Highway History

The National Old Trails Road Part 3

Promoting the Road During a War

Highway Industries Association

On January 21, 1918, 160 representatives of industry met in the Florentine Room of the Congress Hotel in Chicago for what promised “to be the greatest and most practical move for efficiently co-ordinating the highways of our country, developing the means for transportation and ultimately linking up our main lines of travel.”  They formed the Highway Industries Association, to be headed by S. M. Williams, sales manager of the Garford Motor Truck Company.  The meeting took place after preliminary meetings with representatives of highway industries, including AAA, OPRRE, AASHO, and the Highways Transport Committee.

Williams, in a speech to the gathering, explained that it was only a year ago, “our National Government gave any real recognition or acknowledgement of their obligation in the development of our system of highways.”  That initiative was thanks to AAA, AASHO, and OPRRE:

When we become involved in the present war, inquiry was made of certain officials, prominent in Washington, as to whether they were considering the use of highways from either a military standpoint or in the movement of freight.  We were informed that the highways were not being considered and that in their opinion the railroads would be equal to all demands for transportation.

He referred to the advance notice he had published in The Manufacturer’s Record on January 17, 1918:

More highways and better highways must be built and existing highways improved in order to strengthen the nation in the great world contest which it must face for several years to come.

Every day proves that the country must largely depend upon motor trucks and automobiles for a vast amount of travel and freight traffic.  The railroads are wholly unequal to the business.  Traffic will grow more rapidly than the railroad facilities, even under government domination, can be expanded.  Highways must be improved in all parts of the country and motor trucks and automobiles must come into large use to help overcome the breakdown of the railway system.

Build more highways and build them promptly, even at the expense of tens of millions, or of hundreds of millions, if necessary, must be the order of the day, or else the nation will be tremendously handicapped in this great contest.

Williams outlined the steps necessary for this “considerable work.”  First, the group must “convince official Washington that the highways of our country are a real economic necessity and they must be developed to the highest possible degree consistent with surroundings, conditions and demands.”  Second, they had to “educate those who do not realize the importance of highway transportation – because they do not come in direct contact with the necessity and, therefore, do not realize what is necessary in road construction to meet the growing traffic demands of our country.”

Official Washington, he said, seemed to be overlooking the need to feed the army abroad and the people of our allies, with enough left over for the home front.  Increased planting was essential, but so was moving farm produce to market:

Crops cannot be moved to advantage over mud roads.  Our rich agricultural districts should be provided with roads over which their products may be moved promptly and with the least expense.  We are organizing to conserve food, but we are wasting more than we save through all our conservation on account of not only the excessive cost of marketing our food products, but also from the inability to market, in many sections of our country, due to the miserable condition of the roads.

He had been gratified during AASHO’s annual meeting in Richmond “to see a thorough appreciation upon the part of the highway officials that road construction must continue in a manner to meet the demand for heavy traffic over the highways”:

Their experience during the last year has also convinced them there must be some change in the attitude of official Washington towards the marketing of road bonds.

They also realize that if the highway is to become an important factor in transportation there must be uniformity in the laws governing traffic over the highways.

He was encouraged by several of the resolutions, cited earlier, adopted during the AASHO meeting.  Unfortunately, many State highway officials were discouraged by Washington’s effort “to curtail road improvement, and, therefore, did not accomplish what they desired.”  They could not be blamed for not building roads “ahead or beyond the desire of their constituents,” but highway officials properly asked “for a campaign of education that the public may be fully informed of the necessity of continuing a sane program of road construction and intensified maintenance”

Williams concluded:

In view of these requests from highway officials for cooperation, who should respond more quickly than the industries represented here today?  You are all directly interested in road improvement because it has a direct influence on the promotion of your individual interests, and, therefore, it is only right for such industries to unite in securing a safe and intelligent road building program, and in doing this we will be directly aiding all industry throughout the country.

During the meeting, letters of support were read from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, Secretary of Agriculture Houston, OPRRE Director Page, Roy D. Chapin of the National Transport Committee, and Chief Engineer A. R. Hirst of the Wisconsin Highway Commission, vice president of AASAHO, and 1st Vice President of the association.  [“For United Highway Co-Operation and Development,” The Road-Maker, February 1918, pages 50-52; “Highway Industries Association Organized,” Good Roads, January 26, 1918, pages 41, 46-47]

Judge Lowe would join the association’s crusade, which would come close to toppling the Federal-aid highway program after the war.

National Old Trails Road in Kansas

The National Old Trails Road Association’s executive committee met on February 23, 1918, at The Coates House in Kansas City.  Members from Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri attended. 

Judge Lowe opened the meeting by explaining that its purpose was to consider contested routes in the three States to adopt resolutions for consideration during the annual meeting.  In Missouri, the issue was consideration of alternative cross-State highways.  The summary of the meeting reported that, “The Southern Cross-State Highway in Missouri made a remarkable and a very strong showing.”  Representatives from the counties discussed bond issues approved or pending to hard-surface the road.  The executive committee agreed on a resolution:

A CHALLENGE

WHEREAS, The time is at hand for prompt and decisive action in Government aid, permanent road building in Missouri; and,
WHEREAS, There are now two cross-state roads, namely, the Central Route, known as the “Old Trail Route,” and the Southern Highway, known as “Midland Ocean to Ocean Trail,” connecting with the metropolis of the East, and the state metropolis on the west:
THEREFORE.  BE IT RESOLVED, That it is the sense of this meeting that the route guaranteeing first within the next ninety days to build such route complete, from end to end across this state, shall be officially designated as the “Ocean to Ocean Transcontinental Highway,” to connect with and be a part of the Old Trail Route or other Ocean to Ocean Trail, subject to be named by this convention “The Official Old Trail Route.”

The routing issue in Kansas was contested.  Reports from the counties began with Will Townsley of Great Bend in Barton County stating that county and State commissioners had provided for and approved a 20-foot brick road across the county:

Mr. Townsley criticized sharply and very pointedly the action of certain agents of the Government traveling up and down the line urging people not to vote bonds to make any kind of internal improvements during the war.  The alarmist to whom he referred is quoted as saying:  “That any man who would build a house at a time like this was a traitor.”  The convention applauded Mr. Townsley to the echo for his criticism of this kind of patriotism.

State Highway Engineer W. S. Gearhart “assured the convention that the movement for hardsurfacing the National Old Trails was timely and patriotic and congratulated them on the progress being made.”

During the discussion, United States Senator William H. Thompson of Kansas was quoted as saying, “Now is the time to prosecute the movement of means for transportation; that the national Congress was ready to do anything in its power to assist in the movement.”

The summary of county reports concluded that, “Marion County being called, no one was present to report.”

C. W. Journey of Boonville offered a resolution that was seconded and carried:

WHEREAS, By priority order of the Federal authorities, the use of open top railway cars for the carrying of material necessary for road building is forbidden; and,
WHEREAS, Such a condition will seriously interfere with the proposed improvement of the National Old Trails Road;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That this convention memorialize the Railroad Division of the Council for National Defense, Judge Lovitt [sic], Chairman, that restrictions against the use of cars for carrying road building material be removed, unless such action will unquestionably interfere with the greater needs of our Government.

Mr. C. A. Freeland of Leota, Kansas, discussed the Central Kansas Boulevard in that State, while Mr. Percy Devereux of Eades, Colorado, “spoke for the Colorado end of the Central Kansas Boulevard, saying that on the eighty miles across Kiowa County, Colorado, there were only five road crossings and give bridges, and that twenty-three miles of the eighty were shale road”:

At this point Colonel E. W. Stephens again took the floor and made a very earnest and enthusiastic appeal to the Missouri delegates along the Old Trails road to throw off their coats and go to work; that it would be a shame and a disgrace if this road, with one hundred years of history behind it, appealing as it does to every patriotic social, religious and commercial interest in the whole country, should be permitted to lag behind in this great enterprise.  He warmed the convention to a high pitch of enthusiasm, and closed by predicting the road would be finished across this state before the snow flies.

At that point, according to the summary of the meeting, Mrs. John Van Brunt of D.A.R.’s National Old Trails Road Committee “was then called upon unanimously and made a very pronounced patriotic appeal to the convention to build the National Old Trails road.”

One named trail lost its chance to be included in the National Old Trails Road:

The Golden Belt in Kansas lost its opportunity in not having as many delegates present as it should have had and in not making the strong showing that they could have made.  Perhaps they will profit by this action by being more in evidence at the April meeting of this committee.

(The Golden Belt Road was initiated in 1910 to connect Junction City and Salena via Abilene.  The following year it was extended from Kansas City to Colorado Springs, Colorado.  [Habegger, Arman J., Out of the Mud:  The Good Roads Movement in Kansas, 1900-1917, Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Department of History, Graduate School, University of Kansas, October 1971, page 195]

The committee recessed to prepare a report on the routing issues:

It appearing to the satisfaction of this Committee that there is a very general and a very honest and earnest effort now being made along the line of the National Old Trails Road, as heretofore established in the states of Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, and that steps are being taken to comply with the requirements of the law, and it also appearing that similar activities are at work along the roads to which it has been suggested this road should be diverted;

Therefore, It is ordered by this Committee that we recommend a change in the location of the road as at present established from St. Charles east to the Mississippi at or near Alton, Illinois, and, we also recommend that the location as now established from Kansas City, Missouri, through Johnson County, Kansas, be changed to go through Kansas City, Kansas, and thence over the “Fort to Fort” road to the city of Lawrence, and thence south to a connection with the road as now established at Baldwin, Kansas; thence via Overbrook, Burlingame, Osage City, Council Grove, Herington and Lindsborg, connecting with the line heretofore adopted at McPherson, Kansas.

At present we are not prepared to suggest any other changes, but we notify all parties interested that this Committee will meet again on the 16th day of April, 1918, and upon that day we will take final action as to whether the road as now located shall remain as established, or whether it will abandon the present location in the state of Missouri from Fulton in Callaway County and adopt a line from thence across the Missouri River to a connection with the South Cross-State Highway and thence via Sedalia, Warrensburg, Pleasant Hill, Lees Summit, etc., or through Hustonia, Lexington, etc., to Kansas City, and, also, whether it shall remain across the state of Kansas as now located, except as above suggested, or whether it shall adopt the Golden Belt road from Lawrence through Topeka, Manhattan, Junction City, Salina, Little River, etc., to a connection with the Old Trails Road as now established at La Junta, Colorado.

