The Highway - a Medium of Transportation

It is not unusual for a professional public speaker to adopt a title for an address which is like the woman's " mother hubbard"-it covers everything and reveals nothing-but I hope to qualify better than that.My reference to qualifying reminds me of a friend of mine, well known in Indiana state politics, having at one time held an important elective state office.He was a banker and among his possessions was a farm.One year he became ambitious to become a member of the Federal Reserve Bank Board and, casting about for a good argument to further his desires, he hit upon the happy thought of being the representative of the agricultural interests.So he came up to Chicago to interview Mr. George M. Reynolds, who headed the Reserve Board at the time, and laid his aspirations before him.The first inquiry of Mr. Reynolds after learning that my friend was the cashier of a bank was, " How do you qualify as a farmer?"The reply was, " Every Sunday I motor down to the farm and pump water for 200 head of hogs.Don't you think that qualifies?"It has been my privilege over a rather extended engineer ing experience to have had something to do with the gravel roads of Indiana in an early day, and later to have had some thing to do with the building of some fifty miles of concrete highway in another state, as well as a wide variety of city pavements.Close inspection, like nursing in a pneumonia case, has fre quently as much to do with producing successful results as the skill of the engineer or physician.I recall a brick pavement where the brick was laid on a sand cushion resting on a gravel base and the contractor stretched boards across every 16 feet to the cross section of the roadway and then used a straight edge to bring the sand to a true gradient between the strips.Unforunately, the straight edge bent down in the middle under the weight of the workmen, resulting in a miniature " bump the bumps" like those you see in amusement parks.Occasionally, a floater gets into the road game, as I will illustrate.During the war, a Great Lakes boat captain was used in the Emergency Fleet Corporation and later one of his