Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1910-04-19
Commissioner's Rod Meetiur.

A GOOD NUMBER OF th0eo interested
e gathered at the court house, huraday 4
attend the road meeting for Oxfort
County, held according to the provision
of the law, under the direction OF tn
r State Commissioner Of Highways, Pau
!. D. Sargent. Something like thirty VIII
/. are more or less directly interested II
t the question of roads we're assembled
/ and the register which Mr.. Sargent KEEP
, showed the attendance of these count,
D and town officials:
John L. Tubbs, road commissioner. Water
=. p. Mil I , road commissioner, Norway.
Frank A. Farrar, sslectman, Paris.
Henry d. Hammond, county commissioner
G. i. Stevens, road commissioner, Woodstock
, Frank =. Davis, selectman, WOODSTOCK.
b. +. Virgin, road commissioner, Mexico.
I'll W. q. Stearns, selectman, Paris.
II Charles w. Bow ker, selectman, Paris.
w. Il. Russell, road commissioner, Paris.
Il George w. Berry, road commissioner, Paris.
W. II. Eastman, county commissioner. Eas
Sumner.
r. L. Pottle, selectmsn. Otisied
James W. Libby, selectman, Hartford.
III &c. Becker, road commissioner, Albany.
n; A. Thompson, road commissioner Hart
George w. Holmes, selectman. Norway.
ii George o. Brown, selectman, Stoneham.
Dean A. Ballard, county commissioner, Frye
burg
, Soon after ten O'Clock Mr.. Sargent
who had arrived on the morning train
called the assembly to order. He sale
that he had very little to say that wal
new, the most that could be done Al
these meetings was to consider the gen
eral principles which applied to all roaC
building and maintenance.
II Attention was called to certain change,
made by the last legislature in the stats
road law, and these changes were ex
planned. As the law now stands, it il
obligatory upon the selectmen OF
Ievery town to insert In the warrant fol
the annual town meeting an article to see
if the town will make an appropriation
for state road work. Also it is decided
by the attorney general that any apprO.
priation for state road work, involving
state aid, must be made at the annual
meeting. No appropriation can be made
or increased at special meeting. The
plan of each years work must be ap
proved by the inspectors of the state de-
partment before any work Is done, and
the work is subject to inspection and ap-
proval by the state department..
An improved time book was shown by
Mr.. Sargent, which allows not only the
keeping of the time of the men on the
road, but shows the kind of work on
which the time was put in. By keeping
the time in this way, it is possible for
the state department to keep and classify
statistics so as to get an approximate
average for the cost of each item of work,
such as building drain, culvert work,
grading, surfacing, etc. Then when a
piece of work is to be laid out to be done
| it will be possible to make fairly
accurate estimate of the cost in advance
For the lack of such advance estimates,
last year three hundred towns in the
state started larger jobs of work than
they could complete, and had to call on
the town treasury for additional money
with which to finish up, as no money
will be paid by the state until the road
is complete. 1t Is a more satisfactory
plan to keep within the appropriation
each year.
Mr. Sargent then talked for some time
on practical questions and principles OF
road building. When the inspectors of
the state department examine piece of
road where it Is proposed to do state
road work, they first look to see II the
alignment Of the road can be improved.
Sometimes awkward and dangerous
curves can be taken out with a slight
change in the location of the road bed.
Next they look to see II the grade can
be bettered, as it would be poor economy
to build piece Of road and then tear it
to pieces later II it was seen that hill
could profitably be cut down.
But the chief point around which all
improvement centers is drainage, both
surface drainage and sub-drainage. Mr..
Sargent dwelt upon this matter at some
length, illustrating by bis charts the
manner Of building both kinds of drains,
as we'll as culverts, and explaining in
more or less detail the construction of
drains in different places and under
varying conditions.
Mr.. Sargent explained the specifica-
tons for standard road bed, as adopt
cd by the state department, illustrating
it by charts. The standard road is
twenty-One feet wide, but his charts
show either a gravel surface of full
width, 15-foot gravel crown with earth
shoulders, or 12-foot crown with earth
shoulders. Except in exceptional places,
the 15-foot crown will be sufficiently
wide for all travel. In Rhode Island the
state law does not permit building the
gravel or macadam crown more than
fourteen feet wide, and these roads built
that width, where automobile travel Is
quite heavy, are entirely sufficient, as
Mr.. Sargent said he knew from personal
observation.
In the course of his talk Mr.. Sargent
cited the instance of Charles w. Ross,
who has been highway commissioners in
Newton, Mass, for twenty years. he
gets a salary of $4,000 q year, is good
engineer, and one of the best practical
road men of the country. Whenever in
any place Mr.. Ross sees piece OF road
which looks right to him, he hunts up
the man who built it, and finds out bow
he did it, and what the conditions were,
and then goes home and does the same
thing under like conditions. With all
his skill and experience, he never loses
an opportunity to learn little more. l
never attend one of these meetings, said
Mr.. Sargent, without learning something
new. The trouble with most road build.
ers is that they don't get around enough,
to learn what other people are doing,
and profit by their successes and their
failures.
There was quite lot of discussion Of
certain individual cases In some of the
towns represented, where . piece of road
was to be built or repaired under difficult
conditions, as in swamp, or culverts to
be built in bad places. In each case Mr..
Sargent gave more or less advice, and
made note of each to be used by the
state road inspector later.
Speaking of the care and maintenance
Of our ordinary roads, Mr.. Sargent said
that he had long felt that We ought to
get down to systematic method in our
care Of roads. His idea would be to
have the road divided into sections OF
somewhere from ten to twenty-five miles
each, and on each section put q man and
some kind of q team. Let the man
patrol that section of road and put In his
time keeping it In repair. he would do
the little things that need doing, and the
road would be kept good. That is the
system which the railroads employ In
maintaining their road beds, 1t is the sys-
TEN employed by the road builders of
Europe In maintaining their fine high
ways, and 1t is q business method. In
one place in New York state, q piece of
macadam road was so badly worn out
that preparations were made for re-
suriacing 1t. In the meantime man