There are many railroad engineers and hydraulic engineers in the country, but competent highway or road engineers are scarce. And yet there are hundreds of thousands of miles of public roads in these United States which need engineering supervision. So great are the variations in the rock and soil, and in the conditions for drainage and grade to be encountered, that I am satisfied the knowledge and skill required of the engineer in building public roads is not a whit less than that required for the location and building of lines of railroad. And yet we find pervading the country a mistaken belief that anybody can build a road just as there is a mistaken notion that anybody can manage a farm, whether he uses brains and business methods or not. The existence of this mistaken belief does harm in both cases, and as soon as we can get the public to realize the importance of the road engineer we can increase the number of engineers and find ample work for them to do in building good roads. In conclusion, I may say a word about an experiment in building a road with oyster shells in a region where we have no rock for macadam. This "shell road" extends from Wilmington to Wrightsville, and has for a number of years supplied a hard, smooth, excellent road, both for those who drive in search of pleasure and those who, with carts and wagons, transfer various commodities between Wilmington and the seacoast at Wrightsville Sound. It is 8 miles long, and in width averages about 21 feet. It extends through a level region, sandy and marshy at intervals. Ditches were dug on both sides 2 to 4 feet deep for the purpose of drainage, the soil removed from the ditches being used to raise the roadbed. In the center of this roadbed a space 12 to 16 feet wide was covered 6 inches deep with oyster shells taken from Wrightsville Sound. Traffic soon ground the uppermost shells to a powder, which cemented the whole mass and gave a smooth surface on top. The attractiveness of the driveway has been increased by the planting of trees on both sides. The road was built as a private enterprise by Wilmington gentlemen between 1875 and 1881, at a total cost of nearly $40,000. I am satisfied that the road could be built now for less than half that sum. I wish I could report more progress. I am at least able to report that, though the difficulties be numerous and great, we are gradually overcoming them.

Gen. STONE. Col. Tipton has lately made a visit to Mecklenburg County at my request, and possibly, if he can speak now, we should know something more definitely in regard to the actual methods under which those roads have been constructed.

RESPONSE OF COL. TIPTON.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: As Gen. Stone states, I recently paid a visit to Mecklenburg County for the purpose of inspecting the road-building there. While I am not here for the purpose of making a speech, I will state that in building their macadamized roads the authorities of Mecklenburg County are utilizing the county convicts. All prisoners sentenced to terms in jail are made to work during the term of their sentences on these roads. I was informed by Mr. Spratt, the engineer in charge of the construction, that the cost of working the convicts was $6 per capita per month. This includes guarding, feeding, clothing, medical attention, and all incidental expenses. The macadam on the roads they are building there is 12 feet wide; the roadway is from 32 to 40 feet wide, and 12 feet of that is macadamized to the depth of 9 inches. First, an excavation is made on one side of the dirt road and the unbroken stone is laid there; that is covered with crushed stone to the depth of 3 inches, and that is top-dressed with a finer crushed stone which is rolled with a heavy roller. Alongside of that the dirt road is put in good condition and the whole thoroughly drained. The macadamized road is on the right hand side of the roadway as you approach the city. The Mecklenburg law is very stringent with reference to wagons turning to the right, and vehicles going toward the city are,

as a rule, loaded, while those coming from the city are generally empty, and compliance with the law puts the loaded wagon upon the macadam. The road is being constructed at the rate of something over a mile a month now. The Mecklenburg people are profiting by experience, and are materially reducing the cost per mile every succeeding month. The average cost per mile of road-building there during the first few months of this year was $2,470 a mile; most of the time they paid 50 cents per cubic yard for stone delivered on the road; they are now getting the stone for 40 cents per cubic yard.

Some idea of the advantage of the macadamized road in that county can be formed from this fact: At the season of the year when our cotton crop is ready for the market the dirt roads are usually in very bad condition, making it a very costly and a very difficult matter to get the cotton to markets, and especially to take advantage of any temporary rise in the price. In fairly good weather, on the dirt roads of Mecklenburg County two bales of cotton is a good load for two mules; on the macadamized road, without any reference to the weather, the average load for two mules is ten bales of cotton.

The president introduced Hon. H. A. London, of North Carolina, who spoke as follows:

RESPONSE OF HON. H. A. LONDON.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: I was not aware until a few moments ago that my name was on the programme for this occasion, but I can not resist the opportunity of expressing the pleasure which it gives me in seeing this body engaged in so good a cause, and to add that, as a member of the North Carolina Press Association, it gives me peculiar pleasure to state that the editors of North Carolina are heart and soul with you in this work. At their last annual meeting, which was held last month, the matter was thoroughly discussed and a legislative committee appointed, of which I have the honor to be a member, to memorialize the legislature of our State on the subject of good roads, and to suggest material amendments to the present law. We hope, if another conference is held next year, to report a great deal more progress than that which our distinguished State geologist has already reported.

