farm in 
a favorable part of the country. He saw the 
roads were in very poor condition, and left 
without looking any further, and he was jus¬ 
tified in his course. 
ROAD-MAKING AND KEEPING. 
Briefly my opinion is this:—We have so 
many roads that we cannot all at once im¬ 
prove them as they should be—the tax would 
be too heavy. Let us begin permanent road, 
making on the leading arteries of travel. Tax 
all to make these good at all seasons of the 
year, for all will be benefited, all having, of 
course, to use the roads leading to commer¬ 
cial centers, and usually to carry loads of 
farm produce, leaving the roads that are 
largely for the accommodation of contiguous 
residents to be worked—well, about as they 
are now. To build our leading highways sub¬ 
stantially they should be excavated to a depth 
varying with the character of the soil springy 
or dry—and the excavation should be filled 
with crushed stone, not too coarse. This 
should be covered with a layer of the same 
ho if a sise smaller, and this again with stone 
chips or good wearing earth. Then keep the 
road-bed in order. The drains should be con. 
structed to carry water immediately off; it 
shouldn’t be retained for a day, for if surface 
water is held it will soak into the road-bed. 
The road-border between the drains and the 
road limit on each side, should be at least 
decently smoothed or graded, and kept free 
from foul weeds, brush and filth, town or city 
refuse or cord-wood ranks, logs, wood-piles, 
bars and fencing, and even farm implements, 
which too often find a resting place on the 
highway. franklin dye, 
Sec. N. J. Board of Agriculture. 
ROAD CONSIDERATIONS. 
In this State the country highway work is 
done by the people at large under the direc¬ 
tion of overseers who are generally called 
path-masters. Each overseer has a small 
amount of road, two or three miles, more or 
less, under his charge, and all the highway 
taxes in his district are worked out, or shirk¬ 
ed, by the tax payers of the district. In some 
districts the road work is faithfully performed 
and intelligently "applied (the two generally 
go together), but in a majority of cases the 
annual “work on the road” is a farce, the 
workmen simply killing time in payment of 
the tax. 
Of course, under such a system of laws 
there is no system of road making. Men are 
not selected for overseers because of their fit¬ 
ness for the position, and very few are fit for 
it. To fit a man to be a good road maker, he 
must have as much special knowledge and 
practice as would be required to make him a 
good carpenter, baker or shoemaker, or fit 
him for any other trade. Knowledge and ex¬ 
perience count as much in road making as 
any where else. No estimate can be made of 
the cost of roads’As they are generally made 
here; but it is perfectly safe to say that if 
time of men and tools and teams have any value 
the roads cost four times as much as they 
ought to, or would cost if the work was done 
by contract, under the right kind of superj 
vision. 
The first thing, in my judgment, needed to 
get good roads is to impress the people with 
their benefits and what bad roads cost them. 
Let every one figure it up for himself in dol¬ 
lars and cents. Here is a man who has 40 
loads of produce to sell from his farm annu¬ 
ally, and he has seven miles to haul it to mar¬ 
ket.* There is a bad hill in the way, or the 
road is soft and muddy, is rough and stony; 
so, instead of hauling 80 bushels of wheat, he 
only hauls 40 or 50, and instead of hauling a ton 
and a half of hay, he only hauls 1,600 or 1,800 
pounds. Instead of making two trips a day, he 
can only make one. How much extra does the 
bad road cost him every year in labor of men 
and teams? Every man who has got gump¬ 
tion enough to own and try to run a farm, 
ought to sit right down, if he has never done 
it, and figure up how much he is out of pocket 
every year because of bad roads. The Presi¬ 
dent of the Michigan Engineering Society 
said, at a late convention, that he believed 
bad roads cost the people of Michigan annu¬ 
ally an amount equal to the entire value of the 
wheat crop of the State. Let the people un¬ 
derstand that bad roads are tremendously ex¬ 
pensive luxuries. There are very few farm¬ 
ers who, in these times of high prices for labor 
and low prices for produce, can afford to in¬ 
dulge in the luxury of paying for 40 days’ 
labor of man and team to haul their produce 
to market, when but for the bad roads they 
could do it more easily in 15 days. 
That road law would suit me best which 
should provide that all road taxes be paid in 
money, all labor on roads to be done by con¬ 
tract or hired labor, and all highway and 
bridge constructions be done under the super¬ 
vision of a man competent and skillful in the 
business, who should have charge of territory 
enough to occupy his whole time, and who 
should receive as much pay as such skilled 
labor is worth in the market. I would have 
the work done whenever and wherever and 
however it was most needed and could be 
done to the best advantage. 
Sandy roads are the better for being wet. 
