Five miles on a common road,
Twelve and one-half to fifteen miles on a well-made road,
Twenty-five miles on a trolley road,
Two hundred and fifty miles on a steam railway,
One thousand miles on a steamship.
France has 23,603 miles of wagon roads built and maintained by the government. Italy has some 5000 miles of road built and maintained by the government. Here in the United States, where more and more depends upon the ability of the farmers, small and large, to get their produce quickly and safely to market, nothing has been done as yet by the Federal government. It is worth knowing that a pair of horses drawing a load of 4000 pounds on a level road with a certain effort, can only draw with the same effort—
3600 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 100 feet,
3200 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 50 feet,
2880 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 40 feet,
2160 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 25 feet,
1600 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 20 feet.
It is worth knowing, too, that careful experiments prove that wide tires—3 to 4 inches—are lighter in their draught than narrow tires. That they are better for the road is very apparent. The wider tires act almost as a stonecrusher, and actually help to keep roads in repair.
In Austria, all wagons carrying a load of more than 2¼ tons are obliged by law to have wheels with rims 4⅓ inches wide.
In France, the tires of wheels on wagons used for carrying heavy loads are from 4 to 6 inches wide and some of them as much as 10 inches wide. In France, too, the rear axles on such wagons are made from 12 to 14 inches wider than the front axles, so that the rear wheels run outside the track of the front wheels, thus making a very effective road improver of every heavy wagon.
In Germany, the law requires that all wagons carrying heavy loads shall have tires to their wheels at least 4 inches wide.
It is now within the jurisdiction of boards of supervisors, in the state of New York at least, to enact laws regulating the width of tires on heavy wagons.
What good roads and wide tires and properly cared for and properly harnessed and handled horses would mean to us, in this, now the greatest agricultural and manufacturing country in the world, is almost beyond calculation.