The record-union., 1895-02-15
A SPLENDID OPPORTUNITY

SPLENDID OPPORTUNITY.
power at Folsom. and soon will have an
increase oft. As United States Engineer
Stone says, this splendid power can be,
with the convict labor, utilized so as to turn
outroad metal from exhaustless supply of
rock at Folsom at so low a cost as from
20 to 80 cents cubic yard, a yard weighing
about one and half tons. and 600 yards
will make mile of stone road. From
consultations he has had with railroad
carriers he believes adjustment can now
be made to transport the prepared road
metal at cost of haul, and that by mechan-
zeal dumping the cost of unloading
1t into wagons at points of delivery can
be made nominal.
This can be done if the metal is pro-
duced by State labor and State power,
and sold at cost, with such small per cent.
added as will pay the State in three or
four small installments the necessary,
but small advance to buy crusher,
mount it and apply the power to it,
Thereafter this light per cent. could go
into the fund for maintenance of the
prisons.
This plan will give the people road
metal at less than 60 cents for which they
have been accustomed to pay all the way
from 81 80 to 81 80, and even s.. The
State will not be out cent, but will be
money gamer, convicts will be employed,
free labor not competed with, but given
employment where it is now idle, and
stone roads will be built within an area
larger than the States of New York and
Ohio, for the counties will build at once
or by yearly installments. Their present
road tax, indeed, will build good roads of
stone.
The same arrangement can be made as
to transportation. it is believed, in other
sections where counties set up crushers.
Indeed, there does not seem to be any
reason why the vast deposits of road
material all over California may not be
opened up inside of two years, since we
have now been shown that stone roads
can be made for from $500 to 81, 800 mile,
instead of from $1,000 to $1,000 mile.
This will mean from now on relief to
most sections, saving to all the people,
invitation to home builders, enhanced
values, lessened taxation, more business
for common carriers, mora work for
labor, more sales for merchants, bettered
rural conditions, influx of population
now repealed by bad roads and slow
movement, utilization of idle convict
labor, and not one dollar of risk or cost
to the State as a political body.
The convicts we have, eating the sub
stance of the taxpayers; the stone we
have without price; the power we have
running waste. the railroads we have
with their interest involved in develop
ment of the country. All that is needed
is action by the Legislature to set these
forces in motion for common good. With
the example of the effect of improved
stone road conditions on the prosperity
OF the people Of the sections in the East,
who proved development in the midst of
hard times, shall we put off for another
two years and postpone what, at best, it
will take three months to start, even if
now ordered Let US hope not.
If the Legislature wishes to make sure
OF this matter let it provide that the bust
ness shall not be entered upon until there
is road metal enough ordered by coun-
ties and cities to warrant the cost, and
not until transportation agreement is
effected. How much OF an order for stone
will be needed? Why, say the engineers,
simply enough to make 107 miles of a
nine-foot track. 1t is to be sincerely
hoped that this Legislature will embrace
the opportunity before it to inaugurate an
era that will vastly improve conditions
now when the people are ready for the
reform, as they have just declared in the
most representative of conventions.