Clay and muck require thorough drainage to 
make good roads, and in such soils the first, 
second and third principles of road making 
are to get rid of the surplus water as quickly 
as possible. Many a roadside drain ends in 
a puddle in the road, which, at a little ex¬ 
pense, could be carried off into some near wa¬ 
ter-course. I will call attention to one point 
—the importance of securing the best loca¬ 
tion for the road. Just the same principles 
are involved and the same care is required in 
the location of a common road as a railroad; 
but all over Michigan there are innumerable 
instances of rank violation of every principle 
of road location. In illustration, I will men¬ 
tion some actual cases with which I am per¬ 
fectly familial 1 , which are no worse than lots of 
others. A road leaves a section line to go 
around a piece of black ash and tamarack 
swamp, increasing the distance 30 rods. It 
has been there 40 years or more. At a low 
estimate an average’of 10 teams per day have 
passed over it for that time. Then 40 years 
x by 365^ days, x by 10 teams, x 30 rods per 
team, divided by 330 rods in a mile, give us 
over 13,000 miles of extra travel, which has 
been indulged in rather than build a half mile 
of road through a black, ash swamp. And 
there it is yet, and the travel still continues, 
and may continue for aught I know until the 
globe has been encircled a dozen times by ex¬ 
tra travel. Does it pay to make extra trips 
around the earth after loaded teams? 
Another road sticks to the section line and 
thereby follows over a series of hills and 
ravines on the margin of a valley for a mile. 
The road might have followed the level valley 
by increasing its length about 30 or 30 rods. 
The hill sides are steep and long. The longer 
distance could be traveled in a shorter time. 
Forty bushels of wheat are a big load for a 
stout team to draw over these hills, and yet it 
is on the nearest route to market for a large 
tract of as rich farming country as there is in 
Michigan. Not less than 200,000 cubic yards 
of earth would have to be moved, taking .50 
years or more at the rate the work is being 
done, to get as good a road as could be had 
along the valley the first year without the 
moving of any appreciable amount of earth. 
It has cost and will cost more to make a 
good road of it where it is than all the farms 
adjoining the road on both sides are or ever 
will be worth in the”market, without taking 
into account the much greater loss to the pub¬ 
lic arising from the loss of time and labor in 
the traffic passing over the road. In such a 
case does it pay to expend so much for fear of 
cutting into a man’s farm and spoiling his 
square fields? Better buy his farm outright 
and have done with it. All these things 
should be balanced up in the first place just as 
would be done if selecting a line for a rail¬ 
road, and that route should be adopted which, 
all things considered, gives the shortest line, 
the lightest grades and the least cost to build. 
I know it is very nice for the farmer to have 
his fields square and the road on the farm 
line,’ and the public may well sacrifice some¬ 
thing to have them so; but on a main thor¬ 
oughfare it is folly for the public to sacrifice 
so much while the fanner gains so little. 
Kalamazoo Co., Mich. f. ho dgman. 
THE PROBLEM SOLVED. 
John W. McArthur, of Delaware County, 
New York, is one of those farmers who is not 
afraid to break out of the ruts in which our 
fathers and grandfathers have conducted 
farm operations. He will doubtless be remem¬ 
bered by many readers as the owner of the 
large circular barn described iu the Rural a 
few years since. His farm, comprising some¬ 
thing over 500 acres, contained a great many 
rods of road and division stone fences. He i e- 
garded them as]worse than useless, as they oc¬ 
cupied valuable space and caused frequent 
turnings in tilling the land and of mower and 
reaper in harvesting. Mr. McA. believes it 
much more profitable to fence his stock in 
than to fence it out and if he wishes to pasture 
his cows for a time on the aftergrowth in his 
meadows during the fall he finds he can hire 
a hand to keep them out of his growing crops 
much more cheaply than he can keep up so 
much fencing. If the old fences were to be 
removed,what should be done with the stones? 
He decided to put them under the ground, a 
portion of them in the form of underdrains, 
but the greater share of the road walls, espec¬ 
ially, immediately under the middle of the 
road bed. The result is that he now has on 
the highway passing through his farm the best 
roads in any part of the town. They are 
hard and smooth at all seasons of the year and 
when a few more division fences are removed, 
he will have about 150 acres of land in one 
field adapted to tillage and for meadow land- 
When harvesting his crops of hay or grain he 
can start his mower or reaper and avoid all 
the frequent turnings necessitated by small 
fields. 
By this means and w ith the convenience for 
unloading afforded by his well-arranged barn, 
he has reduced the cost of securing his hay 
crop to a minimum. He stated to the writei 
that he could place his] hay injthe mow at a 
cost of from 50 cents to 75 cents per ton. 
