America's Highways 1776–1976: A History of the Federal-Aid Program/Part 1/Chapter 8

by Federal Highway Administration

 

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The
Drive
for
Federal Aid

Rural Free Delivery of U.S. Mail—A Powerful Force for Road Improvement
It is hard for rural residents today to realize the isolation in which most farmers lived in the 19th century. There were then no rural mail delivery, no telephones. One had to go to town, perhaps 4 or 5 miles away, to get a newspaper. If the roads were bad, as they usually were in winter and spring, the rural schools and churches might be only a third filled, and even neighbors might have difficulty communicating with each other.

One of the strongest arguments of the good roads advocates of the 1890’s was that good roads would reduce this isolation, and particularly, would make it practical for the Government to deliver mail to the farms, as some European countries had been doing for decades. In 1893, largely through the influence of the State Granges of the Patrons of Husbandry, Congress appropriated $10,000 for an experimental program of rural mail delivery. After some foot dragging by the Postmaster General, who thought the idea impractical, the Post Office Department established the first experimental rural delivery routes from Charlestown, Halltown and Uvilla, West Virginia, on October 1, 1896, and by July 1897, 44 routes were in operation. Congress increased the appropriation to $50,000 in 1898, and thereafter the free delivery system grew rapidly until, by 1903, there were 8,600 carriers traveling 200,000 miles per day and reaching almost 5 million people.^[1]

The Department made it a rule that rural delivery would be established only along reasonably good roads and that the carrier need not go out on his route unless the roads were in fit condition for travel. These requirements marshaled public opinion on the side of those who wanted better roads, and hundreds of counties undertook substantial road improvements to get rural delivery. In Texas, for example, 100 fords were replaced by bridges in 1901 and 1902.

Under a 1906 agreement between the Postmaster General and the Secretary of Agriculture, a locality desiring a rural mail route could petition the Office of Public Roads for an engineer inspector to examine the route and recommend whatever was necessary to make it suitable for carrying the mail. It was then up to the local officials to make the improvements, but sometimes the inspector, if requested, might assume temporary supervision of the work as an object lesson in roadbuilding. Director Page, thus, hoped to greatly extend the OPR’s educational work:

As the chief aim and purpose of this Office is to bring about a general and uniform improvement of the country roads throughout the United States, a cooperative plan such as the one described above offers the best possible means of achieving positive results in furtherance of that purpose. By this means correct methods of road building and road maintenance will be introduced into practically every section of the United States.^[2]

Important as these efforts were, they did not satisfy the skyrocketing demand for rural delivery service. Congress was generous with funds to operate and extend the free delivery system—in fact, it consistently appropriated more than the Post Office Department asked for—but the problem was really one of roads on which to carry the mails and not one of financing the postal service. This was realized by Congressman Walter P. Brownlow of Tennessee, who in 1903 introduced a bill that would provide $20 million annually in Federal aid to States or counties for the building of post roads. The grants would have to be for specific roads, and the State or county applying for aid would have to agree to pay one-half of their costs. Plans and specifications for the aided roads would be drawn by the Federal Government to insure adequate standards, but the contracts for the work could be let and supervised by the State or county.^[3]

Brownlow’s bill did not become law, but thereafter, for 13 years, bills for some form of national aid to roads were introduced in every session of Congress. One of these, introduced in 1912 by Representative Dorsey W. Shackleford of Missouri, would authorize the spending of $25 million per year out of the Federal fiscal surplus to improve and maintain rural free delivery routes. The aid would be distributed to the counties at the rate of $15 for each mile of graded earth road, $20 for each mile of gravel road, and $25 for each mile of macadam, provided the counties had spent a like amount on these roads in the preceding year.^{[N 1]} The sliding scale would be an inducement to the local authorities to upgrade their roads.^[4] Shackleford argued that this aid would actually save the Government money in the long run by reducing the cost of rural delivery which was then losing $28 million per year.^[5]

The Shackleford bill passed the House but was lost in the Senate. However, in the same session an experimental appropriation was added to the Post Office Department Appropriation Bill (37 Stat 551) to be spent by the Secretary of Agriculture, in cooperation with the Postmaster General, to improve the condition of certain selected post roads, and thereafter, to determine “the increase in the territory which could be served by each carrier as a result of such improvement, the possible increase of the number of delivery days in each year, the amount required in excess of local expenditures for the proper maintenance of such roads, and the relative saving to the Government in the operation of the Rural Delivery Service and to the local inhabitants in the transportation of their products by reason of such improvement. . . .”

