Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/128

 roads, and women and boys, and men past labour, breaking the stones which were lifted up.

By lifting the road, you mean turning it up with the pick-*axe?—Yes; that I consider as man's work; taking up the materials and breaking stones, I consider the work of women and children, and which indeed ought to have been done before those materials had been laid down.

How deep do you go in lifting the roads?—That depends upon circumstances, but I have generally gone four inches deep; I take the materials up four inches deep, and having broken the larger pieces, I put them back again.

Please to explain to the Committee the mode of breaking the stones so as to admit of the labour of men, women and children?—When the stones of an old road have been taken up, they are generally found of the size that women and boys can break them with small hammers, and therefore I would propose to employ these people to break those stones always before they are laid back in the roads.

Is it your plan for those people to break those stones standing, or in a sitting posture?—Always in a sitting posture: because I have found that persons sitting will break more stones than persons standing, and with a lighter hammer.

Does that apply to all materials?—To all materials universally.

Does the plan which you have mentioned of breaking up the roads, apply to gravel roads, or only to those roads composed of hard stones?—In gravel roads and in some other roads it would be impossible to break them up to any advantage; and in several places which I will explain, I should think it unprofitable to lift a road at all. There is a discretion of the surveyor, or the person who has the execution of the work, which must be exercised. I did not order the road in the neighbourhood of Reading to be lifted, but I directed wherever a large piece of flint was seen, it should be taken up, broken, and put down