Road-building in North Carolina is as yet in its infancy. Until a few years ago the only method of pretending to work the roads in our State was the old-fashioned system of the overseer calling out the hands for a holiday picnic-for that is all it really amounted to-just a week before the courts were held in each county, and they thought themselves peculiarly fortunate if the grand jury at the ensuing tera did not indict the overseer. By the way, I would state that the road over which the judge was expected to travel was worked a little better than the others. A few more cedar boughs and a little more dirt was thrown in the mud holes there; yet when court met the judge always made it a very particular point in his charge to the grand jury, and impressed upon them as forcibly as he could their duty to indict overseers whose roads were not in good condition; yet I have scarcely ever known a grand jury indict the overseer in my county, because, as they themselves would candidly state, they were all in the same boat, and if they once began they did not know how far the disease might spread-they might all have it.

As Prof. Holmes has, I think, told you, it was to the legislature of 1885 that Mecklenburg County applied for a special road law, and such a law was passed specially for that county, and with the sad fate to the progressive members from that county who advocated it that Prof. Holmes has told you about. That law was known as the Mecklenburg road law. After the lapse of four years, and when its advantages became apparent, members of the legislature from other counties desired to have that law in operation in their respective counties, so the legislature passed a law in 1889 making it optional with the magistrates, the governing powers in our

respective counties, whether or not they would adopt that law for their own counties. Since that time a number of counties have profited by the good example of Mecklenburg, and have adopted that law, and I am very happy to state that on the first Monday in June, which is the day for the annual meeting of the magistrates of every county in North Carolina, the magistrates of my own county, with only one dissenting voice-and there were 60 of them-adopted this Mecklenburg road law. In that county we have the rock; Prof. Holmes has told you there are a few counties in the State which have suitable rock. In my county the trouble has been there was too much rock. But that rock laid useless, and our people would mire in mud holes in sight of enough rock to macadamize miles of road. But I believe that old Rip Van Winkle, as our State has sometimes been called, is now arousing, and she will show her sister States that she will go hand in hand with them in this new departure. I believe there is no greater work for our people to engage in for their material improvement than that of building up the roads of this country. We have railroads now very generally throughout the State; nearly every court-house or place of any size is connected with the railroad, and what our people now need, and the farmers more than any others, although they seem to object to it most of all, is to have good roads to the railroad station at the county seat, and I believe that the building of good highways in this country will henceforth be of more benefit than the building of railroads has been hitherto.

Hon. J. C. Stevenson. of Wilmington, N. C., was introduced and spoke as follows:

RESPONSE OF HON. J. Ç. STEVENSON.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONFERENCE: Had I been consulted by the committee of arrangements before I was booked for a speech on this subject I think I would have been omitted. Certainly I have not come here with any expectation that I can give the gentlemen of this conference anything which they can profitably carry home with them. I came to learn; I am not accustomed to public speech. But as I look around among the faces of these delegates, they look so familiar to me, they look so much like North Carolinians, and the genial manner and hospitable words of our worthy president give me so much courage, that I feel I am among my own people.

We have been through many stages of progress; we have just been through a stage of complication; we are now entering a stage of coöperation. We find that there are combinations on all hands, combinations of capital, combinations of labor; the greatest combination, and the one which unites us all in one heart and sympathy and in one desire for good is the combination of these great States in this Union, in one government, which looks forward to the accomplishment of a general purpose in the general interest of its people. This combination of interest among the several States results in this convention here to-day. This is one of the results. We have come here as a coöperative association; as a people who have come together to interchange ideas concerning the building of roads.

The history of road-building in the State of North Carolina has been ably narrated to you by our State geologist, and by a further review of that field by our worthy citizen, Mr. London. I could add nothing to what they have said. If I were to attempt to entertain you for hours here--and you need not fear that that will be the case-I would have to resort to the old method of buncombism. Probably you recollect that the State of North Carolina was once divided by the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the west was the "State of Buncombe," which produced a great many orators who could talk forever and say nothing. That would be about the speech I should make to you if I were to make you a long one. But in our county-I am from the metropolis county of the State of North Carolina, in which the city of Wilmington is situ

ated—we are, in common with many other parts of the State, interested in the building of roads. At the meeting last June of the magistrates of our county the question was agitated as to the issuing of bonds and the improvement of our roads. The infection of road-building having started somewhere up North here is getting down our way slowly, and I share the hope of Prof. Holmes that in the next decade North Carolina will be found making rapid strides in the direction of good roads. We have had an object lesson, and I suggest that so far as the building of roads is concerned one object lesson is worth a thousand theories. Just build one good road in a county and let them see what it is; let them know the improvement of agricultural interest along its line; let them see that those people who live on the line of this road are becoming wealthy, their families dressed better, and that there is an intercommunion of sociability between those who live on the line of the road, and the churches are being built along it, and those are the best arguments in the world for good roads, and if I have not said anything of any importance I should like to leave that simple idea with you for reflection.