The committee arranged for members to report to the association as soon as possible on actions in their counties and road districts.  Similar arrangements were recommended for the Southern Cross-State Highway in Missouri and the Golden Belt and Fort to Fort roads in Kansas, with backers of each to report in time for the annual meeting in April.

On February 25, Judge Lowe sent a letter to all members regarding the meeting of the executive committee.  He began:

I am mailing you copy of the decision reached by the Executive Committee last Saturday, by which the committee has unanimously recommended to the annual convention to change the route of the road as at present established, leaving out Johnson County, Kansas, and re-locating it via the “Fort to Fort” road to Lawrence, and thence south to Baldwin to a connection with the road as now established, and re-locating it from Herington west to Lindsborg, etc., thus leaving out Marion County, and changing the route of the road as now established by adopting a line from St. Charles, Missouri, to the Mississippi at or near Alton, Illinois, and thence to a connection with the Old Trails Road in Madison County, Illinois.  These were the only direct changes adopted by the committee.

He referred to the gathering as “perhaps, the most remarkable road meeting, in many respects, ever held in this country”:

It was the most determined and enthusiastic body of men ever assembled.  Every county through which the road runs in three states, was represented except two, and these two lost the road.  They reported wonderful and rapid progress, in almost every instance, and all, including the contested routes, pledged themselves to renewed activities and determination to be in condition to make final report to the committee at its April meeting.  This meeting in April, which is the anniversary of the birth of this Association, will have the destiny of the road from beginning to end before it for final action.

Judge Lowe could not overestimate the importance of the meeting.  “The whole destiny of this entire proposition is at stake”:

The committee has given ample time for the completion of your work.  Its spirit and determination is manifested by its action at the February meeting.  This office will keep in constant touch with the people, not only along the road as now adopted, but of the new lines suggested, as well.

He noted a “point frequently referred to in the convention, and often exploited in the newspaper press, and that is the alarm over the labor situation”:

May it not be that the scarcity of agricultural labor has been brought about by the young men of the country abandoning the dreary, monotonous life on the farm because of the condition of the roads of the country, and not because they have joined the army.

Let us do our part (as much an act of pure patriotism as to enlist in the army) by raising the funds with which to build at least one great Transcontinental Highway, and never doubt for one moment that the labor will be available for its construction.

He pointed out that building the road would not affect farm labor.  “Whoever saw a farmer boy working in a rock quarry, or pounding rock on a road, or in a cement mill or brick kiln?”:

The same class who built the railroads will build the wagon roads.  They are not eligible for military service, nor farm work.  They will willingly work on a road ten hours a day with the mercury at 100 degrees in the shade.  They like camp life.  Road building has much in common with military life.  They are the sappers and miners in the vanguard of civilization.  They cut down the mountains, bridge the rivers, and drain the swamps.  They do not carry their wages away, but spend it like Princes in the vicinity of the camp.  They bring a market to the farmers’ door; and when his work is done he slips into oblivion, and is forgotten.  This class of labor is as abundant now as it ever was.  Its scarcity will only appear in the contractor’s estimates.  He knows just where to find it.  Some types of road building call for expert labor, and this is as abundant as ever.  The ideal time to give employment to this labor, and thus to enhance values of all kinds, and bring rest and contentment everywhere, is during the seasons of depression.  It is foolish and almost criminal to suggest waiting until the war is over.  Build roads now, keep the wheels in motion, and thus have things doing when the boys come back to a smiling, prosperous and happy home, with all its old isolation gone forever.  Let’s not wait to impose this additional burden upon the soldier who is making a supreme sacrifice for his country.

He closed the message with this encouragement:

The governors of the states through which the road runs cannot do a more patriotic service than to make the prison labor of the country available for work on the roads. 
I have often said, and now repeat with emphasis, that the transportation question is the great, overwhelming question in winning this war.  Roads over which armies and their supplies can be transported are just as essential as railroads and ships.  The common roads are the very foundation of the whole transportation problem.  Let us then, unite patriotically and whole-heartedly in making this supreme effort; and if we do, before the snow flies again we shall have a splendidly constructed National Highway from Coast to Coast.  He who counsels otherwise, is unpatriotic, and so densely ignorant of affairs as to entitle his opinion to little weight.  [National Archives at College Park, Maryland]

Judge Lowe followed up with a letter to OPRRE Director Page on March 1, 1918:

If you have patience to look thru the stuff I sent you under separate cover, I believe you will agree with me that we have the National Old Trails Road practically financed as far West as New Mexico.  I therefore apply for and urge that the interned Federal prisoners, or such number as may be practicable, be put to work on this road in the States of New Mexico and Arizona.

I think you appreciate the fact that this is the one road established and located by Acts of Congress throughout its entire length as a National Highway, and that it is in truth and in fact, or will be when completed, an “all the year round” road.

Page reply on March 6 with a brief letter indicating he was “very greatly obliged for the information which you sent me concerning the National Old Trails Road.”  [National Archives at College Park, Maryland]

Government Shifts on Road Building

In early 1918, the Federal Government began to adjust to conditions that had threatened road construction around the country.  With the railroads unable to meet demands, trucks began to carry more of the freight needed for the war and the home front.  The result was that roads built mainly for automobiles were chewed up by the flow of heavier vehicles.

Roy Chapin’s greatest accomplishment as chairman of the Highways Transport Committee illustrated the shift.  As automakers rushed to produce the trucks needed to support military operations in France, the vehicles were transported by rail to the Atlantic Coast ports of embarkation.  Chapin’s idea was to drive the trucks to port, freeing the railroad cars for other freight.  Even before becoming chairman, he obtained approval for an experimental convoy, described in America’s Highways 1976-1976:

On November 22, 1917, a trail-blazing party consisting of representatives of the Ohio Highway Department, the Army, the Lincoln Highway Association, and the OPRRE left Toledo enroute to the East Coast.  The route they selected crossed Ohio via Toledo and Akron to East Palestine, where the Pennsylvania Highway Department picked it up, continuing on to Pittsburgh and across the Allegheny Mountains to Harrisburg, Lancaster, and Philadelphia.  This became the main military truck route.  Later, other truck routes were designated by Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland over the Old National Road, and by Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York via Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, and Albany to New York City.

In December, the Army’s Quartermaster General adopted the policy that the trucks would be driven to the coast to relieve railroad cars, with the first convoy leaving on December 14, 1917:

The first Army truck convoy left Toledo early in December 1917, at the beginning of one of the most severe winters in recent U.S. history.  Three weeks later, on January 3, 1918, 29 of the 30 vehicles that began the trip rolled into Baltimore.  This grueling trip was testimony to the durability of the war-model trucks and the endurance of the drivers, but most of all, to the superb maintenance efforts of the Pennsylvania Highway Department, which, as a result of careful preplanning, had kept the road open over the Alleghenies in the face of blizzards that left drifts 3 to 6 feet deep.  In some places the crews worked around the clock to keep the road open.  Teams and drags broke a track through the drifts, followed by horsedrawn road machines and homemade plows mounted on trucks.  Altogether, 7 trucks and plows, 22 road machines, 20 drags, 105 teams, 3 tractors, and 200 men were thrown into this massive maintenance effort.

Through the remaining war, the Army sent 30,000 trucks to ports on the truck routes, “each loaded with 3 tons or more of spare parts and munitions,” thereby releasing 17,250 railroad cars to carry other freight:

From a historical viewpoint, the main accomplishment of the truck routes was to demonstrate that it was possible to keep long stretches of highway open to traffic through a severe winter and that dependable long-distance interstate travel on the highways was desirable and even necessary.  [America’s Highways 1776-1976, pages 94-95]

A contemporary account of that trip stated that, “One of the thirty trucks starting the journey failed to finish, having been struck by a train en route,” adding:

The snow was bad in Michigan and Ohio, but the highway transports committee believes both these states have learned complete lessons from this trip in regard to snow organization.  Pennsylvania and Maryland, however, had their roads in excellent shape, using only men and shovels, because the snow plows did not arrive in time.  The Highway Transports Committee wants all highway departments to remember that trucks demand wider clearance on roads than passenger cars.  The committee is taking up this matter and also the further clearing and repair of roads enroute . . . .

The trip is remarkable in view of the fact that none of the drivers ever drove any truck before but were men taken from an infantry camp and placed at the wheels.  Weather conditions were the most adverse possible.  The convoy left Detroit at 4 below zero and fought through snow all the way up to Pennsylvania.  Schools let out along the route, business men, military men and professional men turned out to give welcome to the trucks and the Red Cross had hot meals ready for the soldiers at every stop.

The trip completely proves the feasibility of motor truck transportation in all kinds of weather.  [“Truck Train Ends Trip,” Motor Age, January 3, 1918, page 11]

Of course, other goods, including food, could be carried on the roads, as top officials in Washington were beginning to understand.  Around the time of the initial convoys, Herbert Hoover, the future President, was the United States Food Administrator during the war.  He sent the following telegram to Chairman O. E. Carlson of the Board of county commissioner of Twin Falls County, Idaho:

Sincerely hope you will be able to carry election for bond issue intended for permanent roads, as all improvements of this sort tend for general betterment in any community, and particularly for efficient transportation, which is one of the problems we face in our endeavor to reduce the cost between the producer and the consumer.  [“Hoover on Road Improvement,” Good Roads, January 5, 1918, page 2]

On February 2, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker responded to a January 31 letter from J. A. Bennett, president of the Arkansas-Louisiana Highway Improvement District.  Bennett had informed Secretary Baker of the district’s plans.  Baker replied:

The construction of such roads will undoubtedly be of great value to the community, and incidentally to the state and nation, and in my opinion should receive proper encouragement.  Furthermore, I may state that it is my opinion that the roads will be of considerable military value in case of military operations, or preparations for military operations in this vicinity.  [Quoted in letter from Judge Lowe, March 18, cited below]

The issue of Good Roads for February 2, 1918, reported that Secretary of the Treasury James G. McAdoo, who also served as Director General of Railroads during the war, had requested Agriculture Secretary Houston “to curtail all federal aid work except that which is vitally important to the development of the transportation system of the country or to the opening up of territory for increasing important agriculture products.”  [Bishop, H. K., “Effect of the War On Road Improvement,” Good Roads, February 2, 1918, page 60]

In response to the resolutions adopted by AASHO’s executive committee met in Richmond,  Secretary McAdoo wrote to George P. Coleman, chairman of the executive committee:

Your letter received enclosing the resolutions adopted at the Richmond meeting by members of your association, requesting an outline of a policy defining the character of roads or streets for the construction or maintenance of which cars will be furnished for the shipment of materials.