The Act also required that the State or local government receiving aid should put up two-thirds of the total cost and that the Secretary and the Postmaster General should report back to Congress within 1 year the results of their operation and also their recommendations, pro or con, on a general plan of national aid for the improvement of postal roads.

This was a very large assignment for both Departments and one that was to test their negotiating skills to the utmost. Unfortunately, Congress failed to provide either agency with administrative funds to carry out the Act, so they had to secure the necessary engineers and postal inspectors by cutting down on other activities.

Another more important provision of the same Act authorized the appointment of a joint committee of five Senators and five Representatives to make an inquiry into the whole matter of Federal aid to highways and to report back to Congress at the earliest possible date.

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1. In 1912 there were 1,200,000 miles of rural delivery routes in the United States, most of them over dirt roads.

Traffic on an improved post road in Tennessee in 1903.

An earth road near Stafford, Va. that was repaired with pine poles about 1912.

An earth road near Stafford, Va. that was repaired with pine poles about 1912.

The Complexities of Federal-State-County Cooperation
In order to treat all States equally, and also to get information representative of all parts of the country, the two Departments divided the $500,000 appropriation equally among the 48 States. They then, in a joint letter, notified each governor of the apportionment and asked that he designate about 50 miles of road within his State on which rural delivery was or might be established as an experimental post road. Five governors did not even bother to reply to this request; six refused to participate; and 28 indicated that they were unable to comply for lack of legal powers or because of conflicting State statutes. Two States, Georgia and South Carolina, declined to participate because of Federal statutes requiring an 8-hour work day and the Executive Order of May 18, 1905, barring the employment of convict labor on Government work. In the end, only Alabama, Iowa, and Oregon agreed to designate post roads and accept the Federal subsidy.^[6]

By this time, nearly 7 months had passed and no projects were underway, so the two Departments tried a different approach. They decided to select from two to eight locations representative of conditions in various sections of the country and to concentrate the available funds on a few roads in these localities. This plan produced the desired result, and eventually agreements were made for 17 post road projects totaling 457 miles, located in 13 States and 28 counties, but not without practical and legal difficulties. One county in Virginia figured that it could build roads more economically by doing its own work with convicts or by free labor working 10 or 11 hours per day than by accepting the Federal subsidy, and the county canceled its agreement. The original idea of appointing a trustee in each county to hold the funds for each post road, subject to disbursement by a Federal engineer, had to be dropped in some States because of conflict with State laws. The most serious objections came from Minnesota which protested the 8-hour clause in the agreements and appealed the matter to the Attorney General of the United States, who ruled that the work contemplated under the post road program was, after all, not public work of the United States, within the meaning of the statutes, and, therefore, neither the 8-hour law or the prohibition on use of convict labor would apply.^[7]

The Secretary of Agriculture turned the supervision of the post road program over to the Office of Public Roads, and Page in turn assigned responsibility to E. W. James, who detailed an engineer to each project to lay out the road, supervise construction, and approve expenditures. Cooperation with the counties was not easy. Unlike Bennington County, Vermont, which had petitioned the OPR to assign an engineer, the cooperating post road counties had surrendered their control over the joint road funds unwillingly and only to get the Federal subsidy. The Secretary and the Postmaster General described some of the difficulties in these words:

From correspondence and from the attitude of the local officials in many places it appears that there is a disposition frequently to avoid the obvious requirements of the present act with respect to Government control over the expenditure of joint funds. The allotments have been looked upon not infrequently in the light of a gratuity, the idea of the post road has been lost sight of, and the question has been frequently raised in the field as to why the Government would not give the money to the counties and let them spend it. . . .

Fiscal procedure in the States and counties, if possible, should be provided for in local statutes, written with Federal aid in mind. The longest delays, the most unsatisfactory conferences, and the most troublesome routine in the execution of the present projects have arisen because the Federal aid and supervision of local funds was not thought of when the fiscal regulations of the States and counties were made.