The plan he would recommend from his ex¬ 
perience is to have the stones drawn to the 
place where the road is to be made, during the 
fall or winter, or, in case the road-side wall is 
to be used, the stones, of course, are already 
at hand. Then, when the frost is going out in 
the spring, he would place them in the road¬ 
bed, putting the larger flat ones at the bottom, 
even if they are two feet or more square. On 
top of these he would throw the small stones, 
pounding up with a sledge such as are shelly 
and easily broken. 
Finally, after the ground has settled and 
these stones have settled into the road-bed, he 
would, with a road-worker, go over the road 
and cover with earthjfroin the sides of the 
track as far as possible, and if the results are 
as satisfactory as they have proven with him, 
it will be a pronounced success, and even those 
who at first scoffed at the idea of making such 
a disposition of these unsightly fences and 
hedge rows will be forced to admit that, when 
properly used, they do make a first-class 
country road and one that will remain a long 
time in good condition. e. j. brownell. 
Delaware Co., N. Y. 
ROAD MACHINERY IN ROAD MAKING. 
A. M. FULLER. 
The farmer no longer conducts his labors 
without the aid of improved machinery and 
farm implements. In the construction and 
and maintenance of our highways, however, 
there has been little improvement; the old 
methods still prevail, and the fact that there 
is machinery as much superior to the ordin¬ 
ary plow or scraper for road-making as the 
mowing machine is superior to the scythe in 
farming operations, is a fact not as well known 
as it should be. 
The defects most prominent in our present 
system (if it is worthy of being called a sys¬ 
tem of road-making) is in rounding up the 
road-bed so that teams necessarily pass on 
the summit and cut the way into ruts and 
ridges. The first heavy rain produces mud 
holes and a broken surface, rendering the 
road nearly impassable. Each year the same 
course is pursued, a quantity of dirt is plow¬ 
ed and scraped from the ditches and ridged 
upon the drive-way. Again, the road-beds 
are generally too narrow. The results which 
follow are the same as when the center of the 
road is too high, travel being limited to one 
track soon produces deep ruts. The drive-way 
should not be less than 20 feet in width on our 
roads, with a slight descent from the center to 
the ditches. 
The interest which is being taken in im¬ 
proved methods of building roads, not only in 
this section, but throughout the country 
augurs well for the future. In many parts of 
the country through the adoption of road 
machinery, rapid progress is being made, and 
better roads are the result. To secure a 
drive-way of 20 feet in width of suitable 
grade from ditch to ditch will require, in the 
present condition of our roads, the removal 
of a great amount of earth. Our roads are 
now confined mainly to one track which is 
frequently lower than the sides of the road, 
furnishing in many cases an additional ditch, 
It is necessary in order to widen the road to 
remove the shoulders of earth or sod which 
line the road on either side. Now these fre¬ 
quently are from two to four feet wide; this 
cannot be done economically with the ordi¬ 
nary plow or scraper. It requires the use of 
a road-machine to do it properly and economi¬ 
cally. On an ordinary road two men with 
one machine, drawn by four horses, will con¬ 
struct from one-half to one mile of road per 
day, the surface of which will be perfectly 
smooth and the width of 16 to 20 feet, and in 
no other way can it be done so well or so 
cheaply. 
Road machines are a recent invention. The 
perfection of the machines and their adapta¬ 
bility to the work are simply surprising. It 
matters not how hilly or stony the giound 
may be, they can be employed in any place 
where a plow can be used to advantage. The 
machines are very durable and of great power 
iu the removal and carrying of earth, and are 
not more trying to the team than working 
with the ordinary plow and scraper. 
The effort to introduce road machines into 
this section has been quite successful, and all 
who have witnessed the working of the ma¬ 
chines admit that the use of them is the best 
and most economical way of improving the 
roads. It is in no sense an experiment: mak¬ 
ing roads by machinery will accomplish at 
least four times as much work as the old 
method, and the work will be infinitely better 
for the same expenditure of labor. In Penn¬ 
sylvania under the new road law one-fourth 
of the tax levy for road purposes can be col¬ 
lected in cash. The average road tax of town¬ 
ships is about $25,000. One-fourth of this 
sum in cash will, in two years’ time, enable 
every township to possess road machines, and 
eventually the tax can be reduced one-half 
and yet accomplish four times the amount of 
work that is now done under the old system. 
It is possible with road machinery under tho 
new law to accomplish much; but the full 
measure of success in road making can never 
be attained until a cash system of road tax is 
adopted, and the work is done systematically, 
intelligently, and thoroughly. 
Meadville, Pa. 
IN ILLINOIS. 
FRED GRUNDY. 
The general character of the soil in this 
section is a heavy black loam, and as the sur¬ 
face of the country is only slightly undulating) 