The United States Railroad Administration will cooperate with the Secretary of Agriculture by transporting materials for the construction of national highways designated by him as a military or economic necessity, for which the equipment is available and not needed to move supplies for the Army, Navy, Shipping Board, or other governmental activities.  [“Position of the Railroad Administration on 1918 Road Work,” Good Roads, March 2, 1918, page 127]

The same issue reprinted a communication from Secretary Houston to AASHO:

So far as it is practicable to do so, this department will urge the maintenance of the highways already constructed; the construction and completion of those highways which are vitally important because of their bearing upon the war situation or for the movement of commodities; the postponement of all highway construction relatively less essential or not based upon important military or economic needs.  The department is preparing to suggest to the state highway departments the preparation of a schedule of work for the federal aid projects for 1918 in line with this policy.

OPRRE’s Page had informed State highway agencies of this shift in November 1917, as noted earlier.  Now, Good Roads reported, OPPRE had “sent out schedule forms, on which the states are requested to set forth the proposed federal aid work for the 1918 working season”:

Included in the data called for by these schedules are:  Descriptions of each road; the character, quantity and rail haul of the material to be used; the probable total cost; the amount of federal funds desired; the specific purpose of the improvement; its bearing upon the war situation, and a statement as to what would be the effect of delaying the work until 1919 or later. 

The Agriculture Department released a statement that noted the uncertainties involved in the transportation of road materials, but added, “the expectations are that the transportation situation will be improved, and that the shipment of such materials for essential projects can be made.”  [“Government Position on 1918 Road Building Defined,” Good Roads, February 2, 1918,
page 61]

On March 18, Judge Lowe replied to a March 13 letter from C. W. Black, chairman of Building Commissioners at Council Grove, Kansas, and vice president of the National Old Trails Road Association.  The reply began with a discussion of the general situation regarding construction of the National Old Trails Road which, he said, “could not well be more encouraging”:

Since our Executive Committee Meeting of the 23rd of February, Ohio has let a contract for the construction of the last 13-mile section of the road in that state, and the last county in Illinois through which the road runs, has voted bonds for its construction.  This completes the financing of the road, and insures its construction from Washington to
St. Louis.

It is but simple justice to call attention to the fact that in both Indiana and Illinois, the counties through which the road runs have appropriated the general road funds of the county to its construction.  When it is considered that in many of the counties the road runs on the extreme edge of the county, this indicates very strongly their appreciation of its value.  Of course, any road would be of some value to every county, but when it is considered that this is indeed and in fact, a national road, then it becomes of inconceivable value to the people along its line, and, to a large degree, to all of the people in every county and state through which its [sic] runs.

Can it be true that the people of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are in a class by themselves, and that they appreciate its value, while the people of Missouri, Kansas and Colorado fail to understand its importance.  I cannot believe that this is true, but I fully appreciate that at our annual meeting of April 17th and 18th, we shall be able to announce to the world that the building of the road is completely financed all the way to the Rocky Mountains, if not indeed, to the Pacific.

Black had asked Judge Lowe to state the position of the Federal Government on “Road Building”:

I answer this as well as I have been able to ascertain:  Mr. Hoover, the greatest living expert in the line of food production and conservation, comes out squarely in favor of the building of such roads as this, viewed from the standpoint of marketing the food supplies of the country.  Secretary of War Baker emphatically urged the building of roads which will be of military and commercial value.  Secretary McAdoo has the financing of the greatest war in history resting upon his shoulders, which is indeed “some job,” and has not, so far as I know, actually passed upon this question; that is, to say whether he will encourage the sale of road bonds and certificates, in general, but there can be no doubt as to his position regarding the sale of such securities appropriated to the building of this road.

Judge Lowe quoted Secretary McAdoo’s letter to AASHO and Secretary Baker’s letter to Bennett.  Having done so, Judge Lowe added:

Of course disquieting rumors will continue to come out of Washington.  This is to be expected, but shall we “take to the woods” every time some disgruntled, pessimistic old fossil bursts a cap?

Pessimism never won a fight on any of life’s battle fields.  It never gave birth to a great purpose, nor added anything to the general good.  Its congenial habitat is in swamps and fens, where lizards and cotton-mouthed snakes abound and luxuriate on its miasmic poison.  It never offered cool water to parched lips, nor planted hope in the heart of the dying.  It never cuts the brambles and thorns, nor smooths the rough places in life’s pathway.  It has neither inventive genius nor imagination.  It never inspired a line worth remembering, nor added anything of value to the world’s literature.  If this had been the only principle to escape from Pandora’s box,–If optimism, hope, imagination, etc., had not opposed it from the beginning, the world would have indeed and in fact been nothing but a mad-house.  All the joys of life, all the hopes of the future would have been destroyed.  Man, now “but little lower than the angels,” would then have been but little higher than the brute.  Let him go “with his head in the clouds,” if you will; it is infinitely better than burrowing in the earth.  Keep your eyes towards the sunrise, and your “wagon hitched to a star” is the only safe and sane rule of life.  Ad Astra per Aspera.

(“Ad Astra per Aspera” is the motto of the State of Kansas, and means “to the stars through hardships.”)

In times of peace it produces gloom and discouragement, and in times of war is the fruitful source of treason and the sure precursor of disaster.  Hiding behind pretended loyalty, it throws its slimy tentacles around the soldier, and breaks down the morale of the army.

If I had the power I would drive it out of all hearts and back to its native hell from whence it came, its only congenial abiding place.

One Henry Ford, in times like these, is of greater value to the world than 10,000,000 such men.

No one need have any fear but that the federal government will contribute the share to which this road is entitled, under the Appropriation Act of the last Congress, nor need they fear that any obstruction will be placed in the way of selling securities by counties, districts, etc., for building this road.  Those who seek to leave this impression are simply seeking a way to find out how not to do anything.  The thing for us to do is to “go forward,” never doubting for one instant that we shall succeed.  An opportunity like this rarely comes to any people.  No vision is broad enough to comprehend its full meaning.

Victor Hugo’s hero of the French Revolution, in his dungeon cell the night before his execution, exclaimed:  “My motto is:  Always forward.  If God had wished man to go backward, he would have put an eye in the back of his head.  Let us always look towards the sunrise, development, birth.”  These were prophetic words, and entirely apply to the situation of today.  “Go forward” should be the motto of everyone.  Let the “dullards,” the “pull-backs,” the “do nothings,” “objectors,” the “pessimists,” whine and complain as they may, but this Association has long since adopted the motto of Hugo’s creation, and say to our people:  “Go forward!  Look toward the sunrise, development, birth,” and the 17th and 18th of next April will witness our triumphant victory.  It is up to Kansas, Missouri and Colorado now, and I know just what their decision will be.

(The Victor Hugo quote is from his final novel, Ninety-Three, published in 1874.)

Judge Lowe concluded:

The Capital Issues Committee of Federal Reserve Board, at Washington says, that every application for approval of bond issues must stand on its own merit.  We are perfectly satisfied with this ruling of the Committee.  It may not be wise for this Committee or any Committee to tie its hands in advance, but when we are ready to make application there can be no reasonable doubt of its approval.   [National Archives at College Park, Maryland]

Judge Lowe, in his reference to a contract in Ohio, was referring to one of the worst sections of the road east of Columbus.  Despite the obstacles to road construction, Motor Age for March 28, 1918, reported that Ohio planned to complete its section of the National Old Trails Road east of Zanesville:

Instructions have been issued by Ohio officials to finish the gaps of the National highway between Columbus and the Ohio river.  Recently a tour of the road was made by Governor Cox and other state officials, and it was found that several stretches are still to be improved to make an ideal highway to the east.  Convicts will be used to complete the work, which will be rushed as rapidly as possible.  It is said forty Army trucks will be moved from the West to the Atlantic seaboard from the West to the Atlantic seaboard and the National highway will be used.  In Muskingum County a stretch of 12 miles will be paved with brick and in Guernsey County crushed stone will be used.  [“Ohio to Complete National Highway,” Motor Age, March 28, 1918, page 48]

As described in Dependable Highways, paving over the past 5 years had repaired “much that was practically impassable”:

The entire length of the road in Belmont County, westward from Wheeling, is brick paved, 16 feet wide for 28 miles.  Some paving remains to be done in Guernsey County, but the worst section for many years has been east of Zanesville.

The work underway involved an approximately 14-mile section from Zanesville to New Concord, which was being graded for a brick pavement, with new culverts:

The work . . . is being carried on in three parts.  Grading is nearly completed, curbing is in course of construction, and more than a third of the 5,000,000 paving bricks required have been delivered.  Original plans required that the work should be completed by the Fourth of July, and it is not too much to expect that these plans will be realized.

The new pavement will be 16 feet wide, with a 6-inch concrete edging on each side.  The foundation is to be rolled stone or slag 6 inches deep.  Stone and slag will be supplemented to some extent by crushed brick bats and other material suitable for the purpose from a neighboring brick plant.  Changes of grade have made it necessary to alter or replace many of the old stone culverts.  New culverts are mainly vitrified clay pipe with concrete head walls.

For the most part no great amount of filling has been necessary.  The country through which the road passes is sharply rolling, and where grade changes have been necessary the length of haul has been short, in many instances only a few hundred feet. 

Consequently most of the grading is being done with plows and drag scrapers.  Sub-grade is being rolled with 8 to 10-ton rollers.  [“Dirt Flies on National Road in State of Ohio,” Dependable Highways, May 1918, pages 5-7]

The same issue described the use of convicts for the project:

Ohio is using convicts in the construction of the National Road in Guernsey and Muskingum Counties.  Governor James M. Cox declared the situation an emergency.  The highway must be finished for the movement of thousands of government trucks now under construction in the middle west.

