The Mena weekly star., 1908-07-23
HINTS ON MAKING
 GOOD EARTH ROADS
U. s. Office of Public Roads Tells How to Make aud Maintain Them
 Friends of Road
 0verseer.

good roads as those of any country
 of the old world, they have not
 been as Loyalty supported as tue
 men of those countries ID main.
 tainiug the highways after conn
 pletion, and the deplorable state
 of many hundred thousand miles
 of road is thus accounted for.
 County and township officials ma v
 al the outset stand the expense of
 having a road built, but they
 strenuously object when asked to
 provide funds to rebuild the road
 that has been allowed to go to ruin
 The persistent and powerful enemies of earth roads are water and narrow tires, and the con- stant effort of the men in charge of the roads should be to guard against their destructive effects and remedy all damage as quick J as possible. The simple imple- ments which have been found to be of greatest assistance in this work are the blow, the drag scraper. the wheel scraper, the road grader, and the spllt-log drag.
 With a sandy soil and a subsoil of clay, or clay and gravel, deep blowing so as to raise and mix the clay with the surface soil and sand will prove beneficial. The combination forms a sand clay road at a trifiing expense. On tbe other hand, if the read be en- tirely of sand a mistake will be made if it is plowed unless clay can be added. Such blowing would merely deepen the sand, and at the same time break up the small amount of hard surface material which may have formed. If the subsoil is clay and the sur face scant in sand or gravel, plow- ing should not be restored to, as 1t would result in a clay surface rather than one of sand or gravel. A road foreman must know not only what to blow and what not to blow, but how and when to blow. If the road is of the kind which according to the above in- structions should be plowed over its whole width, the best method is 10 ruu the first furrow in the middle of the road and work out to the sides, thus forming crown. Results from such blowing are greatest in the spring or early summer.
 In the ditches blow can be used to good advantage, but should be followed by scrapper or grader. To make wide, deep ditche. nothing better than the ordinary drag scrapper has yet been devised. For hauls under 100 feet, or in making fills" it is especially servicable. It is mi,- take, however, to attempt to handle long haul material with this scra per, as the wheel scraper is better adapted to such work.
 The machine most generally used iu road work is the grader, or road machine. This machine is especially useful in smoothing and growing the road and in open ing ditches. A clay subsoil un- der d thin coating of soil should not be disturbed with a grader. It is also mistake to use grad CT indiscriminately and to pull material from ditches upon sand clay road. Not infrtquenlly turf, soil and silt from ditch bottoms are piled in the middle of the road in a ridge, making mudholes a certainty. It is important in us- ing grader to avoid building up the road too much at one time. A road gradually built up by fre- quent use of the grader will last better than if completed at ote operation. The foreman frequent. ly thinks his road must be high ID the first instauc'. He piles up material from 10 inches to a foot in depth ouly to learn, with the arrival of the first rain, that he has furnished the material for as many inches of mud. All mater. ial should be brought up in thin layers, each layer well puppled