Archer Butler Hulbert

“ And ought not the people have the opportunity to attend church? I am coming to believe that what we need in this country, even more than education of the intellect, is the education of the moral side of our nature. I believe, with Jefferson, that the church and the state should be separate. I believe in religious freedom, and I would not have any man's conscience fettered by act of law; but I do believe that the welfare of this nation demands that man's moral nature shall be educated in keeping with his brain and with his body. ”

“ Or what joy more exquisite than with pleasant companionship to dash along the smooth highway, drawn by a noble American trotter? What poor city scenes can so inspire poetic feeling, can so increase the love of the beautiful, can so elevate and broaden and strengthen the character, and so inspire us with reverence for the great Father of us all? But for the full enjoyment of such pleasures good roads are indispensable. ”

“ It is the question of good roads as they affect the social and moral life of our rural communities. It is easy to talk of bad roads costing a half billion dollars a year—the answer should be that of Hood's—"O God! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap." You cannot count in terms of the stock exchange the cost to this land of poor roads; for poor roads mean the decay of country living, the abandonment of farms and farm-life, poor schools, poor churches, and homes stricken with a social poverty that drives the young men and girls into the cities. ”

“ The farmer has nothing that escapes taxation; and, in all direct taxation, he not only pays on all he has, but the farmer who has visible property has to pay a large part of the taxes that ought to be paid by the owners of invisible property, who escape taxation. I repeat, therefore, that the farmer not only pays more than his share of all direct taxation, but that when you come to expend public moneys you do not spend them on the farms, as a rule. You spend them in the cities, and give the incidental benefits to the people who live in the cities. ”

“ We should remember also that when we collect taxes through consumption we make the farmer pay not only on that which is imported, but upon much of that which is produced at home. Thus the farmer's burden is not measured by what the treasury receives, but is frequently many times what the treasury receives. Thus under indirect taxation the burden upon the farmer is greater than it ought to be; yet when you trace the expenditure of public moneys distributed by the Federal Government you find that even in a larger measure special benefits go to the great cities and not to the rural communities. ”

“ You cannot estimate the cost to this country, in blood, brain, and muscle, of the hideous system of public roads we have possessed in the decade passed. Look at any of our cities to the men who guide the swift rush of commercial, social, and religious affairs and you will find men whose birthplaces are not preparing another such generation of men for the work of the future. ”

“ Without treading upon controversial ground or considering whether this trend has been increased by legislation hostile to the farm, it will be admitted that the government is in duty bound to guard jealously the interests of the rural population, and, as far as it can, make farm life inviting. In the employment of modern conveniences the city has considerably outstripped the country, and naturally so, for in a densely populated community the people can by coöperation supply themselves with water, light, and rapid transit at much smaller cost than they can in a sparsely settled country. ”

“ We have today probably the poorest roads of any civilized nation; although, considering the extent of our roads, which cover perhaps a million and a half miles, we of course have the best roads of any nation of similar age. As we have elsewhere shown, the era of railway building eclipsed the great era of road and canal building in the third and fourth decades of the old century, and it is interesting to note that freight rates on American railways today are cheaper than on any railways in any other country of the world. ”

“ People generally are beginning to realize that road-building is a public matter, and that the best interests of American agriculture and the American people as a whole demand the construction of good roads, and that money wisely expended for this purpose is sure to return.
Road-making is perfected by practice, experience, and labor. Soils and clays, sand and ores, gravels and rocks, are transformed into beautiful roads, streets, and boulevards, by methods which conform with their great varieties of characters and with nature's laws. ”

“ Doubtless the best way to keep an earth road, or any road, for that matter, in repair is by the use of wide tires on all wagons carrying heavy burdens. Water and narrow tires aid each other in destroying streets, macadam, gravel, and earth roads. Narrow tires are also among the most destructive agents to the fields, pastures, and meadows of farms, while on the other hand wide tires are road-makers; they roll and harden the surface, and every loaded wagon becomes in effect a road roller. Nothing so much tends to the improving of a road as the continued rolling of its surface. ”

“ In most cases the selection of a material for road-making is determined more by its cheapness and convenience of location than by any properties it may possess. But when we consider the number of roads all over our country which are bad from neglect and from obsolete methods of maintenance that would be much improved by the use of any rock, this regard for economy is not to be entirely deprecated. At the same time, as a careless selection leads to costly and inferior results, too much care cannot be used in selecting the proper material when good roads are desired at the lowest cost. ”

“ The fair flower of patriotism there reaches its greatest perfection. Every battlefield that marks the world's progress, the victory of liberty over tyranny or right over wrong, [Pg 42] has been deluged with the blood of farmers. He evades neither the taxgatherer nor the recruiting officer. He shirks the performance of no public duty. In the hour of its greatest needs our country never called for help upon its stalwart yeomen when the cry was unheeded. The sons and daughters of American farmers are filling the seminaries and colleges and universities of the land. ”

“ Good roads, like good streets, make habitation along them most desirable; they economize time and force in transportation of products, reduce wear and tear on horses, harness and vehicles, and enhance the market value of real estate. They raise the value of farm lands and farm products, and tend to beautify the country through which they pass; they facilitate rural mail delivery and are a potent aid to education, religion, and sociability. Charles Sumner once said: "The road and the schoolmaster are the two most important agents in advancing civilization." ”