Prisoners live in an essentially war-time camp.  Two barrack buildings, one a mess hall and the other a dormitory, are now in use; another dormitory is being built.  A bath house and cold storage plant will follow.  Provisions are being made for welfare work.  Baseball equipment will be sent to the camp and reading matter is provided.  There will be no Sunday work, and religious exercises will be held.

The contractor pays the State $1.50 a day for each man.  The men, in turn, receive 5 cents an hour, their regular rate of pay for prison work.  The State furnishes subsistence. 

Guards are provided from the same penitentiaries from which the men came, but prisoners wear no distinguishing marks.  Contractors report that the plan is proving valuable at the very onset.  [“Ohio Uses Convicts on National Road,” Dependable Highways, May 1918, page 10]

On the same day as Judge Lowe’s letter to Black, March 18, 1918, the Council of National Defense made public, at Chapin’s insistence, a policy statement on the use of motor trucks for relieving the transportation situation:

The Council of National Defense approves the widest possible use of the motor truck as a transportation agency and requests the state councils of defense and other state authorities to take all necessary steps to facilitate such means of transportation, removing any regulations that tend to restrict and discourage such use.

Motor Age added:

Such announcement of policy, bearing as it does the stamp of Federal authority, will have most important effect on widening the use of the motor truck and highways for transportation of freight, as it will tend to restrict ill-advised measures of state or local authorities, such as unwise taxation and load regulations.  [“Council O.K.’s Trucking,” Motor Age, March 21, 1918, page 15]

Work was underway, of course, in other States.  For example, OPRRE approved 11 Federal-aid projects in New Mexico, including two on the National Old Trails Road:

Project No. 3 calls for the construction of a road 9 miles in length, extending from Santa Fe southeastward to Glorietta, and forms a portion of an ocean-to-ocean highway.  The improvement forms a part of State Highway No. 1 and of the National Old Trails Road.  The road will be improved with a gravel surface and about $14,000 of Federal Aid has been granted.

Project No. 4 involves the improvement of a road between Sandia and Armijo station on the National Old Trails Road in Valencia county, the total length being 34.7 miles.  The character of improvement will be a graded and drained earth road surface with gravel where needed.  Federal Aid to the extent of about $19,000 has been granted.  [“New Mexico Roads Get Federal Aid,” American Motorist, March 1918, page 25]

The 1918 Convention

The Seventh Annual Convention of the National Old Trails Road Association was held in the convention room of the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce on April 17 and 18, 1918.   Judge Lowe’s call for the convention explained:

The Executive Committee will meet the day previous (the 16th), pursuant to the order made at its meeting on the 23rd day of February, and will then make final decision touching the re-location of the road at points along its line, where the people have been derelict in providing for its construction.

This will perhaps be the most important annual meeting of this Association, as the whole future of this enterprise will be up for final decision.  [National Archives at College park, Maryland]

Two hundred representatives from nine of the Old Trails States attended.  Reports from the States indicated that, as Better Roads and Streets put it, the road “was either completely hard-surfaced, or the funds were provided for completing it from Washington to St. Louis, and from that point to Los Angeles probably one-third was completed in detached sections, and every county through Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, not now completed, was actively and enthusiastically engaged in holding bond elections and thus securing funds for its building.”  The convention set the date of June 27 “for final report from the three States last mentioned.  There is scarcely any doubt but what the road will be financed by that time through these three States.”

Many of the States and counties represented at the convention, according to Motor Age “came with fear in their hearts that their earnest work in promoting bond issues would go for naught.”  They were “given aroused enthusiasm” when a telegram was read from Henry C. Flower, a member of the Advisory Committee to the Capital Issues Committee of the Federal Reserve Board:

This board has not intended by anything heretofore given out to leave the impression that we are opposed to good roads.  On the contrary, we are unanimously and enthusiastically in favor of good roads everywhere.  Especially do we favor the construction of such roads as will be of imperative military or immediate marked economic value.  Entertaining these views, we, however, reserve the right in the present dire emergency to pass upon each individual proposition according to its merits with the view in each case of submitting everything to the acid test of helping to win the war.

The article continued:

The road project that received immediate stimulation was the improvement of the National Old Trails road from East St. Louis across Illinois, bonds for a third the cost of which have been voted by the counties, the state having already promised, with Federal money available, the other two-thirds.  The Illinois delegates to the convention were urged to appeal to Governor [Frank O.] Lowden and to Federal authorities and committee, for the release of this project, and the national association will help where possible.

Mr. E. R. Moses of Great Bend, Kansas, represented the Kansas Highway Commission, offered a testimonial to Judge Lowe's efforts:

Now, my friend President Lowe has been for six years giving his time to the National Old Trails road fight; and if it shall be built throughout this country it will be largely due to his courageous persistence.  I think he has been long in the position described in the telegram, as the story goes, that was sent in the Russian-Japanese war.  Telegrams were being sent from the front to the government at home as to the condition of General Kuropatkin, and it was said that Kuropatkin was in statu quo.  And they scratched their heads over what that might mean, and finally one sage volunteered the explanation that it meant that he was in a hell of a fix.  Now, there have been times when that described the situation of our President here, and it is up to your people and all of us to marshal our forces and put this over the top, and it must be done . . . .  I want to see it accomplished, so that before President Lowe dies he can ride all along over this road, not as a conquering hero, but one who loves his fellow men and one who had marshaled the forces of progress to bring about that result – a man who believes in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

As for the condition of the road in Kansas, he explained his philosophy:

You need not be afraid about Kansas not doing her part.  She will have her roads built just as quickly as any state in the Union; and I want to say to you, more cheaply and at less expense . . . .  [But] it is not altogether the help that men receive that counts. The man or boy that is constantly looking for help never accomplishes anything; but those that are put upon their own resources and energy in competition with their neighbors, and who go to work with the best they have, are the ones who accomplish things . . . .  So let me tell you, gentlemen and ladies, if this road is going to be built in your state or in your county, it is going to be built by your push and energy.  It means that you, as has been done in every county through which these roads have been built, shall rally the people of your communities and see that the thing is done.
He did not specify when Kansas would complete its section of the National Old Trails Road.

The delegates debated the proposal to change the routing of the road through several the States, but the convention retained the current routing after delegates from those States demonstrated sufficient improvements had been completed and others were under construction.  Partisans of the present route were able to show sufficient road building progress accomplished and under construction to retain the routing as it has been during the past year.

The convention reelected Judge Lowe as president, C. W. Black as vice-president, and Frank A. Davis as secretary. 

The convention also unanimously endorsed Judge Lowe to succeed the late Senator Stone.  Better Roads and Streets reported that “A resolution urging Governor Gardner to appoint him was adopted by the convention to the accompaniment of deafening cheers”:

This is indeed good news and Better Roads and Streets joins in endorsing Judge Lowe and urging his appointment by the governor of Missouri.  We know the sterling character of the man and have admired his unceasing efforts as president of the National Old Trails Road Association.  Surely he would be an able representative of the “Show Me” State [May 1918]

(Instead, Governor Frederick D. Gardner appointed an attorney and Democratic party official, Xenophon P. Willfley.  He took office on April 30, lost election to a full term, and left office after November 5, 1918.)

The magazine added:

In order that the delegates might get back home and at work in helping feed the nation the convention was confined to one day.  The work was speeded up and all unnecessary business was omitted.

[“National Old Trails Road Association’s Convention,” Better Roads and Streets, May 1918, pages 210, 212; “N.O.T. Meeting,” Motor Age, April 25, 1918, page 22; “The National Old Trails Meeting,” Kansas Highways, July 1918, pages 18-19]

New Conditions in Transportation

By spring 1918, the Federal Government was acknowledging the role of good roads to the war effort.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce held its sixth annual meeting in Chicago on April 10-12, 1918.  Roy Chapin was among several speakers on the topics of motor truck transportation and highway improvements.  His subject was “New Conditions in Transportation.”  He began:

In the past six months there has come to our view an entirely new picture in transportation in America.  We are standing at the threshold of wonderful new developments.  We have seen the railroads taken over by the United States government, and, simultaneously, we have seen the highways of the country taken over by the people of this country to haul goods which could not be hauled during this period of railroad congestion by the railroads themselves.

In the whole history of transportation, highway transportation has been the patient drudge.  Suddenly the motor truck has come forward and has supplied for the highways what the steam engines supply for the railroads and the electric car supplied for the interurban systems – rapid transit.  This has brought about, as you realize, many, many new conditions.

The conditions which I shall hope to discuss in my paper are not only conditions as pertaining to the roadbed itself but as pertaining to the development of types of traffic which we, I think have not yet seen or pictured in our imagination.

Highways, Chapin said, “must play their part, especially in this war condition,” resulting in the Council of National Defense creating the Highways Transport Committee, which he chaired.  It was “the first committee or organization of any authority under the Government which has ever paid any attention to highways traffic.”  The committee had been trying to “keep abreast with the times, with these rapid new things that have come to pass within the last six months, due to the utter necessity of war transportation needs.”

Highway traffic was “coming fast now”:

No limitation has been placed, I am glad to say, on the use of gasoline for highway vehicles, but we are leaving the stage in this country when you and I and possibly all the rest of us have in the past rather looked on the roads of this country as for the use of pleasure cars, as some of you like to call them, and passenger cars as the rest of us like to call them.  The carrying of passengers, due to the great growth in the motor car industry, has developed to the point where millions and millions of people are riding daily over the roads of this country, but suddenly we come to a new picture where the traffic of the country, the freight that must travel and the express that must travel are now seeking the highways as an additional opening due to the fact, partly, that the railroads are congested; and due also to the fact that the time was just right, the dawn is just breaking on highway transportation.  What the years to come will show no one can predict.  I am going to outline to you as well as I can what we see in Washington today in the way of possibility, new possibilities in the highway transportation field.

At present, 100 percent of all commodities move on the roads at some stage.  In fact, “the highways of our country carry more, carry a great deal more tonnage in a year’s time than do the railroads.”  The greater efficiency of motor transportation, compared with horse-drawn movements, prompted the committee to direct its efforts to the “study of the possibility of motor transportation, and that is for this reason that the motor transport fills a niche that is not filled by any other means of haulage.” 