We find that many States incorporate into their State road laws certain details of design and methods of construction which, in any general distribution of national aid, would at once act as checks on supervision by the National Government. . . .^[8]

The first post road to be completed was opened to traffic in 1914. It was a dirt road, extending 14½ miles west from Florence, Alabama, to Waterloo. The program, with congressional extensions, dragged on for four more years, until the last post road, in Dubuque County, Iowa, was opened in 1918. From the start, this program was a very considerable burden on the Office of Public Roads, yet in carrying it out, the OPR learned valuable lessons which Director Page was able to pass on a few years later to the framers of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916. The most important of these recommendations was that Federal aid should be dispensed only through the 48 States, avoiding the complexities of dealing with the Nation’s more than 3,000 counties.

It is worth noting that the post road program of 1912 to 1918 was the Office of Public Roads’ first involvement with the Federal policy of inducing social change in the States by means of the public works programs. Later legislation conditioned Federal grants for roads on State compliance with the 8-hour law, the prohibition of convict labor, the use of hand labor methods, the payment of minimum wages, and numerous other requirements that were primarily social.

Although the date is not known, it can be assumed that Director Page made up this model of a State highway department about the time that he made his recommendation on the 1916 Federal Aid Road Act.

The Lincoln Highway
The Glidden Tours and the exploits of the Pioneer Freighter inspired a growing interest in motorable long-distance roads among the rapidly increasing class of automobile owners. In 1912 Carl G. Fisher, builder of the Indianapolis Speedway, conceived the idea of a “coast-to-coast rock highway” as a way to dramatize the need for interstate roads. He was able to get support for this idea from some of the foremost leaders of the automotive and allied industries, and in July 1913, Fisher and his supporters formed the Lincoln Highway Association to carry out the scheme and collect public subscriptions to pay for it. The Association then selected what they considered the most direct route across the mid-United States beginning at New York and proceeding by way of Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha, Cheyenne, and Salt Lake City to San Francisco, a total distance of about 3,150 miles.^[9]

The Association recruited members in all of the towns along the route, and, with thoroughgoing efficiency, appointed able and influential local citizens as “consuls” to promote the improvement of the various sections of the route. The result was a rich harvest of local and national publicity and sizable cash contributions as well.

The Lincoln Highway Association collected millions of dollars from the public, but its officers had no illusions that they would ever be able to get enough to build the highway from this source. Their primary purpose was to educate the public to the need for better roads and build political support for national aid to good roads. As a vehicle for this educational campaign, they adopted Roy Stone’s tried and tested technique of object lesson roads. The funds donated to the Association were used to finance “seedling miles” distributed throughout the length of the route. The first of these, begun October 1914, near the village of Malta, Illinois, was a cement concrete pavement, and many of the others were of similar high types suitable for heavy traffic.

The Lincoln Highway inspired a tremendous amount of argument both for and against long-distance roads. The rural interests generally were against them, claiming that the Nation would be drained of funds to build a few “peacock alleys” for the enjoyment of wealthy tourists. Urban spokesmen said the country had been too long in bondage to the medieval English concept that roads were the responsibility of the smallest and weakest units of government, namely, the road districts, townships, and counties, and that the Federal Government should assume responsibility for “national routes.”

Among the most active of the national roads advocates was the National Highways Association, an organization its enemies claimed was dominated by the road machinery, road materials, and portland cement interests. This Association published a map showing a recommended 50,000-mile system of national roads extending from coast to coast and from Canada to the Gulf, which it claimed should be the responsibility of the Federal Government to build and maintain.^{[N 1][10]} Such a system, proponents claimed, would not lay any additional expense on the States and counties but, rather, would relieve them of the cost of keeping up their heaviest trafficked roads, leaving more of the local funds to spend on the local roads.

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1. This idea was 30 years ahead of its time and was not realized until the Interstate System was authorized in 1944.

With the spring thaw, roads such as this one in Michigan about 1916 annually became impassable because of the mud.

With the spring thaw, roads such as this one in Michigan about 1916 annually became impassable because of the mud.

