The total number of experimental and object-lesson roads built under the direction of the Office since its organization is 96, with a total length of about 39 miles. The roads were built in 28 states, the materials used in construction being shells, chert, limestone, gravel, brick, oil, tar, sand-clay, marl, stone, burned clay, slag, and steel track.
Four complete road-building outfits were placed in the field at the beginning of the past fiscal year, and their work has continued without interruption. Twenty-one sections of road have been built during the year in nine states, the total length being a little over nine miles. In the construction of these roads a variety of materials was used, such as stone, shale, burnt clay (known as gumbo), sand clay, and shells.
they even put a lot of thought into how steep road grades could be. Remember that horses were still pulling loads on these roads, and it was worked out just how a hill effected the work needed by horses to pull weight up a single degree of slope:
We are told by experts that a horse, working on a level road, can exert one-tenth of his weight as a tractive force, and travel at the rate of two and one-half miles per hour for a period of ten hours per day, keep it up continuously and remain in good condition. Also that this power will be diminished by ten per cent, for each degree of incline on which the horse is compelled to work.
Thus it will be seen that a 3,000- pound team working on a level grade on an earth road, where the coefficient of road resistance is 1-20, can draw a load equal to double the weight of the team. But substitute a five % grade, and the team will be only able to draw a load equal to one-half its weight, or 1,500 pounds. The following table shows loads which can be drawn on different road surfaces with varying grades, when the tractive force is constantly 300 pounds:
The conditions of amount and weight of traffic are changing and constantly demanding better brick, and our modern manufacturers are meeting these requirements. Charlestown, W. Va., has the reputation of being the first city in the United States to use brick for paving purposes. This was in 1870, and twenty years later a careful ex amination showed that the brick had worn away less than one-half inch, which is surely a good test for what was practically nothing but a hard-burned building brick.
Cape May County in New Jersey wanted a road reestablished to 5 mile beach, as it had been abandoned for 15 years due to storms wiping it out, making it unpassable to anything but horses.
When this was built about one-half of the distance was laid crosswise with cedar slabs, the other half with small poles, then a very light coat of upland soil.
The new road was constructed using large gum trees as a means of securing a foundation, with two opposite sides flattened, were laid lengthwise; one was placed in the center, the other two about under the wheel ruts. Across these were laid poles, about three inches in diameter at the small end, the space between the stringers having first been filled with mud. Over the ends of the poles at each side were placed curb planks, 2 by 6 inches; these planks were securely fastened, edge up, to cedar piles driven six feet into the meadow and projecting four feet above the planks; these same planks were placed eight feet from the center line, thus giving us a 16-foot drive way.
A mud bank was carefully thrown upon each side against the outside of the planks and thoroughly compacted. The meadow grass grows through this, making it more secure. A line of mud about two feet wide was placed on the inside of the planks and compacted, thus making an almost water tight trough. The remaining space between the curb planks was filled with upland soil to a level with the outside planks.
Over this soil we used oyster shells, three bushels to the square yard, 27,000 bushels in all. Over the shells, before they were ground up, was spread a coat of good gravel. This gave us an elevation of about fourteen inches above the highest meadow passed over, and above tides, except very severe northeast storms. It has been topped several times since it was completed by storm tides, but it has withstood them beyond all expectations.
When they began the rebuilding of the Beesley's Point and Ocean City Turnpike, 1.75 miles across a salt meadow. There had been a road on this same route for about twenty years. During that time all but sixteen hundred feet of it had been poled three times. Large trees had been cut and laid lengthwise, and poles nine feet long laid across them, butting in the middle.
In some places this construction had settled four feet into the meadow.
Mecklenburg County, N. C, was the first to use convict labor in road construction in the South, where it is more customary than elsewhere.
"A visit was made to camp on Lodo road. The force consisted of one superintendent, one machinist, who was also an engineer, some hired teamsters, three day and one night guard, and forty-one convicts, who are working out sentences of ten years or under. No longer term sentences are put on public highways in North Carolina. The stockade consists of a low wooden structure, with horizontal windows at sides. These windows have iron gratings and doors hinged below that are closed in cold weather. In a four-foot passage-way, through the center, are the stoves for use in very cold weather. The bunks are continuous, are located between the passage-way and the wall, and a foot or more above the floor.
Each convict has a separate straw tick and two brown blankets. The ticks are placed side by side, and the occupant sleeps with his head to the wall. A foot-board to the bunk, about eight inches wide, is used as f seat. Along the foot-board runs a rod with hooks and eyes. A series of rods is passed through the anklet chains of the convicts, and when the hooked rods are drawn taut by a lever the convict cannot move away from his bunk, but is allowed movement of his chain along his bunk a distance of about four feet.