As a result, in the last 2 weeks, the Council of National Defense had “recognized the utility and the necessity of motor transportation.”  He was referring to the resolution, cited earlier, about approving “the widest possible use as a transportation agency of the motor truck.”  This resolution put “the stamp of Governmental approval on the new means of transport.”  It was recognition that the motor truck could provide what the railroads, interurban lines, and waterways could not, namely “transportation from door to door.”

The committee was working with railroad officials to “take off of the railroads the short movement, which is congesting their terminals, and place that movement on the highways, where I might say it legitimately belongs from every economical standpoint, which would be helping them just that much in this present serious situation.”

Especially in the heavily congested eastern zone, every large city had “established intercity truck lines, plying back and forth on a regular schedule, carrying goods out at a more rapid rate than either the railroads or express lines, and in many instances taking them right from your door and delivering them to the door of your consignee.”  The motor lines would soon “form a perfect net work throughout our whole United States, and they will live not because they are well financed, not because they are run by an enthusiast, they will simply live on a competitive basis where they can prove that they will carry that traffic more quickly, more expeditiously and more safely than any other means of transportation.”

One problem the committee found was that motor trucks were entering the city fully loaded, then returning empty.  In the fall of 1917, an experiment was undertaken in Connecticut based on experience in England.  Fourteen local return loads bureaus were established, “all listed in the telephone books as return loads bureaus.”  That way, the drivers could find loads to carry to their originating city or area.  The idea was spreading to nearby States, including New Jersey and Rhode Island.  “This coming week a transport return bureau is to be established in New York City.”  Philadelphia was next.

One of the committee’s special interests was the shipment of food.  “Out about the various cities of this country are thousands and tens of thousands of acres of land which could ship into the city a very large amount of food if any means were obtainable to get that food in easily and on a daily basis.”  The previous fall, the committee “found in Maryland a very wonderful system of rural express wagons was in operation”:

These rural express wagons start from the farm and they run into Baltimore.  They run into Washington, but most of them run into Baltimore . . . .  Those lines in the main reach farms that are not on the railroads or not upon any interurban line.

After study of systems around the country, the committee concluded that the rural express system in Maryland was “the best system of any state in the country.”  It “supplies transportation to the farmer and gives it to him daily, economical and efficient transportation that he can count on, to do the work and a convenient transportation.” 

The committee was working with the Food Administration and the Department of Agriculture to expand rural express systems:

No one can sit here and predict at the moment where the highway transportation is going and how big it is going to get.  But, I can say this, I look for it to come just as surely as can be.  That highway transportation is going to link up the farms of this United States on a regular service and on their main highway in this country, and that within a space of a very, very few years; in conjunction with the Quartermaster Corps of the Army and the Engineering Corps our committee was called on to assist in laying out the so-called military motor truck routes.

He discussed transport of trucks, under their own power, to the ports for shipment to France:

The greatest difficulty in bringing those trucks east this winter was not the men or their lack of training, nor was it the trucks.  It was the snow upon the roads.  I do not know whether you realize it or not.  We have rather been in the habit of, in this country, taking it for granted that when snow fell on our country highways we might just as well wait a while to use them, but when you are in war you cannot wait for snow to melt.  These trucks had to go through, and they went through.  They went through, I might say, from Detroit to Baltimore over roads that were in the main cleared, and cleared quite well, by the various state and county and township officials living along the line, who did that as a patriotic duty.  They said if they want to go through we will clear those roads so that they can go through.  And they cleared the way.

Based on experience with the trucks-for-France trips, Chapin predicted “we are coming to a point in this country and I hope it won’t be long, when the highway traffic will be of such importance in our nation that the main highways in our state will be cleared 365 days in the year.”  It was inefficient to spend $20,000 a mile to build roads that could not be used in winter.  “It is inefficiency, and it is something I think possibly the army trucks by the examples that they have set and the experience that they have had is going to change.”

Another lesson learned from the extraordinary snow removal is that “where snow is removed, the experience of the highway engineers is that it is shown that the break up of that road in the spring is not anywhere near as heavy as the break up would have been if the snow had stayed on that road until spring comes.” 

Local conditions, of course, varied around the country among the modes of transportation:

Traffic over the waterways very frequently must come to the boat over the highway. I am full of predictions to-day, but we are going to match up the waterway system – inland waterway system – with the inland highway transportation system, which will take freight from the stations, and take it down to the waterway system and deliver it to the boat and the boat will take it and then again the motor truck will take it from the boat at destination and deliver it to the final destination.

The result “means much for the commerce of your particular communities.”  He urged creation of local committees to study the topic:

Such a committee could give the whole matter their intelligent thought; such a committee might develop a very excellent point of contract [sic] with which our committee might work, and many of the questions which are coming up in the city from which you come.  It is something I would like to have you take home and consider and if such committees are appointed just advise the Highway Committee [of the] National Council of Defense, Washington, and we will see that you will be kept in touch with what we are doing.

Unlike in France, the United States did not own any roads or highways except within public land:

Whether that condition will come where we will have routes similar to the main roads of France, maintained and controlled absolutely by the French government, whether the time will come when we will have those roads in the main highways of this Government, whether that time will ever come I cannot say.  It rests with you.  You are the Government.  The government takes over what it should take over.  So that really in a matter of that sort it is impossible to predict.

It is simply a question of what the people of this country want.

Either way, a “new type of transportation carrying every year millions of tons of freight is coming into being, and it has possibilities you cannot put down on paper.  It has perhaps the greatest potentiality or potential possibility of any form of transportation that we have.  We are going to have a net-work of good highways in this country.  If we cannot have them during this war, we can have some of them.  We ought to have all those highways which are essential to the conduct of business – the conduct of our military establishment.  All of these highways will help to win the war.”

He concluded:

It seems reasonable to me that the movement of all the freight in the future in America for moderate distances is going to be over the highways from door to door.  This is certainly worthy of your careful study.  You are going to see articles and literature of all sorts, and you will have all sorts of opportunities to become more familiar with it, because the development of highway transportation is looked up as news to-day.

I want to impress on you that you can help guide this form of transportation.  This is your opportunity to be in at the beginning of the wonderful new form of transport in these United States, and to each one of you individually to help guide the future of this wonderful new mode of transportation.  [Chapin, Roy D., “New Conditions in Transportation,” Motor Age, April 18, 1918, pages 18-20]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce adopted a resolution calling for:

Whereas, it is apparent that the present traffic burden is beyond the capacity of the railroads, and that the vigorous and successful prosecution of the war is hampered thereby; it is therefore imperative that our great rivers, canals and intercoastal water routes, as well as our main highways, should be forthwith used to move freight; be it therefore
Resolved by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States that the Government, through the president and Director-General of Railroads, be petitioned:

1. To organize and operate existing equipment and construct new equipment for use upon the inland and coastwise waterways in accordance with the authority recently conferred by Congress in the Transportation bill.
2. To complete trunk highways for heavy traffic where they can be useful in relieving railroad congestion.
3. To adopt a permanent policy, assuring co-ordination of railroads, water routes and highways for traffic service.  [“U.S.C. of C. Meeting,” The Road-Maker, May 1918, page 41]

Adapting to Highway Transportation

Highway development, to a large extend, depended on bond issues by State and local governments to pay for their own work and to provide revenue to match Federal-aid highway funds.  Members of AASHO’s executive committee met in Washington with Federal officials to discuss the limitation of highway bond issues in a way that will be most helpful to the country during the war.  F. H. Goff, a member of the Capital Issues Advisory Committee, represented the Federal Reserve.  OPRRE Director Logan Page participated in the meeting.

The AASHO representatives quoted a letter from Secretary McAdoo in which he said:

We are engaged in a great war, a war in which the very safety of America is seriously imperilled.  We can not win this war unless every resource of the Nation is carefully husbanded and used with the utmost intelligence.  The great financial operations of the government, greater than those ever undertaken by any government in the history of civilization, make it essential that every unnecessary expenditure by the Government, by the States and municipalities, and by private corporations, and individuals be avoided while the war is in progress.  Unless this is done it will be impossible for the people of the United States to support its soldiers and sailors who are shedding their blood for us upon the battlefields.

Goff made clear that in the Federal Reserve’s view, State, county, municipal, corporate, and individual “financing should be strictly limited to projects which will contribute to the successful prosecution of the war, or which are necessary for public health and welfare.”  Local and personal interests must be subordinated to the public welfare.  Only by enforcing “the most rigid economy” in all such matters, could the United States “hope to bear its part of the financial burden of the war and to release sufficient labor and materials for war purposes without depletion of our resources.”

An account of the meeting in Better Roads and Streets added:

Highway construction and maintenance calls during normal times for an outlay of some three hundred million dollars annually.  The Federal Government co-operates directly with the States through a large Federal appropriation and pays fifty per cent. of the cost of selected roads.  L. W. Page, director of the Bureau of Public Roads, explained that already his bureau was co-operating with all of the forty-eight State highway departments in a most rigid selective consideration of all highway projects under the provisions of the Federal Aid Road Act, to the end that only those which are of military or special economic importance should be approved.  That the people should be taken fully into the confidence of the State and Federal officials and asked to co-operate in the weeding out of unnecessary public improvements, was the unanimous sentiment of the officials present.  [Better Roads and Streets, April 1918, pages 150-151]

Highway Transportation Jeopardized

S. M. Williams of the Highway Industries Association addressed the Highway Traffic Association of the State of New York on April 16, 1918.  Williams began:

Are we as a people serious as to the importance of highway transportation?  Do we believe that highway transportation is necessary for the building up of the great industrial and agricultural industries of our country?  It will be necessary for us to come to a definite conclusion as to these facts before we are in a position to consider highway transportation as being jeopardized.

Because transportation is “the foundation of civilization” in any country, neglect of the roads “would mean that they would be left behind in the race by more enlightened localities.”  The importance of roads at present differed from the past only “in the increased demand”:

Official Washington has for many years closed both eyes and ears to the public highway, and their refusal to allow the highways of our country to be improved so that they might take their proper place in our great system of transportation is to-day penalizing the country many times the cost of highway improvement.

In this time of war, he believes citizens had a duty to support the government “in whatever it undertakes,” but also to “frankly and fearlessly” call attention to its “errors in judgment when we conscientiously believe they exist and are of great importance to the welfare of our country.”