The American Automobile Association took a strong position in favor of Federal aid and against dissipating the Federal funds in driblets over the more than 2 million miles of local roads:

. . . we advocate the main roads to be built first, and those are the two fundamental principles that this Association is working for: that the government should aid, and that the government money should be spent only on the main thoroughfares and should not be dissipated by trying to spend it on 2,000,000 miles of road . . . we believe that this work should not of necessity be done by the government, but that the State highway officials, in cooperation with the government, should agree on the roads, the plans, and the specifications, and on the various features of the contract.^[11]

The Evolution of a National Policy on Federal Aid
When the Post Office Appropriation Act of 1912 was passed, it was already apparent to most Congressmen that some form of Federal aid to roads was inevitable. The real questions before Congress were how much the aid should be and the form in which it should be granted. The experimental post road appropriation and the congressional joint committee were measures designed to get some answers to these questions, but in the end, the inevitable Federal-aid bill was hammered out on the anvil of political compromise.

The legislators appointed to the Joint Committee on Federal Aid in the Construction of Post Roads represented all shades of opinion from extreme national road advocates to local road supporters. The Committee held hearings and drew heavily on the files of the State Department and the Office of Public Roads for information on the economic and social importance of roads and how they were administered in the United States and the advanced countries of Europe. They learned, for example, that in the United States the average haul for farm products to market or to the nearest railroad station was 9 miles; and the average cost of hauling over the existing country roads was 21 cents per ton-mile. By comparison, it cost French farmers only 8 cents per ton-mile to haul farm products over their macadam roads. The difference, or 13 cents per ton-mile, was in effect a financial burden laid on American producers and consumers alike by bad roads, a “mud tax” that was costing the country $504 million annually. At 6 percent, this loss represented the interest on $8.4 billion, which, according to some economists, might profitably be spent annually to improve the roads instead of the niggardly $204 million spent in 1912.^[12]

The Committee received testimony on the effect of bad roads on the education of rural children, the quality of rural life, and migration of young people from the farms to the cities; and on the value of farm land, the labor of horses, and the wear and tear on wagons and draft gear, and the motorization of farm transportation. They sent inquiries to people in all walks of life in all parts of the country, and of 10,000 replies, 97 percent were in favor of some form of Federal aid.

The Joint Committee’s work stretched out far longer than Congress had anticipated and was not completed when the 63d Congress convened in 1914. This did not discourage the proponents of Federal aid, who poured a steady stream of bills into the legislative hopper in the first session. In all, 10 bills were introduced in the Senate and 39 in the House. These bills covered the whole spectrum of thinking on the Federal-aid question. At one extreme was Alabama Senator John H. Bankhead’s bill to set up a National Bureau of Highways in Washington to spend $25 million per year on a national highway system. At the other end was a bill by Senator Hoke Smith of Georgia to classify all the rural mail routes according to the type of surfacing and then pay each State $60 annually for each mile of Class A (macadam) road, $30 per mile for Class B (gravel), and $15 per mile for Class C (earth), as “rental” for the use of the roads to carry the U.S. mail. A novel plan offered by Senator Jonathan Bourne, Jr., of Oregon would apportion $1 billion among the States according to four factors. Under this complicated plan, the Federal Government would lend part of the money to the States at 4 percent interest and the remainder would be a subsidy for State roads. This was to be accomplished by the issuance of both State and Federal Government bonds over a long period of time.

Through this welter of different Federal-aid plans there ran a thin thread of agreement on three matters:

• The amount of Federal aid should be from $20 to $25 million annually.
• The aid should be apportioned among the States according to some formula. (The most popular formula was one-third of the funds according to population, one-third according to geographic area, and one-third according to the mileage of post roads.)
• The aid should be matched by State contributions, with 50-50 the most favored ratio.

Eventually the House passed a modified version of the “ABC Rental Plan” offered by Representative Shackleford of Missouri, but this bill was lost in the Senate reportedly because of the opposition of the American Automobile Association and big city interests.^[13]

State Highway No. 1 (now 1-25) in New Mexico in 1915 with a 6 percent grade into Nogal Canyon.

State Highway No. 1 (now I-25) in New Mexico in 1915 with a 6 percent grade into Nogal Canyon.

