Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1906-1908, 1906-09-07
TRAINED ROAD
MAKERS NEEDED
TO SEE THAT GREAT SUMS ARE
WISELY SPENT.
The Iowa Highway Commission
Trains Men in a School for Road
Observation-Disclosures Should
Do the Same -S3.0O0,OO0 Spent
Annually BY Rural Districts.

1t is somewhat astonishing to learn
that sum aggregating nearly three
million dollars is spent annually by
roads and bridges 1t is hard to be-
lieve that in the last ten years about
twenty-five million dollars have been
spent for these purposes outside of
the cities and villages, especially so
when the condition of the roads and
bridges is taken into account. They
have now practically the same appear
ance that they used to have before
those twenty-five millions We're spent
The money has literally been dropped
into the holes in our roads.
But more astonishing than the
greatness of these amounts is the fact
that they have been spent on engineer
ing projects in almost every instance
without the advice of a trained man.
We would naturally think man who
dollar railroad was absolutely crazy
If he did not hire the best engineering
talent he could get In fact the
courts would promptly be asked to APP
point guardian by his heirs if he
selected men who had no experience
and no technical training for the
work. Yet we go on in this great
state of ours and spend millions every
year on just that principle, without
any definite plan or any advice from
trained men. We all know road over
seer-many of them in our country
who know next to nothing of the
work they are supposed to do and their
work shows 1t.
When we start to build house we
get a mason to put up the foundation,
plumber to put in the piping,
painter to finish the job, and perhaps
men of other trades-in d word we
get men who know their business
We don't let the job to neighbol
Jones and his boy who never built any
thing more, pretentious than COW
she'd Yet when we come to select
a man to keep the road in repair sc
we can get to and from that house We
elect one who bad never given a day
Of careful consideration of the best
and cheapest means of keeping that
road in proper shape. We trust tC
luck that he Will do it we'll enough,
but he puts in a hundred dollar culvert
that is too small and washes out, or
five hundred dollar bridge without
proper abutments, which is soon I'M
1ermined after some heavy shower,
and bridge and abutments must both
be replaced. We cheerfully look upon
it as unavoidable and although we
grumple a little, quite readily pay
taxes next ar for someone else tC
waste in putting IN culvert about
four times too large and bridge
twice as long as needed.
But when we ask where we can get
trained men we find we havI't them
available our system hasn't been vi
the sort to make them. We have hired
a mason to do our woodwork. d novice
to lay the foundation and a black
smith to paint the house until each has
forgotten his own trade and does net
know the other. We must train men
from the start if we are ever to have
good roads.
The Iowa Highway Commission has
adopted the plan Of holding roac
school for a week in the summer, tc
which all road supervisors are invited.
They go to the Iowa State College
where they see all kinds Of road ma.
chinery at work and listen to lectures
on the best types of bridges, culverts
and road machinery. They are given
liberal opportunity to ask questions,
and all the help possible is given then
in the various problems they have met
in their work. Some such method as
this must be adopted in Wisconsin if
we are to see any results from the
$50, 900, 900 that will be spent on the
roads and bridges in the next ten
years.