Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1909 — Good Roads of Hill Holland. [ARTICLE]

Good Roads of Hill Holland.

I am a reader of. the R. F. D. News, and being a R. L. C., traveling the roads every day, I have noted with pleasure the efforts made by -different writers, both in the News, and In different farm journals, in behalf of better roads. lam a Hollander by birth, and lived in that little country across the pond until I was 15 years of age, and remember well how roads are built and maintained over there. It would not do to say that this country is not up to date in road building That would be erroneous, but I will say that in the maintenance of them, after they are built this country is way behind Holland or any other European country. I was born and raised in a little town of about 1,800 inhabitants in the province the home of the Freisian-Holstein cattle. Our little city was on the main road, running north and south from one end of the country to another, called the “government road” because it was built and maintained by the government it was built in 1827, and is in splendid repair today. The road bed proper is about 30 feet wide, built of hardburned blue clinker brick, with good foundation, and sloping to either side, beinj about 12 inches higher in the center than on either side; then comes a strip of grass on either side of about 10 feet wide and on a level with the center of the road, but sloping a little to the outside; then a row of trees, sometimes oak or elm, sometimes fruit trees, at equal distances apart. A few feet back of that is a deep ditch, out of which the material was taken to make the road bed sufficiently high. About every 100 feet, a little ditch, sometimes a drain, is laid across through the strip of grass to the ditch. A uniformed workman, with shovel and broom on his shoulder, travois his beat of several miles along this road every day, just as a section hand on a railroad, keeping the drains open and removing whatever dirt the rain don’t wash off. This workman has police powers, as far as anything connected with the road is concerned. He may stop any teamster, and Inspect the load. If he thinks It too heavy for the width of the tires on his wagon, he will order the man to the nearest scales, which are built at the center of every section along the road, to be weighed, and if ho finds his suspicions correct, ths man is taken, before the nearest justice and fined. A general repairgang goes over the road once so often, and does what the dally roundsman cannot very weU do; that is, repairing pavement wherever necessary; these roads are always clean and nice and

one horse can do more work on them than two or even three horses could on the average road in this country. So much for “government roads.” They have no county roads there. The rest of the roadways are under the supervision of and maintained by the different townships. These township roads are generally made with screened or washed gravel, coarse below and fine on top, the sand all screened out of it The roads are laid out a good deal like klinker roads, with the exception of trees, on either side; they are considered no good roads along gravel roads, keeping the sun off, so that the road would not dry off readily after a rain. As the section man on our railroad has his pile of ties and rail handy in case of an emergency, so has our uniformed workman, who travels these roads every day, his pile of gravel handy at different places along the road, and whenever he notices a little depression in the road after a rain, he takes his shovel, drains off the water, and fills the hole with gravel from the nearest pile. These roads are as nice as the boulevards around our big cities. As it costs lots of money to build good roads. It will not pay to let them take charge of themselves when once built A man may buy ever so nice and good a suit of clothes, but if he don’t take care of it, it will soon be worn and shabby, and that calls for another one. The question of what to do with our prison labor has been discussed time and again; for no matter what they were employed at, It always interferred with the honest man outside of prison in the same line of business. Why not put the convicts of the country to building good roads for the benefit of everybody? This seems to me a practical solution of that very aggravating problem. It would kill two birds with one stone. Then after the roads are built, turn them over to the State or county they pass through, and compel eaid State or county to keep them In good repair. It would not take the average citizen, or farmer long to see the advantage of good roads, and crossroads would son be built, * Another thing that strikes me as a drawbacks to road building in this country Is the very lax law In regard to assessments for that purpose and the way people's money Is generally spent A law doing away with this jobbery would save the people from one-third to one-half of their assessments, and would do away with a good dela of kicking whenever there Is talk of building a now road. MATT BOSWINKLE. Thayer, Ind.