In support of his plan to subsidize the lesser rural roads, Shackleford used an argument that would have repercussions for years afterward in the design of highways. He asserted that there are two types of roads: “touring roads” and “business roads,” and that the two are somehow incompatible in the same system of highways. In 1913, at the Third American Road Congress he said:

It can not be doubted that an overwhelming majority of the people want federal road legislation; but, unfortunately, they radically differ in opinion as to what such legislation should provide. They are divided into two general classes, which for the purposes of this discussion may be designated as the ‘touring-roads’ class and the ‘business-roads’ class. The ‘touring-roads’ class is marching under a banner upon which is inscribed in letters of gold: ‘See America first.’ The ‘business-roads’ class is marshaling its forces under a flag which bears the legend: ‘Cheaper transportation and lower cost of living.’ . . .

The ‘touring-roads’ class demands that the United States shall limit its road activities to the construction and maintenance of a few ‘ocean-to-ocean’ and ‘across-country’ highways of great perfection and then leave the rest of the people to build their own roads or do without, as they may choose.

The ‘business-roads’ class believes that in dealing with roads we must keep in mind their functions and the relation which they bear to the general transportation system of the country ; that, as the harbor is the terminus of the river and the railroad, so, for practical purposes, the railway station is the terminus for roads; that neither freight nor passengers will ever be carried long distances over roads as cheaply as they could be over railways, and that it is an idle dream to imagine that auto trucks and automobiles will take the place of railways in the long-distance movement of freight or passengers; that the proper function of roads is not to connect antipodal oceans nor the distant capitals of far-away States, but to make easy communication between the farms on one hand and the towns and railway stations on the other, to the end that the farmer may market his crops at less expense and the town dweller may get farm products more easily at less cost. They therefore favor a general system of roads radiating from the towns and railway stations out among the farms.^[14]

In later years, in a different context, and in somewhat different form, Shackleford’s arguments would be used to oppose parkways, highway beautification and long-distance freeways.

In their report of January 21, 1915, the members agreed unanimously on the need and desirability of Federal aid and its constitutionality, but not on any specific policy for Congress to follow in granting such aid. The Committee failed to come to grips with the question of how much aid should be granted, other than to counsel that Federal aid should be undertaken in a large way rather than a small, haphazard way. They warned that small contributions spread over a large mileage would create a “pork barrel” that would dissipate the Federal funds without any permanent upgrading of the roads. The Committee also came out against centralization of control over the road program in Washington.

Prophetically, the Committee declared, “We believe that permanent highways will result in very considerable adoption of auto-truck hauling in preference to rail transportation where the distance is within a half day’s run.”^[15]

Federal Aid Becomes A Reality
Among the first bills introduced into the 64th Congress in January 1916 was Representative Shackleford’s H.R. 7617, providing that “the Secretary of Agriculture, on behalf of the United States, shall, in certain cases, aid the States in the construction and maintenance of rural post roads.” This bill proposed to appropriate $25 million annually, out of which each State would receive at least $65,000. The remainder would be apportioned one-half in proportion to population and one-half in proportion to the mileage of rural free delivery (RFD) and star post routes. The locations and standards of the aided roads were to be agreed upon between the Secretary of Agriculture and the States, and earth, sand-clay, and other low cost surfaces would be eligible for the subsidy, as well as higher types, and the Federal share of the cost would be not less than 30 percent nor more than 50 percent. To receive Federal aid after 1920, each State would have to have a State highway department to administer the Federal funds. Finally, the construction and maintenance of the aided roads would remain under State control.

Other good roads bills were introduced in the 64th Congress, but Shackleford’s H.R. 7617 attracted the most support. Its author had been cochairman of the Joint Congressional Committee, and he was now chairman of the newly formed House Committee on Roads. He had come to realize that compromise between the long-distance roads and local roads advocates would be necessary to pass any Federal-aid bill. His new bill had the support of the American Association of State Highway Officials, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Postmaster General, and the Office of Public Roads, all of whom opposed the ABC rental plan so dear to Shackleford’s heart.

When the Shackleford bill reached the floor of the House, there was no opposition to it on constitutional grounds, and almost everybody was satisfied that ownership and responsibility for roads should remain with the State and local governments. There was also general agreement that the Government should deal only with States through a highway department. Debate revolved almost entirely about the formula for apportioning the funds among the States, and the exclusion of places of more than 2,500 population from the benefits of the act.^{[N 1]}

Opponents of the bill claimed that the apportionment formula gave the wealthier States, which contributed most of the Federal revenues, less than their fair share of the post road benefits, and they were particularly bitter that the cities, which contributed a very large share of the revenue in all States, got nothing at all from the bill. The rural road advocates replied that the wealthy States and the cities had already received more than their fair share of the national income in other forms, such as expensive post offices and public buildings, harbor improvements, veterans’ pensions (one-third of the pensioners lived in six eastern States, practically none in the south) and, most of all, in shelter of their industries behind a high protective tariff.