“ The practice of using too soft, too brittle, or rotten material on roads cannot be too severely condemned. Some people seem to think that if a stone quarries easily, breaks easily, and packs readily, it [Pg 139] is the very best stone for road-building. This practice, together with that of placing the material on unimproved foundations and leaving it thus for traffic to consolidate, has done a great deal to destroy the confidence of many people in stone roads. There is no reason in the world why a road should not last for ages if it is built of good material and kept in proper repair. ”

“ Good roads do not concern our pockets only. They may become the instrumentalities for improved health, increased happiness and pleasure, for refining tastes, strengthening, broadening, and elevating the character. The toiler in the great city must have rest and recreation. Old and young, and especially the young, with character unformed, must and will sweeten the daily labor with some pleasure. It is not the hours of industry, but the hours devoted to pleasure, that furnish the devil his opportunity. ”

“ While we are building great libraries in the great cities we do not have libraries in the country; and there ought to be a library in every community. Instead of laying upon the farmer the burden of buying his own books, we ought to make it possible for the farmers to have the same opportunity as the people in the city to use books in common, and thus economize on the expense of a library. ”

“ For a farm or farming community the width need not be greater than ten or twelve feet. A roadway which is too wide is not only useless, but the extra width is a positive damage. Any width beyond that needed for the traffic is not only a waste of money in constructing the road, but is the cause of a never-ending expense in maintaining it. The surface of the roadbed should preferably have a fall from the center to the sides the same as that to be given the finished road, and should, if possible, be thoroughly rolled and consolidated until perfectly smooth and firm. ”

“ There are but two ways in which the value of a rock as a road material can be accurately determined. One way, and beyond all doubt the surest, is to build sample roads of all the rocks available in a locality, to measure the traffic and wear to which they are subjected, and keep an accurate account of the cost both of construction and annual repairs for each. ”

“ Rural delivery routes diverge from our towns and cities and give the country people the advantages of a splendid post office system. Good roads to these cities would give them a score of advantages where now they have but this one. Like rural delivery it may seem impracticable, but in a short space of time America will leap forward in the front rank of the nations in point of good highways.
An execrable road system, besides bringing poor schools and poor churches, has rendered impossible any genuine community of social interests among country people. ”

“ If loose earth is dumped into the middle of the road and consolidated by traffic, the action of the narrow-tired wheels cuts it or rolls it into uneven ruts and ridges, which hold water, and ultimately results, if in the winter season, in a sticky, muddy surface, or if it be in dry weather, in covering the surface with several inches of dust. If, however, the surface be prepared with a road machine and properly rolled with a heavy roller, it can usually be made sufficiently firm and smooth to sustain the traffic without rutting, and resist the penetrating action of the water. ”

“ When used alone, clay is the least desirable of all road materials, but roads constructed over clay soils may be treated with sand or small gravel, from which a comparatively hard and compact mass is formed which is nearly impervious to water. Material of this character found in the natural state, commonly known as hardpan, makes, when properly applied, a very solid and durable surface. In soil composed of a mixture of sand, gravel, and clay, all that is necessary to make a good road of its kind is to "crown" the surface, keep the ruts and hollows filled, and the ditches open and free. ”

“ Graceful and natural curves conforming to the lay of the land add beauty to the landscape, besides enhancing the value of property. Not only do level, curved roads add beauty to the landscape and make lands along them more valuable, but the horse is able to utilize his full strength over them; furthermore, a horse can pull only four-fifths as much on a grade of two feet in one hundred feet, and this gradually lessens until with a grade of ten feet in one hundred feet he can draw but one-fourth as much as he can on a level road. ”

“ Roads constructed over wet undrained lands are always difficult to manage and expensive to maintain, and they are liable to be broken up in wet weather or after frosts. It will be much cheaper in the long run to go to the expense of making the drainage of the subjacent soil and substructure as perfect as possible. There is scarcely an earth road in the United States which cannot be so improved by surface or subdrainage as to yield benefits to the farmers a hundred times greater in value than the cost of the drains themselves. ”

“ The work of maintaining earth roads will be much increased by lack of care in properly finishing the work. The labor and money spent in rolling a newly-made road may save many times that amount of labor and money in making future repairs. After the material has been placed it should not be left for the traffic to consolidate, or for the rains to wash off into the ditches, but should be carefully formed and surfaced, and then, if possible, rolled. The rolling not only consolidates the material, but puts the roadbed in proper shape for travel immediately. ”

“ If the surface of a macadam road continues to be too muddy or dusty after the necessary drainage precautions have been followed, then the rock of which it is constructed [Pg 173] lacks sufficient hardness or toughness to meet the traffic to which it is subjected. If, on the contrary, the fine binding material of the surface is carried off by wind and rain and is not replaced by the wear of the coarser fragments, the surface stones will soon loosen and allow water to make its way freely to the foundation and bring about the destruction of the road. ”

“ For the Southern States, where there are no frosts to contend with, the best qualities of limestone are considered quite satisfactory so far as the cementing and recementing qualities are concerned; but in most cases roads of this class of material do not stand the wear and tear of traffic like those built of trap rock, and when exposed to the severe northern winters such material disintegrates very rapidly. In fact, trap rock, "nigger heads," technically known as diabase, and diorites, are considered by most road engineers of long experience to be the very best stones for road-building. ”

“ In the popular mind the benefits of country living are common only as a fad; the boy who goes to college and returns to the farm again is one of a thousand. Who wants to be landlocked five months of the year, without social advantages? Good roads, in one generation, would accomplish a social revolution throughout the United States that would greatly tend to better our condition and brighten the prospect of future strength. ”