The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-12-12
AWAKE TO ROAD NEEDS
DEPARTMENT or AGRICULTURE
 HAS wIDENED EXPERIMENTS.
At Work h Many states-Engineerp seat te Develop Highways From Local HIaterisIs-Sand Clay
 Best Tn the South and

That the United States government Is awakening to the necessity of im- proving the public highways through. out the country Is shown in the state- ment made by ofiice of public roads contained in the annual report of the Secretary of Agriculture. The state- ment explains that out of the total appropriation of $s7,3s0 made last year for the division of public roads, $16,- Sfe.79 was spent in carrying out de- monstrations on 69 sections of object lesson" road. with total surface area of sst.ss2 square yards. as against li7,sOe25, expended on 31 sections. with a total of 223.20S square yards during the preceding year. These operations covered iz macadam. 2s clay, gravel. 10 earth. 1 shell. and 1s experimental roads. Under this last classincation were sand-clay, ' gravel, burnt-ciay. and roads in which crude petroleum or other as- phaltic products entered as bidder.
 The purpose of these "object-lesson" roads Is to give elementary instructions to local road builders and to demonstrate the possibilities of road improvement. A majority of them were built under cooperative arrangements. by which the local authorities paid all expenses of machinery. tools, labor. and ma terials, the government providing for the engineering work.
 More Experiments Made.
 The office of public roads also has continued the work of aiding road ini- provement by studies and experiments conducted without the aid of either State or county funds. The proffer Of State aid in the construction of public roads by more than half the States and the consideration of the question by the remainder together with large bond issues by many counties. are. according to the officials of the de- partment indexes of the general in- terest being shown in the work, and have occasioned great demand upon the office for advice and assistance. So effective has been the educational work performed in cooperation that the number of square yards constructed has grown from 79,203 in 1905 to 661,- s92 in 1909.
 The policy of the department in this work leads to the most profitable use of means and material at hand in Q given locality. In pursuing this policy communities with abundant resources have been encouraged to use them more freely. while thinly-settled regions have been protected against too much enthusiasm for the expensive roads.
 Second in importance only to "object- lesson" work Is the experimental work of the office. The most important problem considered thus far has been that of combating the destructive action of automobile traffic upon costly macadam roads. Tn experimenting along these lines many materials hitherto regarded as useless, have proven available for certain classes of work.
 Experiments have been made princi- paiiy with view to obtaining a satis- factory binder and dust preventive at reasonable cost. Excellent results have been attained in the use of as- phait tar. and other bituminous pro- ducts. Waste from the sugar refineries and wool-pulp mills have also been found useful as binders in regions where oil or tar Is scarce.
 Use of siag and Iron.
 Attention has also been given to blast furnace slag. alone and in com- bination with other materials. In the construction of roads in an endeavor to find way to ,gutilize the large quantities of this waste product. The sand-clay road has also been found satisfactory in the Southern States. It has also fbeen Introduced Into Iowa. Kansas, and Nebraska, where 1t has thus far answered every requirement.. Experiments with the corrosion of iron and steel. both of which products are important factors in the construc- ,tion of good roads, have also been car ried on with excellent results. This work was inaugurated to find means of lessening the depreciation in iron and steel culverts in road work and was later extended to include fence wire. Upon the recommendations of experts of the office many manu- facturers of structural steel have in- stalled improved methods in turning out this commodity. which promise to eliminate many of the difficulties here tofore encountered in steel and reen- i forced concrete bridge and culvert con- l struction.
 Assisting the States!
 In the advisory work of the office,