Despite the opposition, the Shackleford Bill, with some changes, passed the House by a good margin and was carried unanimously in the Senate. It became law July 11, 1916.

The principal changes in the bill were to reduce the funding and change the apportionment factors to one-third according to area, one-third according to population, and one-third according to post road mileage. The Secretary of Agriculture was allowed to take 3 percent off the top of all appropriations for administration. No Federal aid was to be apportioned to any State until its legislature had assented to the provisions of the Act, but after that, the Secretary would pay one-half of the actual cost of any approved project, including the cost of bridges and culverts, up to $10,000 per mile. After completion of the aided road, it would be the duty of the State to properly maintain it, and if this were not done, the Secretary could refuse to approve further Federal aid in that State until the road was restored to good condition.

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1. The debate on the Federal-aid bill comprises some 300 pages of The Congressional Record, Vol. 53, 1916.

Congress realized that it would take some time for the States to enact suitable legislation assenting to the Federal Act, to raise matching funds and train personnel for an expanded road program. The Congress, in order to provide time, allowed States with unexpended funds at the close of the fiscal year one additional fiscal year to obligate funds and, for those States that did not have a State highway department, the appropriation would be available until the close of the third fiscal year following the fiscal year for which it was apportioned. The legislators may also have remembered how long it took the Secretary of Agriculture and the Postmaster General to implement the much smaller post road program of 1912. At any rate, they appropriated only $5 million for fiscal year 1917, the first year of the new program, but at the same time, they provided for increasing the amount by $5 million annually up to a maximum of $25 million in 1921.^{[N 1]} Thus, although the amount initially available was not large, Congress, by appropriating for 5 years in advance, made it possible for the States to plan ahead and build up an orderly program. This wise policy has continued down to the present.

Launching the Federal-Aid Program
The Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 placed an immense additional responsibility on Logan Waller Page and the Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering,^{[N 2]} to whom Secretary of Agriculture Houston delegated the administration of the Act. First, they had to apportion the appropriated funds among the 48 States, and this required that the Postmaster General certify the mileage of rural delivery and star routes in each State. The apportionment was published July 21, 1916, just 10 days after President Wilson signed the Act.

Page and the Department solicitor then drafted tentative regulations for carrying out the provisions of the Act, and invited the heads of all the State highway departments to a conference in Washington to discuss them. The draft regulations did not satisfy everyone, particularly the provisions denying Federal participation in the cost of right-of-way and the cost of making preliminary surveys and plans. However, most of the suggestions made by the State officials were incorporated in the final draft, and the regulations were issued September 1, 1916.

The harmonious cooperation between the Federal and State officials in drafting these regulations was a good omen for the eventual success of the Federal-aid program. Their work was so well done that the regulations were not greatly changed for years afterward, even though the Act itself was very considerably amended.

The Act gave the State highway departments the authority to initiate projects subject to approval of the plans, specifications and estimates by the Secretary. To provide prompt inspection and approval of projects, Page decentralized the OPKEE into ten regional districts, each in charge of an experienced highway engineer. At the same time, he had men at work, in cooperation with the States, preparing standard forms for plans and specifications, and in February 1917 he convened a conference of State testing engineers in Washington to recommend to the States standard specifications and methods of testing road materials.

The OPRRE’s administrative diligence was matched by that of those States which already had adequate highway departments. By July 1917, Page’s district engineers had received applications from 26 States for Federal aid in the construction of 949 miles of road estimated to cost $5.43 million, the Federal share of which amounted to about $2.43 million, or less than half of the funds appropriated by Congress for fiscal year 1917. Of these projects, 188 miles, with a Federal share of $846,152, had been approved.^[17]

Standards for Federally Aided Roads
Representative Shackleford’s original bill, which much amended eventually became the Federal Aid Road Act, provided that Federal aid might be used for earth and sand-clay roads, as well as for higher types, “. . . one of the purposes of this Act being to encourage and promote the improvement of a general system of roads leading from cities, towns and railway stations into the adjacent farming communities.”^[18] This specific language was eliminated while the bill was under consideration in Congress. Instead, the Secretary of Agriculture was given the power to review and approve State proposals, including road types and standards, subject to the limitation that approved projects should be “substantial in character.”

