The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1885-02-07

were stones, and stones only. Flint Essex
and Sussex, he said, made an excellent
road, if only broken properly small; lime
stone CWilts, Somerset and Gloucester
consolidates soonest of ali, but is not the
most lasting; the pebbles of Shropshire and
Staffordshire were also good, and the beach
pebbles of Essex, Kent and Sussex were
some of the best materials in the kingdom;
but the whin-stone or granite of the North
and of Scotland he pronounced the most
durable.
Even in the breaking of stones McAdam
made revolution He saw that able
bodied men standing up with heavy ham,
mers wasted the greater portion of their
strength. He made his stone breakers sit,
SO that all the force of the blows took direct
effect on the stone; and the result was that
he found small hammers did the work per-
fectly well, and thus was enabled to confne
it to 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 smooth road. This
he found to be about an inch lengthwise,
and therefore he laid it down that "a stone
which exceeds an inch in any of its dimen-
sions is mischievous" that is to say, that
the wheel in pressing upon one end OF it
tends to lift the other end out of the road.
In practice he found it simplest to fix
weight of six ounces; and his surveyors
carried about scales to test the largest
stones in each heap. He would allow no
large stones even for the foundation of his
roads, for he found they constantly worked
upwards by the pressure and vibration OF
the traffic The whole road was small
broken stone, even over swampy ground
But there is nothing new under the sun;
and Mr. Cripps, a Surrey magistrate, stated
in the same year that in Sweden, where
the roads were "more beautiful than any
he had ever beheld," McAdam's system
(quite unknown to himl had long been in
operation roads being almost perfectly
fiat, and the granite for them being broken
even as small as walnuts. Telford, too, a
gentleman" as the entertaining Mogg OBJ
served "whose works as an engineer con-
tinue to panegyrize his name, had been at
work in North Wales, laying the Holyhead
and other roads of an eliptical section which
was almost fiat.
McAdam, having expended so much of
his private resources for the public benefit,
found himself embarrassed about 1920,
and petitioned Parliament for his expenses
and some reward. He was for some time
sent about from post to pillar between COM
mittees, the Treasury and the Postoffice,
and repeated his petition in 1923, when at
length a select committee was appointed
to consider his case. They reported atht
he had essentially benefited agriculture,
commerce and manufactures, by the ease.
of traffic he had introduced; that he had
reduced horse labor and the consequent
expense of horses, had diminished the wear
and tear of carriages of all kinds, and had
increased the comfort, convenience and
safety of the public generally. They added
that wherever he had gone to work he had
brought down the poor-rates by finding
employment for "the surplus labor popula-
ton, and had abolished the odious impost
of statute labor. In fact, he fulfilled the
expectations of the committee of 1911,
who prophesied minimum saving of five
millions whenever the roads should be put
in good order. This committee of 1923
also reported that the system of appointing
large number of noblemen, farmers and
tradesmen as commissioners of roads had
failed. The result was that McAdam was
voted 910,O0Oi and a surveyor-general Of
metropolitan roads having been appointed
in 1927, he got the post. He died in 1886.
McAdam had no special or technical ed
ucation; and yet by force of liability and
indefatigable exertions," to which all bore
testimony, he discovered what no profes-
sional engineer (if in some particulars we
except Telford) had been able to descry,
One of the many definitions of that elusive
term genius is q tFanscendent capacity
for taking trouble. In this sense McAdam
undoubtedly was man of genius