The Russellville Democrat. [volume] (Russellville, Ark.) 1875-1898, 1883-10-04
McAdam Road-Making.

John London McAdam, according to
mis- own account, came to Scotland from
America in 1888, when the Scotch Turn
pike acts had been about twenty years
in operation and roads were still being
made everywhere. He got appointed a
Commissioner of Roads, and afterward
removed to Bristol, where he obtained
a similar post and was made q magis-
trate. Gifted with a mania on the sub
ject, he began about 1894 to travel over
the country at his own cost; and these
Iabors he continued from Inverness to
years, for no other purpose, apparently,
than to search for well-made road and
the best means of making one.
McAdam's plan of road making diff
fered as much from the old way which
he found in operation as a bridge does
from ford. Instead of going deep for
"bottoming," he worked solely on the
top. Instead of producing a peaked.
roof-like mass of rough, soft rubbi.h, he
got dat, smooth and solid surface. In
lieu of road four feet and a half
through, he made one of at most ten
inches in thickness; and for rocks and
boulders he substituted stone broken
small. His leading principle was that
q road ought to be considered as an ar
tificial flooring so strong and even as to
let the heaviest vehicle pass over it with
out impeachment. Then people began to
hear with wonder of roads thirty and
forty feet wide rising only three inches
in the center; and he propounded the
extraordinary heresy that a better and
more lasting road could be made over
the naked surface of morass than over
solid rock. Another of his easy first
principles was that the native soil was
more resistant when dry than when wet,
and that, as in reality, 1t hid TO carry
not alone the traffic but the road also, il
ought to be kept in condition OF the
greatest resistance; that the best way
of keeping it dry was to put over 1t a
covering impervious to rain--the road,
in fact; and that the thickness of this
relation to its imperviousness, and not
at all as to its bearing of weights, to
which the native soil was quite equal.
Instead of digging q trench, therefore,
10 do away with the surface of the native
soil, he carefully re lpected it, and raised
his road sufficiently above it to let the
water run off. Impermeability he OBJ
tanned by the practical discovery that
stones broken small and shaken and
pre- ssed together, as BIZ the traffic on a
road, rapidly settled down face 10 face
and angle To angle, and made rs close q
mass as n wall. Mankind in general
now believe that this last is al that
Me Adam invented; the rest is forgotten.
That important fraction of his discov-
cries is what has given 70 Us the verb 70
macGfGjnise ("lo pave a road with
small. broken stones"-Skeat). aud TO
the French their noans--placafaal, and
the verb BldeadaBsfSr.
Surprise followed surprise Roads
which were mere layers OF broven stone,
six, four, and even as little as three
inches in thickness, passed through the
worst winters without DreI king
up, while, rs the coaehmen used to say.
they ''ran true; the wheel ran hard
upon them, ii ran upon the nail" Com
missioners could not believe their eyes
when they saw new roads made for much
less than it had cost them yearly 10 re-
pair their old ones. When an old road
was given into McAdam's charge he Of
ten made new one OF ii for ESs mile,
while round London the cost OF annual
repairs had been f470 mile. For he
knew that the rosds-such had been the
ignorant waste-geRerally contained
materials enough for their use for sew
eral years il properly applied. Unless
the road was hopeless, be weat to work
IN q practical, cheap way; first outing
OFF the .'gridironn of rsIts ia the center
"to level with the bottom of the fur
rows then picking the road up 10 a
depth of four inches, removing al the
chalk, clay, or mud, breaking the large
stones small, aud simply putting them
back again, and one of his directions TO
bis workmen was that ''nothing is 10 be