The poorer States of the South and West regarded this limitation with considerable apprehension, fearing that the Secretary might require macadam, concrete or other high types of surfacing for Federal approval. This apprehension may have been reinforced by the fact that the first Federal-aid project approved was a 20-foot concrete road in California. To allay this widespread fear, Secretary Houston, in February 1917, issued a specific statement to the public:

‘This department, which is charged with the administration of the Federal Aid Road Act, has placed absolutely no restrictions, either direct or implied, upon the kinds of highways to be constructed. States may submit for approval any kind of road, even an earth road, and approval will be given if the construction be substantial in character, suitable for traffic needs, and meets the terms of the Federal act. To give State legislators and highway officials the impression that this department favors only costly types of road or discriminates in favor of any particular material, results not only in spreading misinformation, but in placing barriers in the way of States which wish to avail themselves of Federal aid in road construction.’^[19]

This announcement apparently had the desired effect. As of January 1918, 80 percent of the 2,849 miles submitted for Federal-aid approval were for gravel, sand-clay or graded earth roads.

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1. In addition to providing $75 million for Federal aid to post roads, Congress appropriated $10 million for roads and trails in national forests to be spent at the rate of $1 million per year beginning in 1917 under the supervision of the Secretary of Agriculture.
2. On July 1, 1915, the Department’s work on farm drainage, irrigation and farm architecture was merged with the work on roads under a new Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering (OPRRE) with Logan Waller Page as Director. The working force under Page after the merger was 450 persons, of whom 288 were from the rolls of the old OPR and 162 from other agencies.^[16]

A caution sign to drivers to preserve the low type State highway.

A caution sign to drivers to preserve the low type State highway.

The Federal-aid regulations of 1916 contained one rather unusual provision:

Unless otherwise specifically stipulated in the project agreement, bridges, viaducts and under-passes shall have clear width of roadway of not less than 16 feet, and clear head room of not less than 14 feet for a width of 8 feet at the center.^[20]

This was one of the few occasions on which the Federal Government chose to set standards for roads. In the years following, the Government let the States set standards by agreement among themselves through the American Association of State Highway Officials and then made adherence to these standards a condition for receiving Federal aid. Thus, strictly speaking, there have never been “national standards” for roads in the United States, such as were established by the governments of France and other European countries.

The Road Census of 1914
The Office of Public Road Inquiries made the first national road inventory in 1904, canvassing not only road mileage, but also revenues and expenditures for construction and maintenance. This information, such as it was, was obtained entirely by correspondence, and before the inventory was over, some 60,000 printed forms and letters were sent out and received by the OPRI. The information was far from complete, and some was of questionable accuracy. In some instances, the county road officials refused to supply the information unless paid for their services, and in such cases, it became necessary to secure the information through postmasters, attorneys, physicians or other private citizens.

The roads in many counties and townships have never been measured, surveyed or recorded, and in such cases it became necessary to secure an estimate of the mileage from persons best informed on this subject in the counties. In some instances no permanent records appeared to have been kept of collections or expenditures of road funds, and in others the records are kept in such manner as to confuse rather than enlighten one in search of information.^[21]

Tollgate in Ambrose County near Lynchburg, Va. The sign warns that there is a fine of $10. for exceeding the speed limit of 6 m.p.h.

Tollgate in Ambrose County near Lynchburg, Va. The sign warns that there is a fine of $10. for exceeding the speed limit of 6 m.p.h.

In 1909, the OPR made another inventory by mail, canvassing only the mileage of various types of road surfaces.

By 1914, well over half of the States had highway departments, and Page persuaded these departments to help with the road census by supplying “collaborators” who would collect the information in their States and forward it to OPR. In those States that did not supply collaborators, the OPR collected the information directly from the local authorities, or from local and State road associations, chambers of commerce, automobile clubs, postmasters and private citizens. Apparently, in these States the quality of recordkeeping had improved but little since 1904:

Highway accounting systems and methods, especially in the local subdivisions of States, are, in general, far from satisfactory. In many places the records were found to be so indefinite or so incomplete that the most careful investigation failed to determine even the bare total of what funds had been expended on roads and bridges during the previous years. At times the memory of some official or employee seemed a better guide than the permanent existing records.

