The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1858-12-07
Our Streets.


The Enquirer has notable project for
improving the streets. 1t proposes to set
a night watch to catch the loafers and rogues
and put them to work breaking stone to
cover the streets. In this way the improve
ment could be made, it thinks, without
much cost. Experience teaches that labor
wrung from idle vagabonds and thieves is
the most expensive that can be employed
The Enquirer admits we have no stone, but
thinks it can be procured. There are no
rock that we know of within one hundred
and fifty miles of the city suitable for paw
ing or matchmaking. We are Of the opin-
ion that covering our streets with imported
rock by the labor extorted from thieves and
loafers would make city orders very cheap
in the course of short experiment.
But we have material already prepared,
which forms the best surface for a street or
roads of any other substance in nature, at
hand, lying neglected and unused, from
want we suppose, Of a practical experience
of its qualities. There is coal mine, al
most within the city limi that is pouring
out coal slack, the drebris of slate, and iron
pyrites, in quantities sufficient, in few
years, to cover all the principal streets in
the city, with surface as firm and durable
as any that could be placed upon them
These ingredients, when put on a road, grind
down to compact mass, and cement togeth-
er as firmly as sand rock. The cinder and
scoria from the foundries and steam fur
naces, with coal ashes, make the cement
irmer and more durable when added to it.
Twelve or fifteen inches of these refuse of
the coal, which the city could probably
procure for the price of hauling, spread
upon Main street, would, in three months
give it surface equal to any pavement
that could be made. 1t might require two
or three inches to be added to it in the two
or three succeeding years. by which time
the street would have surface equal to the
Russ pavement; without dust in summer or
wet in winter.
A few days ago we passed over a piece
of road made in 1886 with coal slack for
hauling coal from a mine to the river in
wagons, before the business justified the
building of railroads. Though the road
had been abandoned, and nothing done to
it for fifteen years, its surface was still firm
and smooth as a rock. If the soil on
which the road is to be built is too soft to
sustain the bed of slack, puncheons or plank
laid upon it, and being covered with the coal
debris, the wood becomes kyonized by the
copperas-water from the pyrites and it will
endure for an age. We saw, few weeks
ago, timber taken from road where it had
been covered with coal slack in the year
194l, unaffected by decay and with all the
marks of the axe upon it.
An arrangement might be made by the
city authorities with the Bodiam Mining
Company for the refuse brought up from
their pit. The road from the mines to the
city should first be Stacked to make good
roadway over that important avenue into
AuCu VI lHO SluSh u
cover the other streets, could be very cheap
ly done A load could be hauled from the
mines, containing 40 bushels, for thirty
cents, which would cover thrice as much
surface as a load of rock of the same weight
The cost of covering the streets with Goa
slack, if the Mining Company would con
sent to its removal, would be but a little
more than the. expense of covering then
with common dirt, for the slack is less ex-
pensiye to move. t-
1t would cost less to purchase the bes
lump coal from the mines delivered upor
the street at ten cents the bushel than any
rock that is accessible to us, and lay it upor
them. A bushel of broken rock would no
cost less than 20 cents; while coal, which i
better road material, could be had for o
10 cents. But the slack-mingled with slat
and pyrites-is better than coal or rock, ant
can be laid upon the streets for cent
bushel for hauling, and the Mining Compan,
would, forone or two cents a bushel doubl
the supply by bringing up all the refuse {
the mines, the greater part of which is noN
left in the pit and only enough remove
to make room for the operations below.