ate in the Union. Its
roads are now costing from twenty to seventy cents per square yard.
Where the telford construction is used they sometimes cost as much as
seventy-three cents per square yard. The average cost of all classes of
the roads of that state during the last season was about fifty cents per
square yard. The stone was, as a rule, spread on to a depth of nine
inches, which, after rolling, gave a depth of about eight inches. At
this rate a single-track road eight feet wide costs about $2,346 per
mile, while a double-track road fourteen feet wide costs about $4,106
per mile, and one eighteen feet wide costs about $5,280 per mile. Where
the material is spread on so as to consolidate to a four-inch layer the
eight-foot road will cost about $1,173 per mile, the fourteen-foot road
about $2,053 per mile, while the one eighteen feet wide will cost about
$2,640 per mile.

[Illustration: EARTH AND MACADAM ROADS

[_Built by convict labor in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina_]]

The total cost of maintaining roads in good order ranges, on account of
varying conditions, between as wide limits almost as the initial cost of
construction. Suffice it to say that all money spent on repairing earth
roads becomes each year a total loss without materially improving
their condition. They are, as a rule, the most expensive roads that can
be used, while on the other hand stone roads, if properly constructed of
good material and kept in perfect condition, are the most satisfactory,
the cheapest, and most economical roads that can be constructed.

The road that will best suit the needs of the farmer, in the first
place, must not be too costly; and, in the second place, must be of the
very best kind, for farmers should be able to do their heavy hauling
over them when their fields are too wet to work and their teams would
otherwise be idle.

The best road for the farmer, all things being considered, is a solid,
well-built stone road, so narrow as to be only a single track, but
having a firm earth road on one or both sides. Where the traffic is not
very extensive the purposes of good roads are better served by narrow
tracks than by wide ones, while many of the objectionable features of
wide tracks are removed, the initial cost of construction is cut down
one-half or more, and the charges for repair reduced in proportion.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] By Hon. Maurice O. Eldridge, Assistant Director Office of Public
Road Inquiries.

CH