Notwithstanding the importance of good roads to the war effort, “we find ourselves facing a second year of retrenchment in highway improvement, and only a few months ago the public was astonished to read that the highway construction of our country was placed in the same classification as the manufacture of musical instruments and the building of theaters.”  Given that attitude, those who understand the importance of good roads must “join together and place their collective experience and energy at the disposal of the country and back of an intelligent campaign of highway education”:

It is time that our National Government should assume its own responsibility in highway development, and should build and maintain certain classes of roads without obligating States and counties.  In this I do not mean that States or counties should be relieved of their own individual responsibilities in highway development.

There should be co-ordination of responsibilities based upon definite policies that will insure an intelligent highway program upon the part of the Nation, State, and county.

Williams pointed out that nine government departments were “directly interested in highway development – the departments of Agriculture, War, Post Office, Commerce, Interior, Labor, the Food, Fuel, and Railroad Administration – and that notwithstanding our highways are just as important to our country as our railways, we find the highways without similar consideration or representation.”

State highway officials complained that they had no centralized national authority with power to act.  “The Office of Public Roads is doing all they can, but they are without either authority or power.”  The agency was “subordinate to another branch of the government, which should not be the case.”  The time was “fast approaching, if it is not here, when the people of the United States will not stand for further subordination of the highways of our country to the interests of other agencies of transportation.”

The warring countries of Europe would, “for years at least,” look to the United States “for a large part of the enormous quantities of materials of construction that will be required in repairing the hundreds of millions of dollars’ damage from shell fire” and other sources.  Demand in the United States also will increase.  “It is safe to say that in the minds of the people of the United States there must be many changes and more efficiency in all transportation of our country”:

They will no longer be satisfied with its development upon a single trackplan – that of the railroads; they will demand that every form of transportation, including the highways, waterways, and railways, steam and electric, be developed to their highest point of efficiency so that each type may take its proper place in the general system of transportation.

With regard to the “dilatory and negligent policy of general highway development,” he cited the difficulty of road building “because labor must be considered for the industries, the farms, and lumber camps.”  Williams considered this assumption a misunderstanding.  Many workers who left the road field for war-related work had returned to their original field.  This reality illustrates “that labor to a degree only is mobile and that a workman skilled in one line, mastered in from ten to twenty years, cannot quickly, if at all, become proficient in an entirely new craft.”  In addition, prisons had many “able-bodied and sound-minded male prisoners” who could be used in highway construction.

The other issue affecting road construction was the shortage of rail cars for the movement of roadbuilding materials.  It demanded “serious consideration”:

What the result will be, I am not able to predict, but I am sure as necessity of road construction and maintenance is forced upon Government by the complete breaking down of our highways under the excessive traffic demands, ways and means will be found for the movement of necessary materials.

Williams stated that railroad officials had told him that if the question were left to them and the communities they serve, “in most cases the equipment can be furnished in such a manner as to not seriously interfere with the movement of other commodities.”

He also noted the “considerable comment” from officials about the need to curtail road construction “on account of finance and great emphasis is placed upon the passing of the Capital Issues committee upon all bonds for road improvement in amounts over one hundred thousand dollars”:

They fail, however, to tell the public that from eighty to eighty-five per cent. of all road construction in the United States is financed by tax levy, automobile and motor truck fees, and that only fifteen to twenty per cent. comes from bond issues.  They also overlook the fact that the money from tax levy or fees is raised regardless of war and that it cannot be used for any other purpose than road construction or maintenance.

Williams concluded the speech with a brief discussion of the situation in New York State that had been in the news recently.  In 1916, the New York State Highway Commission had failed to meet its road construction quota for the first time.  It finished only half the mileage completed in 1915.  The high cost of labor was partly responsible, a problem that worsened in 1917 because of the war.  Michael R. Fein, in his book about the State’s road building program, explained that Highway Commissioner Edwin Duffey, an attorney and political operative, was concerned about labor costs:

Duffey recommended a decreased appropriation until the price of labor stabilized.  After the United States declared war on the Central Powers in April, the legislature made no highway appropriations at all.  The wartime emergency sharply reduced the supply of men and materials and limited the availability of transportation service.  Highway work ground to a standstill.  Completed mileage (primarily projects begun in 1916) totaled about a third of the peak 1915 mileage.  No new construction was begun in the wartime year of 1918.  [Fein, Michael R., Paving the Way:  New York Road Building and the American State, 1880-1956, University Press of Kansas, 2008, page 73]

Williams asked, “Does it not cause you to wonder whether the policy of road construction in your State has not been to secure the greatest number of miles with the money available rather than the building of such highways that will meet the traffic burdens awaiting them?”  He could not agree with a “non-go-ahead program in highway building,” explaining:

Traffic will not stop growing because we stop highway work.  We might just as well talk about stopping railroad development, and then expect the railroads to meet the traffic demands upon them.

He concluded:

While highway transportation, through the use of the motor truck has already reached some proportion, it is really in its infancy and we must provide for it in no uncertain terms.  We must build roads and more roads, and they must provide for a very heavy increase in heavy tonnage in the near future.

We must also give consideration to adequate bridge construction.  A road is only as strong as its weakest link, hence a heavy tonnage highway with weak bridges would be of little value . . . .

We should remember that our highway officials cannot build roads beyond the expectation and demand of their constituents and therefore if we do not support them in the building of roads that will be adequate for the traffic demands of to-day with safe margin for future traffic development, we will fail in our duty as good citizens.  [Williams, S. M., “Highway Transportation Jeopardized,” Better Roads and Streets, May 1918, pages 198-201]

Signs That Signify

In May 1918, Motor Age published an article about the value of signs.  Signboards helped motorists find their way, but also assisted them in finding needed services and sights worth seeing:

Naturally, the motorist could halt his car and make inquiry, provided he is within inquiring distance of some one or some place.  The difficulty with this plan is that in addition to loss of time, the person he directs this question to may not know the answer.  Many disappointing replies have been received in answer to questions made by transcontinental or even local motorists.  The source of information may be honestly mistaken or he may give data as to a turn at this tall tree and the passing of that school house, another turn at the white church, “not the brick church, just beyond, you understand.”

The author cited several examples from a recent tour from Chicago to Colorado:

The National Old Trails, of which the Boone’s Lick Trail is a part, served for most of the course across Missouri.  In most localities it is pre-eminently well marked as to banded telephone poles and metal corner signs mounted usually upon metal posts and indicating the main trail, as distinguished from tributary roads, also giving distances to the nearest small towns and the most important large cities, as Kansas City.  Columbia has in the middle of a business street an excellent sign of this route, mounted upon a pedestal, naming the city itself, with a westward arrow showing the direction and distance of Boonville and Kansas City and an eastward arrow pointing, with the terms of mileage, to Fulton and St. Louis.

The state of Missouri has co-operated with the Daughters of the American Revolution to place red granite monuments further marking this trail at scattered intervals.  Among the most elaborate of these is one at the Salt Creek Church site.  Beside it a high arch, borne by pillars, crosses the road, indicating the cemetery beyond, established in 1817, just a century before these markers were photographed.  The site is a “heaven-kissing hill” with an inspiring outlook, an ideal spot for a halt to meditate upon the past of a fair land.  The old church is gone, but the mossy, toppling gravestones remain and the grass is kept cut.  Most of the burial dates were about 1844.

At New Franklin, not far from the mid-state channel of the chocolate-brown Missouri, this same body of patriotic women has erected an even larger monument to the pioneers who trod this road before us.  The inscription is, “Capt. William Bicknell, of Franklin, father of the Santa Fe Trail, with four companions led the first organized trade expedition to Santa Fe, Sept. 1, 1821 . . . .  This trail, one of the greatest highways of the world, stretched nearly 1000 miles from Franklin, Mo., to Santa Fe, N. Mex.  From Civilization to Sundown.  Marked by the Daughters of the Revolution and the State of Missouri, 1909.”

A justifiable mention of family pride and a feeling of public spirit seems to have prompted one farmer.  Framed by a high background of trees, shrubs and vines a large sign at the fence reads, “Old Homestead settled by J. F. Rice, 1852.  Best Wishes to All.  J. D. Rice.”

Along the Santa Fe trail occasional stone monuments appeared, as upon the other historic trail to the eastward.  At Buckner three of these stones are grouped.

One progressive farmer had painted his silo as a landmark using three broad bands, the red, white and blue of the National Old Trails group of connecting old roads, now modernized.

Educative signs picked up in the Sunflower state, including those giving the altitudes of cities.  Those who had never visited the state before may have a mistaken idea that the high plain begins in Eastern Colorado.  Successive city signs teach the error, for the western portion of the state is much higher above sea level than the eastern.  Among signs of interest Bonner Springs warns, “Ten dollars’ fine for hallooing and disturbing the peace.”  The Ogden monument marks the geographical center of the United States.  At Brookville was the first signs of a free camp ground.  Wilson placards, “Tourists welcome.  Wilson Club.  Telephone Building.”  Near Ellinwood is a stone Santa Fe marker.  Pawnee Rock does a worth-while act in placarding on its main street the existence and direction to Pawnee Rock State park, a few blocks away.”  Here a monument in a neatly kept square, surmounting a little hill where pioneers, with several famous scouts, held the Indians at bay, is dedicated, “In honor of the brave men and women who, passing over the old Santa Fe Trail, endured the hardships of frontier life and blazed the path of civilization for posterity.”

LaJunta offers camps at 25 cents per night per car, fuel and water to boot.  Rocky Ford advertises to wayfarers a free camp site at her fairgrounds.  [“Signs That Signify,” Motor Age, May 16, 1918, pages 5-7]

New Restrictions

In OPRRE’s annual report for fiscal year (FY) 1918, Director Page explained that in the early spring, “it became apparent that unless positive action was taken, serious difficulty might arise in obtaining the necessary bituminous materials for highway work during the season of 1918.”  He worked with the Fuel Administration to establish a permitting plan that was released to road and street officials seeking bituminous materials for use in road and street work.  The message began:

In order that the fuel oil requirements of our Allies, as well as our own Army and Navy and essential war industries, may be fully satisfied, it is found necessary to limit the use of petroleum and coal in the manufacture of road products, such as asphalt, road  binders, road oils, tar binders or dressings.