In answer to an inquiry, Mr. Stevenson said: We have no rock in our county, but there has been a shell road built from Wilmington to the seacoast. That road is properly ditched on both sides, and upon the surface is put the oyster shells that have accumulated along the line of the coast from year to year, and that makes a most magnificent road. It is traveled a great deal, it costs but very little to keep it up, yet it is always in repair, and it is "a thing of beauty and a joy forever."

Maj. W. W. Screws, of Montgomery, Ala., next addressed the confer

ence.

RESPONSE OF MAJ. SCREWS.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: Although I am not in the habit of speaking, yet, as my State is called upon, I desire to express my gratification in being here. I am impressed with the idea that if there is any truth in the old adage that "misery loves company," it is quite pleasant to have been here and to have heard pretty much the same report from some of the States that we can make from ours. We have mud roads. I live in the black-prairie country and people who desire to haul their produce to our market town have to engage in what they call a “triweekly" visit, which consists of going up one week and trying to get back the next. Roads are strewn with broken wheels, axles, and not unfrequently with their dilapidated drivers. But that hour is passing away. We have the old primitive law of township road work; the men give ten days' service in working the road, and that ten days' service-as the gentleman from North Carolina suggested-is put in with the strict view of dodging the result of a grand jury's action. In north Alabama there is a magnificent system of turnpike roads, and there the land has always been worth anything from four to five times what it was in any other county in Alabama. A few years ago, in addition to the number of miles of turnpike they already had, they bonded the county for several hundred thousand dollars to increase it, and now I think there is not a single foot of roadway in Madison County that can not be traveled with ease at any season of the year.

In Jefferson County, which is in the heart of the mineral region, they have some 70 miles of hard roadway, a large portion of which is built by the use of convict labor; but they disproved the correctness of the theory that it was better to use. convict labor in public works of that sort than to hire labor. After trying it a short time they abandoned it and hired labor to complete the contract they had on hand. In my county and about Montgomery, the capital of the State, about four years ago

they concluded it was rather hard on the people to compel them to take a week or two to get to town and back again, and they undertook to build 6 miles of hard roadway, the road being about 16 feet wide and 7 or 8 inches deep; it is built out of material called chert; I do not know whether it is known in any other State or not; it is found around Birmingham, and is of a peculiar clay and gravel formation, and when put on the roadway becomes as hard as asphalt. It cost us about $6,000 a mile, as the material had to be hauled about 90 miles. Our people, however, were so pleased with it that the board of county revenue made another contract for about 6 miles more, that is now being put down, and the people are so enthused with the idea of having a decent roadway that they authorized the members of the legislature to get through a bill leaving it to the people to say whether or not they should issue bonds for $300,000, which would enable them to have roadways in that county equal to any, and I am satisfied that our people will vote for that. Under the Alabama law you can only go to the extent of 50 cents per hundred on county taxation for any purpose, and the county can not issue a bond, excepting to refund a debt already existing. Therefore, they can not have any State aid, but by acts of the legislature the people have the right to tax themselves for the purpose of building schoolhouses, bridges, and good roads, and our people have taken the fever, and I am satisfied that within a few years there will not be a county in Alabama that can not compare with almost any in any other State. I think we will disprove the correctness of the idea that Alabama is a State in which "we rest," and the people will learn that it is a State in which we live and move and hustle.

Hon. Martin Dodge, president of the Ohio road commission, addressed the convention:

RESPONSE OF HON. MARTIN DODGE.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NATIONAL ROAD CONFERENCE: It appears, by the numerous expressions that have already been made, that the opinions of the members of this conference are, like Joseph's coat, of many colors. Whether we shall be able to agree as to what is best to be done in the matter of roads may be doubtful; in fact, I think it is doubtful whether any one plan would be suitable to all parts of our country. This one thing I believe ought to be said, and ought to be more fully understood than I think it is, and that is that it is no part of the purpose or business of this conference, or of those interested in this movement, to levy burdens upon the people, but rather to remove from the people the burdens they already bear-perhaps one of the greatest burdens that a people can bear-and that is the excessive cost of transportation which prevails where horses and wagons are used. We may be all agreed, I think, that whatever judicious expenditure of money is made to really better the roads so as to cheapen the cost of transportation, will result in lightening the burden rather than in putting greater burdens upon the people. The burdens that the people bear in this respect have done much, in my opinion, especially in the older States, to diminish the value of land and to lessen the rewards of labor. Something has been said by one of the speakers in this conference as to the misappropriation of money that is sometimes made by the General Government with the object of cheapening transportation by deepening rivers.

It is also true, as has been said here, that much of the money, or labor-which is the same thing-that is expended in working the roads is also misappropriated.

It behooves us to make no mistake as to the advice we give in reference to the expenditure of money in improving our roads. If we advise a wise system of road building which results in a proper application of money or labor, which finally results in cheapening transportation, and thereby adds to the value of land and the rewards of labor, then we have done a good thing. If, however, we make a mistake, and misapply, or misappropriate, or misadvise in any way so that the labor shall be lost, then the result will be no better than in the cases which have been