"The convicts are kept in the stockade on the Sabbath; have tracts to read and religious services, but are not allowed banjos or other musical instruments. The only holidays are Christmas and Thanks giving, but they are allowed to see friends once a month.
"The food is white flour unleavened bread, can scarcely be called white bread, for breakfast; coarse corn bread for din ner and supper. Molasses is served and grits for supper. They get fat, very fat, pork and milk, no coffee nor tea except on Thanksgiving and Christmas, when they get all they want to drink.
"The work is from sun to sun, with an hour off at noon in winter and a hour and a half in summer. The work is constant and heavy, without rest or cessation. Pun ishment is with a strap over an inch wide and about eighteen inches long, exclusive of attachment to handle. The strap is applied by the superintendent to the bared body, while the culprit is bent over a barrel.
"A United States official who had widely traveled through the South, whose home was in Maryland, said that the worst features of the system were hidden, especially from Northern people, so far as possible. He said the gang is no method of reformation, as a man once on the highway chaingang is placed beyond respect and sympathy. If a man is brought up for a trivial offense, and it appears that he has formerly been on a gang, he has little chance to es cape being returned, even on partial evidence against him.
Said there was one difference between Southern chain-gang and hell—the former had an end. He said so many in the South were in favor of the system, and did not criticize its evils, because it gave them good roads, and they have no apparent sympathy for the convicts and are not troubled with the apparent barbarity connected with it. This complacent feeling comes from the fact that the large percent age, in fact nearly all, of the prisoners are colored, for whom the average Southerner has no thought of sympathy."
In the Northern and Western states, where the race issue is not a factor, the Ohio commissioners found the use of convict labor established on a different principle. In California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, New York and Oregon, which are already using convict labor for road work, or are investigating the subject, the idea is that, from a humanitarian standpoint, convicts must be kept employed, that punishment should be corrective, and that honorable labor should not be cheapened by competition with penal labor.
"In a part of these states," says the report, "the laws provide only for the use of convicts in preparing road material and appliances. As this kind of work can be performed in enclosed quarters, and without the unsanitary conditions that arise from temporary camps and from working in pub lic view with all its objectionable features, there can be no objection raised that may not be raised to any employment on which convicts may be used."
In New York. "This subject is one which has been advocated at different times, as well as the establishment of a state quarrynear the state prison at Sing Sing, where a large amount of stone can be procured suit able for road making purposes, but, as stated above, no laws are yet in existence."
Well, I never realized the useless occupation of hard labor criminals of making big rocks into little rocks was to create road building material... and that in the cotton states, since most prisoners were black, and they were despised by southerners, it was that arrogance and contempt that made chain gangs the road builders.
Civic pride is a pronounced characteristic of the people of the Northwest. Such cities as Portland, Ore., and Tacoma, Wash., are fairly bubbling over with efforts for mun icipal improvement, and a visitor returning after an absence of a few years finds a new and more beautiful town than the one he remembered. There are many of the older cities of the East which cannot compare with those of the distant West in the completeness of sewerage and water systems, fire departments, parks and other public utilities, nor equal them in roads and pavements.
The Warren Brothers Co. bitulithic pavement is coming into quite general use, and its smoothness and hardness, together with its gritty surface, that does so much to eliminate the slipperiness characteristic of some other pavements, is making it very generally popular.
The recent decision of the Bureau of High ways of New York City to pave lower Broad way from the Battery to City Hall Park with wood block is one of the most notable events In the history of paving during the past sev eral years. New York has been confronted for many years with the fact that it must allow heavy trucking to be done in the heart of its office building district.
Asphalt pavements have been laid in some cases on streets which are least used in heavy trucking, but with these exceptions the inhabitants are compelled to endure the noise and uproar incident to the traffic over the present stone pavements. It is a well known fact that offices on the lower floors of New York office buildings are rented at lower prices than those higher up, because during the hot summer the noise makes it impossible for those in the offices to converse without having the windows tightly closed.
The first hint of a possible relief to the citizens came with the laying of wood block pavement on West Broadway. This was a sample strip laid as a test of its ability to endure the enormous traffic. The relief from noise on this street was immediate, for it was found that the traffic was reduced more nearly to the silence of the country road.
The block to be used in this work is that of the United States Wood Preserving Co., the leading manufacturer in this country of a special wood block treated by what is known as the creo-resinate process, which hardens the wood, makes it impervious to moisture and kills the germs of decay. The rosin in the mixture with which the blocks are impregnated makes it impossible for the preservative creosote to wash away or evap orate, thus making the life of the block practically indefinite.
It is claimed for the blocks that they will outwear granite or any other form of pavement, a result obtained by the expedient of laying the wood with the grain vertical, so as to eliminate the possi bility of splintering.
Good roads magazine, 1906
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