Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1896 — FREE ROCK FOR THE ROADS. [ARTICLE]

FREE ROCK FOR THE ROADS.

California Highway Bureau’s Rock Crushing Plant. Following close upon the heels of recent events in road improvement agitation, the good roads’ convention at Santa Cruz, the supervisors’ convention at San Jose, and the universal stirring up of the question throughout the state, comes the opening of the state rockcrushing plant, at Folsom penitentiary, on Saturday last. June 6. The crusher is one-half a mile from the Folsom power house. The i>ower is conveyed by means of compressed air through a Lafel turbine wheel and a six-inch pipe. At the machine the compressed air rushes into a receiver, where it is heated by the Injection of a fine jet of steam no larger than a pencil point. This crusher is the largest of its kind in the United States. The foundation is 34 feet deep in solid rock, filled up with granite blocks 18 inches thick. The weight of the rock-bunkers, when full of rock, is nearly pounds. The main shaft of the crusher is about as large as the shaft of the line-of-bat-tie ship Oregon. Its capacity, running

at full velocity, h 110 tons an hour, or almost two tons of crushed rock per minute. Th!® great engine is a product of home labor. It was built by the Union Iron Works at a cost of $30,000. The total coet of the plant represents an outlay, if built by ordinary labor, of SIOO,OOO, but the use of convict labor represents an important saving to the state. On the state property there Is an unlimited supply of the finest kind of trap-rock for road-building purposes, which the highway bureau is authorized to use. The crusher is operated by the same agency which oversees also its distribution. For this purpose an elaborate set of blanks has been prepared to insure that all the rock sent out goes to the roads for which it is designated. The contractor must file applications with the mayor or board of supervisor® and with the bureau; be must have all kinds of certificates from the board of supervisors that he has been granted the contract, and from the city engineer that the estimates are correct. before the rock is shipped. We have mnch to learn from the Roman people in the matter of road construction. They had the greatest system of highways the world has ever seen. At one time twenty-nine great roads centered in Rome, and there were 320 state roads throughout the empire.

These highways, which extended through what is now Germany, France, Spain and even into England, and south into Africa, were built to withstand the heaviest of traffic. They were excavated 4 feet deep and filled with four solid layers of rock of decreasing size, the bottom layer being of solid rocks, hewn and fitted by hand, with mortar and cement poured into the interstices. Smaller stones were then laid in, and the top finished off with something like the macadam of the present day. On these great thoroughfares the Roman prisoners labored, and, in time of jieaee, road-making was the occupation of the soldiery. Opponents of convict labor usually base their objections on the ground that it throws out of employment a certain amount of free labor by the introduction into the market of goods at low prices which would otherwise have to be made by free labor. However, the fact is that the convicts employed at rock crushing in Folsom do not compete at all, but actually create work for others. The fact is that rock crushed by outside labor is so expensive that it cannot be used by the state or counties for road making at all; whereas, the stone prepared by the convicts is supplied by the state for road building at a nominal charge, i. e., that of the oil and waste used on the machinery, and the cost of transportation to the point where it is to be used.—San Francisco Wave.