The United States is now being drawn upon to an ever increasing extent for petroleum products, especially fuel oil.  It will be appreciated that this demand must be satisfied.  Commencing this date we request that all highway work in your state of any character, including municipal work involving the use of the above mentioned materials, be passed upon by your State Highway Department.  A special permit of the Fuel Administration, Oil Division, will be required before delivery of purchases will be authorized . . . .

Preference will be given to material for maintenance and repair work.  The supply of the above materials is so limited that it is requested that all new construction involving these materials be deferred this year except in cases where such work is necessary toward winning the war.

He included the forms for approval to use the oil-based materials for maintenance, reconstruction, or new construction.  The forms were to be approved by the State highway department and mailed to Page, “acting as chairman of a committee which will consider the necessity of the material being supplied and make their recommendations to the Oil Division of the Fuel Administration, which will issue permits in accordance with the recommendations when the necessary material is available.”  The State’s certificate would indicate that State officials were fully aware of the project and that “a genuine and urgent necessity existed for the work therein described.”

Page requested that each recipient of his letter “give this matter full publicity, so that all parties concerned will be familiar with the procedure necessary to procure supply of these materials.” [“Government Restrictions on Bituminous Materials for Roads and Streets,” Good Roads, May 18, 1918, page 254]

Page summarized the result in the annual report:

Under that arrangement several thousand applications for approval of highway projects were submitted to the office and permits were issued by the Fuel Administration in line with the arrangement for amounts of bituminous materials equivalent to upward of 100,000,000 gallons.  This work, however, was merged in June 1918, into the work of the United States Highways Council, and the totals to June 30, inclusive, cover in addition to results obtained under the original arrangement, those obtained under the operation of the United States Highways Council for the period from June 8 to June 30, inclusive.  To the close of the fiscal year, a total of 2,235 applications had been received, calling for the equivalent of 75,000,000 gallons of bituminous materials, of which 58,000,000 gallons had been approved and permits issues.  [Page, L. W., Report of the Director of the Bureau of Public Roads, October 14, 1918, Annual Reports of the Department of Agriculture for the Year Ended June 30, 1918, page 374]

On May 31, the Council on National Defense altered Priority Order No. 2 to allow open-top freight railcars to carry sand, gravel, and other road material according to a ruling of the Railroad War Board.  Suitable open-top cars “should be furnished preferentially” for transportation of coal, coke, and ore.  Those not suitable for the preferred use “may be furnished for the transportation of stone, sand and gravel, and when so furnished shall be used preferentially for highway maintenance materials.”  The suitable cars, on return trips to mines or ovens “should be utilized wherever practicable in furnishing car supply for stone, sand and gravel.”  Every effort should be made, “consistent with keeping up the production of coal, coke and ore, to furnish shippers of stone, sand and gravel with a minimum of 40 per cent of their normal weekly transportation requirements.”

The revised order added:

Where the transportation needs of essential road construction or maintenance projects cannot be met by car supply furnished in accordance with the above rules, the state, county or municipal officials in charge of the work should, through their proper state highway department, apply to the Director of the Bureau of Public Roads, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., for assistance.  Such applications will be considered by representatives of the Department of Agriculture, the War Department, the War Industries Board, the Fuel Administration and the Railroad Administration, and in accordance with the recommendations of such representatives, the Car Service Section will endeavor to furnish car supply necessary for approved essential road construction or maintenance.

It must be understood that car supply for stone, sand and gravel must not be permitted to jeopardize the essential production of coal, coke or ore.  If at any time such a result is apparent on individual roads, or generally, orders will immediately issue to curtail the car supply for stone, sand and gravel.  [“Road Work Gets Cars,” Motor Age, June 6, 1918, page 13]

Still, coordination remained a problem, as Director Page explained in his 1918 annual report:

It became apparent early in the fiscal year that some method of coordinating the various powers of the Government with reference to highways was essential, not only to the appropriate regulation of highway work during the period of the war, but to enable really essential highway work to proceed.  Evidence of this existed in the fact that the Capital Issues Committee passed upon the highway bond issues; the Railroad Administration controlled cars which were required in the transportation of highway materials; the War Industries Board had power to control essential highway materials, such as steel, cement, brick, crushed stone, etc.; the Fuel Administration exercised control over bituminous materials, such as oil, asphalt, and tars; the Department of Agriculture exercised the direct power of the Government with reference to highways under the terms of the Federal aid road act, and the appropriation for the Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering; the War Department was directly interested in highways which serve military purposes, such as Army truck routes, etc.  Any highway project which required several of the facilities controlled by these various Government agencies was compelled, therefore, to be subjected to the delay and hazard of securing approval separately from each Government organization.

To resolve the situation, Secretary of Agriculture Houston as well as the Secretary of War, the Director General of Railroads, the chairman of the War Industries Board, and the Fuel Administrator each named a representative to serve with Page on a council to coordinate these activities.  “In accordance with the Secretary’s suggestion, the United States Highways Council was formed and held its first session on June 8, 1918.”  Director Page served as chairman, while OPRRE’s Chief of Management, J. E. Pennybacker, served as secretary:

An immense amount of regulatory work has been done by the council since its organization . . . .  The office provided engineering and clerical assistance to the council as well as office room, necessary stationery, and printing.  Engineers of the office made inspections of projects on which the council desired information.  [Report, pages 374-375]

To explain the attitude and policies of Federal agencies on road building and maintenance, the Council of National Defense transmitted a letter from Secretary Houston to the State councils in late June:

Fully recognizing the vital military and economic importance of the highways of the country, the council has emphasized certain important policies set forth therein, and urged the state councils to cooperate with the state highway departments to the end that consideration be given to the following in connection with all road construction and maintenance:

1. All plans for road construction and maintenance should be viewed in the light of war conditions and expenditure of labor and materials should be directed only to those roads which are of prime importance for economic and military purposes.
2. It is desirable to avoid offering to the market issues of bonds which are not urgent from the point of view of aiding the nation in winning the war.
3. As far as practicable important highways already constructed should be maintained, and only those should be constructed and completed which are of vital importance because of their bearing on the war situation.  They may be summarized as follows:
   1. Those which are utilized or will be utilized by the military establishment.
   2. Those which carry considerable volume of material and supplies essential to war industries.
   3. Those which have a bearing on the production and distribution of food supplies, connecting population and shipping centers with surrounding agricultural areas.
   4. It is especially desirable to use, wherever possible, local road materials in order to simplify the rail transportation problem.  [“Road Construction Urged by Council of National Defense,” Good Roads, June 29, 1918, pages 325-326]

The Impatience of Judge Lowe

Judge Lowe wrote to Roy Chapin in what Better Roads and Streets called “an excellent argument in favor of a go-ahead road building policy at this time.”  After referencing “some literature” he was sending under separate cover “which may or may not interest you,” he got to the point:

I write chiefly for the purpose of protesting most seriously against the attitude of the Federal Reserve Board, etc., regarding the marketing of road bonds.  While I concur heartily in the position that these boards should adopt a selective system and approve only such issues as will tend to the immediate advantage of the country both as to military needs and commercial interests, yet I do sincerely protest that the situation should be handled in such a way as to not only further the best interests of the Government, but so as not to put an everlasting “quietus” on the road question.

History teaches how easy it is to destroy a movement even after it has reached such headway as the road question has at this time.  There is a world of people not much inclined at best, to do anything, who will immediately become inoculated with so much patriotism that they dodge behind a situation like this and proclaim with much fervor that all these matters ought to be postponed until the war is over.  The most important question in my poor judgment, that we are facing, next, of course, to winning the war, is the situation that will confront us when the war is over and our boys all come home.  They reply to this that we should go ahead and get ready, carry bond elections, etc., and then hold up until the war is ended.  The complete answer to this is that when you tell us to stop now, it is foolish to urge our people to go ahead.  As I see it, unless we take immediate steps to get this situation ironed out and put properly before the public, our movement is going to suffer very serious damage.  [Better Roads and Streets, June 1918, pages 241-242]

On July 3, Judge Lowe wrote to members of the National Old Trails Road Association, “particularly in Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona:

The National Old Trails Road is either completely hard-surfaced or its permanent construction is completely financed from Washington to Saint Louis.  A few counties and road districts have been slow to take final steps for financing the road in each of the states west of the Mississippi River.

The final adjourned meeting of the executive committee will be held at this office on the 17th day of August.  Immediately thereafter, a new map of the road will be gotten out with such revisions and possible local changes as may be ordered at that time.  A complete set of plates have been ordered and it only remains for each county or sub-division thereof, where permanent action has not been taken, to be ready with final reports at the time.  It is squarely up to you whether the road through your county or district shall remain on the map as now established.  No added days of grace will be permitted; you have had ample time, and the committee will be slow to consider any excuse or apology.

I repeat a statement often heretofore made, that the policy of “slowing down” in road work does not, and I am assured will not apply in building the National Old Trails Road.  The “wild-eyed” and “blind-fold” policy adopted by many of the state and road associations has never been the policy governing this association.  We have adhered logically and consistently to the building of this great National Highway.  We have no “shotgun” system of firing money in the air and letting it fall where it will.  We have opposed with all our might, the “pork-barrel” principle of scattering money in building little patches of road.  We feel perfectly assured that this policy and purpose consistently pursued by this association, takes it entirely out of that class of propaganda, and insures us that no opposition will be made in our effort to finance the construction of this road.  Each state through which the road runs will be reported as a whole, to the proper authorities at Washington, and there is no question of their approval; therefore, there is no excuse for dodging or hiding behind a general policy adopted by some of the committees at Washington.

Keep in mind that the 27th day of August will soon be here, and that no added days of grade will be tolerated.  [National Archives at College Park]

Many highway critics considered the Federal-aid highway program established by the 1916 Act to be a pork barrel program.  Politicians, in this view, would spread each State’s money over every political subdivision to secure votes rather than the long-distance roads that were needed.

On July 11, Raymond Beck, field engineer for the Highways Transport Committee of the Council of National Defense in Washington, wrote to Judge Lowe:

It probably is of interest to you to know that the writer was largely responsible for the immediate completion of the National Old Trails Road in Ohio, and that the stretches of fourteen and twelve miles of unimproved road will be completed before the end of August this year.