Lack of definite data and records by the local subdivisions is even more pronounced as to road mileage. Hundreds of instances were discovered where the local officials could give no more than a rough estimate, as maps had not been prepared or measurement of the roads been made.^[22]

Despite these shortcomings, the census of 1914, taken as a whole, was the most accurate and comprehensive inventory of American roads and road finances made up to that time. The most striking finding was an enormous increase in the total annual expenditures on roads and bridges, from $79.62 million in 1904 to $240.26 million in 1914, a large part of which was derived from the sale of bonds.^{[N 1]}

The mileage summary showed that the country’s network of rural roads, that is, those outside incorporated cities and towns, had grown from 2,151,379 miles in 1904 to 2,445,760 miles in 1914. Roads surfaced with sand-clay, gravel, macadam or substances other than plain dirt had increased from 153,530 miles in 1904 to 257,291 miles in 1914 but were still only 10.5 percent of the total mileage. Of the surfaced mileage, 32,180 miles, or 12.5 percent, were of dust-free types, such as bituminous macadam, brick or concrete. These, with a few thousand more miles added in 1915 and 1916, would soon be put to the supreme test of wartime traffic.

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1. About $21.0 million of road and bridge bonds had been issued in the 10 years preceding 1904 in five States.^[23] In 1914, the total of State and local bridge and road bonds outstanding was $344.76 million, distributed through 42 States. Of this amount, $115.32 million were State bonds issued by New York ($65 million) and 10 other States.^[24]

REFERENCES

1. A. Machen, Rural Free Delivery of Mails, Proceedings, North Carolina Good Roads Convention, Bulletin No. 24 (Office of Public Road Inquiries, Washington, D.C., 1903) p. 51.
2. Bureau of Public Roads Annual Report, 1906, p. 23.
3. M. Dodge, Our National Policy, Proceedings, National Good Roads Convention Held At St. Louis, Mo., Bulletin No. 26 (Office of Public Road Inquiries, Washington, D.C., 1903) p. 20.
4. Address by Hon. Wm. P. Borland, Proceedings, Third American Road Congress, (American Highway Association, Washington, D.C., 1914) p. 76.
5. 64 Cong. Rec. 1353 (1916).
6. Joint Report of The Progress of Post Road Improvement, H. Doc. 204, 63d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 4, 5.
7. Id., pp. 19, 20.
8. Id., p. 13.
9. A. Rose, Historic American Highways—Public Roads of The Past (American Association of State Highway Officials, Washington, D.C., 1953) p. 109.
10. D. Shackleford, Federal Road Legislation, Proceedings, Third American Road Congress (American Highway Association, Washington, D.C., 1914) pp. 59, 60.
11. Proceedings, Fourth American Road Congress (American Highway Association, Washington, D.C., 1915) pp. 26, 27.
12. Federal Aid To Good Roads, H. Doc. 1510, 63d Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 15–17.
13. D. Shackleford, supra, note 10, p. 63.
14. Id., pp. 56, 57.
15. H. Doc, supra, note 12, p. 15.
16. Bureau of Public Roads Annual Report, 1915, p. 1.
17. Bureau of Public Roads Annual Report, 1917, p. 3.
18. H. R. 7617, 64th Cong., 1st Sess., Jan. 6, 1916.
19. J. Pennybacker & L. Boykin, Federal Aid to Highways, Yearbook of The Department of Agriculture, 1917 (GPO, Washington, D.C., 1918) p. 135.
20. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rules and Regulations of The Secretary of Agriculture For Carrying Out The Federal Aid Road Act, Circular No. 65 (GPO, Washington, D.C., 1916) p. 10.
21. M. Eldridge, Public-Road Mileage, Revenues and Expenditures In The United States In 1904, Bulletin No. 32 (Office of Public Roads, Washington, D.C., 1907) p. 7.
22. Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering, Public Road Mileage and Revenues In The United States, 1914—A Summary, Bulletin No. 390 (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., 1917) p. 2.
23. M. Eldridge, supra, note 21, p. 18.
24. OPRRE, supra, note 22, pp. 3, 8.