effort for self-improvement and elevation, is followed not only by personal advantages, but by benefits to society and to our race.

Farmers, citizens and friends-Trusting you will be pleased and benefited by this Institute, convened to encourage and disseminate useful knowledge, again I bid you welcome to the hospitalities of the "Independent State of Monroe."

The final session closed with the usual complimentary resolutions, and one offered by Mr. Sumner to the effect that the legislature be requested to appoint a dairy commissioner, whose duty it shall be to see to the enforcement of the law applying to bogus butter, was unanimously adopted. This concluded the business of the Institute, and it adjourned.

LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT FARMERS'

INSTITUTES.

COUNTRY ROADS.

BY A. L. ALDRICH, OF Flint.

(Read at the Flushing Institute, January 16, '85.)

It is undeniable that the average country roads in this part of Michigan are bad. They are inferior to and out of harmony with the fences, buildings, field cultivation, and the general air of thrift pervading the farms to which they are adjacent. They show a lack of enterprise and good judgment and scientific methods in their original construction and subsequent care that are not complimentary to those who are responsible for them. Indeed most country roads have never been "constructed" to any considerable extent, but like Topsy, they just growed" into the unprepossessing and unprofitable public property that we find them almost universally to-day. If there are occasional stretches of good country road, they are generally so through accident rather than through any intelligent or expert work expended on them.

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There have been wonderful improvements in farming in the last quarter of a century, through the application of scientific methods to field culture, and the invention and use of a great variety of ingenious agricultural implements. Buildings and fences are better, the average yield of crops is increasing, stock of all kinds is incomparably better than it was in the boyhood of even the younger farmers of to-day. But what of the roads? They have scarcely improved perceptibly, if indeed they have held their own. A few weeks ago I drove in a carriage over many miles of country roads that were familiar to me as a boy forty years ago, in a rich farming section of southwestern New York. On every hand on the farms were evidences of commendable growth towards better standards of excellence. Flocks and herds were composed of animals of a higher type. Good taste and good business sense were shown in the general management of fields and the appearance of buildings. But the roads. are not one whit better than they were so long ago, though no soil on the continent is better adapted to the making of splendid roads than that which I refer to.

Now this state of things, whether there or here, is wholly indefensible, illogical, in bad taste, and false in an economic sense. Bad roads, besides being an inconvenience and an unspeakable nuisance, are a bad business investment, because they make the farms which they skirt difficult of access from the commercial centers, and do not, so much as they ought, facilitate communication between one farm and another. They are a constant tax on

the farmer, both because they increase the wear and tear of teams, harness and vehicles in the transportation of farm products to market, and by reducing the amount to be conveyed at a single load from one-third to onehalf of what it ought to be. They thus depreciate the value of the land, as well as of every bushel of surplus grain or fruit, and every pound of wool or butter or meat produced upon the land.

If bad roads were a hard necessity, fixed irrevocably by some malign fate, men might accommodate themselves to their existence stoically or philosophically, according to their several dispositions. But they are not a necessity, and the conditions precedent to good roads are not beyond the reach of any average community in any fairly good farming country. (Of course it will be understood that I do not in this paper, propose to discuss the matter of building roads across swamps and marshes.)

IMPORTANCE.

I undertake to say that good roads, and by that term, I mean good hard turnpike roads that shall be practicable for the transportation of heavy loads or the rapid transit of light vehicles at all seasons of the year, wet or dry, summer or winter, spring or fall, can be maintained on nine out of every ten miles of main roads running through the arable lands of this part of Michigan. And I further maintain that such roads are as much a necessity to the farmer as good machinery on the farm. No farmer with a hundred acres of wheat to harvest on good smooth, well cleared land, would think it good economy to cut it with a sickle or a mulay cradle in these days of reapers and binders. But the toleration of bad roads is of a piece, so far as economy and sound business practice are concerned, with the use of these obsolete implements in a modern harvest field.

But, in order to have good roads, there must be radical changes in the methods of constructing and maintaining them. And it must be understood that good roads, like other things of real value, cost money. So do good implements, good teams, good stock, good barns, under-drainage, and iron bridges. And yet no sensible farmer will consent to dispense with good teams, good implements and good barns to house his crops and protect his stock, because they are expensive. Iron bridges cost money, and yet there are a score of them in this county, built at great present outlay of means, and why? Because their construction and maintenance are better business economy in the long run than the building and care of perishable wooden structures.

LAWS.

Now, about the reform in methods:

First in importance is a reform in the manner of assessing and collecting highway taxes, and the fundamental principle in this is, that they shall be assessed like other taxes on property according to its value, and shall be paid in money. All cities and villages pay their highway taxes thus. Farmers do pay their bridge or ditch tax in work. Their school taxes are not paid in labor, nor their general, township, county or State taxes, and why, in old and well settled sections, should road taxes be an exception to the general rule?

