Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1903-05-02
THE ROAD PROBLEM.

The mud blockade thru which we
have just passed is enough to make the
country inquire what is to be done that
we may have better roads.
Two men have removed to this vicin-
ity from Illinois this spring, one from
W~innebago county, where the roads are
m~acadanlized. and the other from Bur-
eau county, where the roads are gravel
led. Neither OF those counties would
think of making roads OF earth, as JEFF
ferson county is trying to do, and has
been trying to do for more than sixty
years. 1t is doubtful, after all the labor
of man, beast and machinery has been
lavished on these that mud roads. if
they are any better than they We're
when the first wagons tracked the viz
gin prairie. If we so on at this rate
another sixty years, the roads will be
no better than they are today. Almost
twenty years ago / advanced the idea
before the Farmers Club that if w.
were ever to have good roads that they
must be hard roads; that if the county
should employ a number of men from
wear to year to construct such roads
it would cost little or nothing. If ten
men were hired by the year, half of
| Muoln Hau ldlIlIiltS, Ill lllc pay llSS
received would either be expended in
the county or 1t would be invested here,
so that nothing would be lost. In
Bureau county, Ill, two wagon loads
of gravel are unloaded side by side and
those two loads give sufficient material
for the road of at least ten feet In
length. We can see that for the 5000
feet of a mile, 1t would take 500 loads
of material. There is enough lime stone
along Cedar creek to make every mile
of highway in the county a road in fact.
1t would take some money out of tax
payers pockets, but ii would put this
money as we have shown above, into
the pockets of other men-merchants,
doctors. and all rad would get back
much of all this expense within q year.
Ten men with four teams Of horses
beginning work, let us say. on the
Glasgow and Fairfield highway, at the
nearest point to the stone quarry, ought
to haul out at least 1000 loads in Il
year, making three or four miles of
roads, for the stone ought to so farther
than the gravel would in making q road.
/ believe the ten men four teams
could easily be found for $1,000, or even
less. l am only trying roughly to ind!-
cate the probable cost of sucn a road.
Implements for building the road might
cost $4,000, but this would be only for
the first year and would be little or
nothing afterwards. in addition to the
regular force no doubt farmers would
find spare days that they could work
to advantage, either in preparing the
roadway IL in hauling stone. Then
v~agabcnds might be given the oppor-
tunity of doing some good in this world |
by breaking stone.
II this plan or something like 1t had
been adopted twenty years G there
might nave been at this time at least
fifty miles of road in the county, where
now there is not one. Some may not
at first thought, see that stone road
insures a superior earth road, when a
store road is possible. In wet times
will be confined to the hard road
and will not cut into deep ruts and
holes he roadway from side to side. l
believe that II the county supervisors
would at one begin a comprehensive
for constructing hard roads the
good sense of the people would heartily
approve of it. Long before twenty
years of work at real read making
shall pass substitutes for cheapening
construction will be found AT
Glendale the railway agent has emptiei
coal ashes and cinders into the mud
md made a dry path to reach the post
office. The path is little more than
a foot wide and perhaps six inches
deep, yet wagons on the Burlington
highway pass over it by hundreds, ris
ing out of the mud on one side Of the
path to sink into the mud on the other
side, and still the path keeps good. If
a well graded roadway six feet wide
was made of similar material, one can
see that it would be a good road. Burnt
ballast would no doubt make a very
good road, but until something is be-
gun we will have no roads, not wen
Earth roads when they become dry, for
hey will, for a long time, be too rough
travel over in comfort.