I attach hereto a copy of the “Official Bulletin” with regard to the Government policy of road building this year, and call your particular attention to Paragraph 4, enumerated therein.

Judge Lowe included the letter at the top of his July 15 letter to association members:

The above letter drives the faint-hearted and lukewarm from hiding behind the general policy of the Advisory Committee regarding the continued construction of the National Old Trails Road.  There has never been any doubt regarding the attitude of the Government toward this road.  If the people earnestly desire it, and your State Highway Boards are ready to cooperate with the General Government, then there is no excuse for delay.  There is no record that bonds for this road have been discouraged, nor are they likely to be.  The completion of the road in Ohio is conclusive evidence that no obstruction has been or will be contemplated.

Paragraph 4 referred to by Mr. Beck, copied from the Official Bulletin of the Council of National Defense, reads as follows:

“It is especially desirable to use, wherever possible, local materials in order to simplify the rail transportation problem.”  In the states west of the Mississippi it is easy to comply with this request as there is abundance of local road material at hand.  There is no excuse for getting tangled up with the transportation problem.

Both Federal and State money will be turned back into the treasuries because the people have not accepted the proffered assistance.  The materials at hand may not build the ideal road some people have in mind, but it will build a good road – such as the Federal and State authorities will be glad to approve.  I repeat, no bonds issued for the building of this road in any of the States have been discouraged anywhere, and are not likely to be.  More than one-half the mileage is built or provided for; and instead of discouraging, both the State and Federal authorities urge us to go ahead and complete it.  The Federal money is appropriated and waiting, and so is the States’ share in some of the States.  In Missouri, the State Highway Board is begging for the opportunity to pay one-half the cost of construction.  The money is in the treasury.  Why wait?  The State Boards of Kansas and Colorado will go the limit of their authority in the effort to build.  Why wait!  [National Archives at College Park]

The August 1918 issue of Better Roads and Streets published a bulletin from Judge Lowe under the headline “We Are Making Progress.”  In it, Judge Lowe returned to his longstanding opposition to the Federal-aid concept:

One of the most hopeful indications at present is that, notwithstanding the discouragement of active road work, because of the action of certain boards and individuals at Washington, yet there has recently been a road organization established with headquarters in the city of Washington, known as the Highway Industries Association, composed of some of the leading and most prominent men of the nation.

For many years we have been constantly urging that the true, if not the only solution of the road problem in this country was, for the Government to establish, build, and maintain a large system of national highways.  This solution, notwithstanding the circumstances of the present, is making rapid progress throughout the country.

This new organization above mentioned seems to comprehend the situation and is taking hold of it with that degree of vigor which insures success.

The bulletin issued by this [Highways Industries] association, July 26, ought to be in the hands of all the people. After showing that we have about three million miles of roads in this country, they show in this bulletin that it will take about 166 years at the present rate of progress to build all these highways, and they show conclusively that this cannot be done unless the Government shall build and maintain, at least, the great leading trunk-line roads of the country.  This bulletin says, “Our highways must be lifted out of the mud, and we must be up and doing and add at least three times as much fuel as heretofore has been used to the smoldering embers.”

He reprinted a resolution adopted at a meeting of the Virginia Council of National Defense, “at which were present citizens from twenty-four counties and nine cities”:

Resolved, That this meeting hereby recommends the adoption by the National Government of a definite highway policy, and the establishment of a National Highway System; this system to include only the main arteries of travel, and to be constructed and maintained by the National Government.

Judge Lowe also reprinted a similar resolution adopted by the National Real Estate Board at its eighth annual convention in St. Louis:

Be It Further Resolved, That we recommend to the Government, the creation of a prominent highway commission, for the purpose of preparing plans for the construction of a national highway system.

Judge Lowe continued:

The action of these two conventions, and of many others recently held, is emphasized by the Highway Industries Association, above mentioned, and indicates most clearly that the wild-eyed, pork-barrel system has come to an end.

If this war has taught us anything, it is that all industrial and development work must be organized and carried on in the most sensible and efficient manner possible.  This great purpose can only be achieved by fixing the responsibility and carrying forward the work in a well-grounded, systematic manner.  This can only be done when the Government builds and maintains its own roads under the supervision of its own engineers, and when the States and counties pursue a like policy.

Day is not only dawning, but the sun is high up toward the meridian, and the light is shining in full effulgence on all the dark and obscure places in the country.  This is no time for any one to sound a note of discouragement.  When farm lands are paying for themselves twice over with the produce of two or three crops, why say the time is “inopportune” for road development?  Why slow down when there is every encouragement to go forward with renewed energy?  Pile high the fuel on the “smoldering embers,” and it will burst into a flame of prosperity and wealth such as this country has not seen.  [Lowe, J. M., “We Are Making Progress,” Better Roads and Streets, August 1918, page 314]

The Road-Maker published the bulletin in slightly different form.  It added that Henry Shirley, secretary of the Highway Industries Association, indicated that the association appreciated Judge Lowe’s statement “and wishes to amplify what has been heretofore said in the efforts it proposes putting forward to accomplish that which seems most important to the welfare of the country, viz:  The laying out and construction of a national system of highways by the national government.”  (Shirley had resigned as chief engineer of the Maryland State Roads Commission until on April 15, 1918)  [“We Are Making Progress,” The Road-Maker, September 1918, pages 29-30]

On August 14, Judge Lowe addressed the Young Men’s Division of the Chamber of Commerce of Kansas City, Missouri, at the Baltimore Hotel.  He told them:

We are facing a crisis on the road question much more serious than is generally considered.  It is simply astounding that with a full realization of the important part which transportation bears in this war we should have deliberately and premeditatedly struck down at a single blow the principal factor, that of building and maintaining the common highways of the country.

An editorial in the Manufacturers’ Record aptly stated the true situation as follows:

All that has been done by all the bureaus and departments in Washington on this subject has been negative rather than positive as compared with the needs of the time.  We had negation instead of positive aggression, with a chaos in highway work that must have delighted the heart of every pro-German in the nation.

We are spending a billion dollars for railroad betterments, a sum wholly inadequate with the actual needs of the hour, but we are spending almost nothing in the development of highways for motor truck hauling, though motor trucks are increasing in every part of the country where a passable highway is to be found.  The government itself has depended upon motor trucks for work which the railroads cannot do.  The Government is wearing out existing railroads; it is shipping stuff all over the country by motor trucks and yet it makes no solitary move of any significance whatsoever toward the maintenance of existing highways or to the building of new highways adequate to meet the needs of the hour.

It looks as though no hope can come from any of the existing governmental activities which control and suppress highway improvements.  We can see no hope except through an organization formed by President Wilson himself, in co-operation with Congress, or by Congress taking the lead for creating a commission committed wholly and absolutely to the one great issue of building highways.

Judge Lowe continued:

Consider for one moment that the appropriation of a billion dollars to rehabilitate the railroads would, if a like amount were appropriated to the building and maintenance of the common roads, which belong to the people, if the average cost of construction be estimated at $10,000 per mile, would build 100,000 miles of roads, and if the average cost be placed at the high estimate of $20,000 a mile, a billion dollars would build
50,000 miles of road.

Moreover, when this money appropriated to the railroads is expended, however important and necessary such expenditure may be, it will not have added one dollar additional value to our national wealth.  Whereas, if 100,000 miles of common roads were built and maintained by the government, they would absolutely pay their entire cost before the roads could be completed, in the increase of additional values, thus adding immensely to the national wealth.

I know of no other scheme of internal improvements that would add so much to our betterment, would add so much to the wealth and prosperity, and accomplish a greater amount of good toward winning the war.  If the government cannot see its way clear to do this great work, and do it now, by all means it ought to at least get out of the way and let the people, who stand ready and willing, build their own roads.  But we are facing the amazing spectacle of the government refusing to contribute to this great cause and, through these committees, bureaus and departments, absolutely discouraging and suppressing the effort of the people to build them at their own expense.  We have waited with patience because no man or association of men desire to be placed in the attitude of criticizing or opposing any plan designed to help forward war measures, but all the dictates and impulses of genuine patriotism require that we should speak out plainly and emphatically even at this late day, and undertake to reverse this Washington attitude.

When we shall have 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 men on the battlefields of Europe it will tax our productive and transportation energies to the very utmost to keep them supplied with necessary provisions, arms and ammunition.  Under such circumstances, facing such a condition as this, shall we halt or hesitate.  No, a thousand times no!  Every patriotic impulse, every drop of American blood, should be enlisted in this, the world’s greatest and world’s most glorious and righteous war on the part of the Allies, and no other act on our part can do more to bring a speedy and righteous verdict than going forward in this great work, so necessary in the solution of war problems.  [“The Crisis of the Road,” The Road-Maker, September 1918, page 28]

The Young Men’s Division adopted resolutions calling for “a definite highway policy and the establishment of a national highway system – this system to include only the main arteries of travel of the nation, and to be constructed and maintained by the National Government.”  The Federal Government should establish “a permanent highway commission” to build the system.  Given the importance of roads to the war effort, President Wilson and Congress should take immediate steps “to encourage, expedite, and promote the building of such a national system rather than to continue the policy of discouragement and suppression as heretofore practiced.”  If it was “practical and profitable” to appropriate public funds for the railroads, which “belong to individuals and corporations,” it was “practical and important” to use public funds for building and maintaining the common roads of the country, “which belong to the general public.”  In short, the division called for creation of an “organization in Washington, committed absolutely to the building of highways and nothing else.”  The resolution concluded:

The chaotic condition which now prevails throughout the country in highway work, at a time when every mile of bad road of main highways lessens our fighting power and increases the cost of our food and fuel situation, and lengthens the duration of the war, is intolerable.

The railroads of the country have absolutely broken down, and proven their utter incompetency.  It has been demonstrated that the utmost stretch of work that can be given to their expansion will scarcely more than take care of their deterioration under the strain under which they are working.

Motor trucks over our highways can materially aid the situation, supplemented by waterways and railroads, but it is arrant nonsense to encourage the building of trucks if there are no roads over which they can run.  [“RESOLUTIONS,” Better Roads and Streets, September 1918, page 339; Judge Lowe’s speech is on pages 338-339]

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