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Mr. President, it is time to abolish in Michigan the annual road working holiday, picnic, festival, carnival, masculine social, or whatever the real thing is that goes under the misnomer of "working the roads" under the direction of the Pathmaster, sometime between vernal thaws and autumnal frosts. I retain vivid recollections of these summer day vacations in my boyhood, when

all the males from ten years old upwards residing in the neighborhood limited by the boundaries of the road district, would get together somewhere on the highway, the lads to have a grand lark, and the fathers and grandfathers to discuss politics, wrangle over hard-shell Calvinism and Wesleyan free grace, compare notes on the crops or give their several versions of the local gossip. If the roads, already bad, escaped being permanently impaired by the work done under such auspices, the wayfarers thereon might consider themselves fortunate. This venerable custom seems to have traveled west with the sons of those who invented it, on parallel lines, and judging from some specimens of road working I have seen in Michigan, I think the traditions of the fathers have been carried out with tolerable fidelity.

Second. Section 1354 of the compiled laws of 1871, which is section 1 of chapter 4 of Title IX of Howell's Annotated Statutes of Michigan of 1883, ought to be abolished or radically amended. Where it permits the people of a township to pay their highway taxes in money if the majority of the electors so vote at the annual township meeting, the statute should be made mandatory and provide that all such taxes shall be paid in money. The new and sparsely settled townships might be excepted from this provision for a term of years if the enforcement would be a hardship.

Section 3 of the same chapter, Howell's Statutes, provides that the electors may determine by a vote how much money shall be raised for highway purposes, by taxation, the amount not to exceed one-half of one per cent of the aggregate assessed valuation of the property in the township in any one year. This section ought to be so amended as to allow one per cent instead of onehalf of one per cent to be raised for highway purposes, each and every year until such time as the roads of the township are put in good condition-and what is meant by "good condition" will appear further on in this paper.

Third. One of the serious defects in the present system of road management is the smallness of the road districts provided for in the present law. Section 8 of chapter 4 of the act above quoted, provides that each full township shall be divided into not less than four road districts. This section should be so amended as to provide for not more than one such district in any one township. Of course such an amendment should be followed by another abolishing the office of overseer of highways, or path master as he is called in common parlance, altogether. All supervision of highways in the township should be in the hands of one officer, and that officer should be the highway commissioner, whose duties should be well and specially defined by law and made subject to review by the town board.

The amount of money to be raised for highway purposes in the year should be determined by a vote of the qualified electors at the annual township election, upon a statement of the highway commissioner, setting forth the condition of the roads and the improvements and repairs necessary to be made during the year. The amount, having been voted, should be assessed and collected like other taxes, and the money placed in the hands of the township treasurer subject to the order of the highway commissioner.

Fourth. This having been effected, all work on the roads should be done. under his sole supervision, but always under contract, with as minute and exact specifications as would be employed in letting a contract to build a railroad or a court house or a state house.

I believe that in this proposed payment of road taxes in money, and the performance of all work on the highways under contract, the solution of the

problem of how to have good country roads will ultimately be found. The plan of large districts, comprising the whole township, will make it possible for all road work to be done at wholesale prices, and letting the work by contract will further insure the cheapening of prices and the excellence of work through the sharp competition among contractors. Under such a regime there would be men always available, provided with teams and machinery and all the necessary appliances for grading and filling and ditching and doing all kinds of road work at the least possible expense, so that the people of the township would really get more than twice as much road work done for a given amount of money as they get under the present system, and with the further advantage of having it done uniformly and in season.

I am aware that objection will be made to placing so much power in the hands of one man, as this plan implies. But there is nothing abnormal in it. He really would have less power than is exercised by the supervisor, and in any event, he would be a creature of the people, answerable to them for his acts, and punishable under the statutes for corruption or malfeasance in office. One man of capacity and integrity can do such work vastly better than half a dozen. Too many cooks are pretty likely to spoil the broth.

BUILDING.

Now, as to the actual, practical details of building country roads. Of course it will not be practicable to build good, permanent, finished turnpike roads all over a township in one year. That would involve a greater outlay of money than the people would be likely to authorize; but the whole or a part of the main traveled road in the township, the one leading, say, to the chief market place, should first be built, the amount in any one year to be determined by the sum of money available for the purpose, sufficient being retained to pay for such repairs as are absolutely necessary on other roads, until such time as they shall be reached with the permanent work, in the order of their importance to the traveling public.

It is of course desirable that all roads, for ease and convenience of transport and travel, shall be as nearly level as the topography of the country through which they pass will allow. If not absolutely level, the grades should be made as light as possible by cutting down the high places and filling the low ones. Steep ascents should be obviated wherever possible. As a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, so a road is only available for the transportation of such loads as can be hauled up its steepest acclivities. Remembering this, before any other work is done where a permanent turnpike is to be made, a competent surveyor should be employed to fix the grade throughout the entire length of the line.

This having been done, it is first to be remembered that the great enemy of good roads, as of good farming, is water. No good road can be continuously maintained until provision has been made for getting rid, not only of the surface water, but also of that which is below the surface, but tending always to come to the top through capillary action. To get rid of the water, then, is another of the great problems of road making. To do this properly, some system of under drainage must be resorted to. The beginning of the substructure of a good, permanent road is an underdrain that will carry off the water which percolates through the soil, throughout the entire length of the line, and to the distance of thirty to fifty feet each side of the center line of the track. It is better, of course, to put this drain under the middle of the