The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-01-06
the McADAM (MACADAMIzED) ROADS

IL Is COllSiucIllS NnuJ Sllall ne UOne
with the half million dollars which
the Illinois Central Railroad pays
every year into the State treasury.
The Chicago Tribune says, use it
to make good wagon roads. The
suggestion is wise one, for good
roads promote civilization, good fell
lowship and good morals. But it is
not every man, even though he may
bea road-master, or even an engineer,
who knows how to build good
wagon road. The best roads ever
built, since the days of the old ROM
ans, are those known as the McAdam
roads.
McAdam was an American who set
tied in Scotland, in 1888, and got
appointed commissioner of roads.
He had mania for bodybuilding,
to which he devoted himself for six
and-twenty years. His plan of road
making is described as follows in the
st. JameS'S Gazette.
His leading principle was that a
road ought to be considered as an
artificial flooring, so strong and even
as to let the heaviest vehicle pass
over it without impeachment.
Then people began to hear with
wonder of roads thirty and forty feet
wide rising only three inches in the
centre, and he propounded the eN-
traordinary heresy, that better and
more lasting road could be made
over the surface of mcrass than
over solid rock.
Another of his easy first principles
was that the native soil was more re-
sistant when dry than when wet.
AS in reality it had to carry not
alone the traffic, but the road also,
it ought to be kept in condition Of
the greatest resistance; that the best
way of keeping it dry was to put over
it covering impervious to rain-the
road, in fact.
The thickness of this covering was
to be regulated solely in 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 a trench, there
fore, to do away with the surface of
the native soil, he carefully respected
it, and raised the road sufficiently
above it to let the water run off.
Impermeability he obtained by
the practical discovery that stones
broken small, and shaken and pres
sed together, as by the traffic on
road, rapidly settled down face to
face, and angle to angle, and made
as close mass as wall. Mankind
in general now believe that this last
is all that McAdam invented; the
rest is forgotten. That important
fraction of his discoveries is what
has given to us the verb to macadana-
ize c. To pave road with small
broken stones. "-tSheat), and to the
French their nouns mdcadana,
("Nom DUN pavage invente par un
Anglais. '-Littre,) macadamisage,
and the verb moca6amiser. If "a man
is knocked down by an omnibus in
the middle of the boulevard, Pa
risian bystander will nowadays say,
"Je Pal VII tomber sur lie macadam."
Surprise followed surprise. Roads
which were mere layers of broken
stone, six, four, and even as little as
three inches in thickness, passed
through the worst winters without
breaking up, while, as the coachman
used to say, they iran true" the
wheel ran hard upon them, it ranup
the nail.
Even in the breaking of stones
McAdam made a revolution. He saw
that able-bodied men standing up
with heavy hammers wasted the
greater portion of their strength.
He made his one-breakers sit, so
that all the force of the blows took
direct effect on the stone; and the
result was that he found small ham
mers did the work perfectly well,
and thus was able to confine ito old
men past hard labor, women, and
boys, which reduced the cost of the
broken stone, by one-half.
The size to which the stone should be
broken, he determined in practical
way, by the area of contact of an
ordinary wheel with a smooth road.
This he found to be about an inch
lengthwise, and therefore he laid it
down that ia stone which exceeds an
inch in any of its dimensions is mis-