Village Improvements and Farm VillagesWaring, George E. (George Edwin)
Science
Village Improvements and Farm Villages
Waring, George E. (George Edwin)
Civic improvement; Farm life
What is said above applies especially to country roads; but it is
appropriate, so far as it goes, to the better-made and better-kept roads
of a village. In the case of these latter, except where the soil is
naturally dry and firm, some attention should be given to the
improvement of the surface; and it is to be considered whether to adopt
the expensive process of covering with broken stone road-metal, or to
use gravel. One or the other of these is desirable in all cases where
there is much tendency to sloppiness in wet weather; but any form of
artificial covering is so costly that the early efforts of the
improvement association will produce a more telling result if applied in
other directions. The necessary cross-walks may be satisfactorily made
with coal-ashes.
It is even more easy in a village than in the country, to have the
grades of all roadways so regulated as to shed rain-water falling upon
them, and to have them so furnished with side gutters so as to prevent
water from the roadside from running on to them. The simplest way to
effect this, and the neatest way too, is to make gutters outside of the
line of the road, say six inches deep and eight feet wide, these being
at once sodded or sown with grass and grain to give an early protection
against washing; made on such a shallow curve, they will afford no
obstruction to any system of mowing that may be adopted, while their
great width will give them sufficient capacity to carry away the water
of considerable storms.
The work of construction having been duly attended to, it is no less
important to provide for regular and constant care. Any rutting that
comes of heavy traffic in bad weather should be obliterated either by
raking, or, better still, by filling the ruts with gravel or ashes. If
such work is attended to immediately on the occasion for it arising, the
amount of labor required will be very slight; for it is especially true
with reference to roads, that "a stitch in time saves nine." If the
filling of ruts and wheel-tracks be done in time, the serious damage
that comes from guttering flows of water lengthwise along the road may
be almost entirely avoided.
The mere cleaning work of both the roadway and roadside grass spaces, it
will be easy to induce children to perform for slight rewards and
encouragement. The daily removal of bits of paper and other rubbish will
have an excellent effect on the general appearance of the village. In
the autumn the removal of the fallen leaves will call for something
more than children's work; but ordinarily this source of cheap labor
will be found sufficient if properly directed.
PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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