were 2,958 automobiles registered in Michigan, each owner paying a 50-cent fee to the state.
The best available records indicate there were 68,000 miles of roads in the state. Fewer than 8,000 miles were improved, 7,700 with gravel and 245 with macadam. Only 18 counties had adopted the county road system.
The new highway department set up business in the office of the Speaker of the House in the State Capitol. Its operating budget of 310,000 a year paid for a staff of five, including Earle and his deputy, Frank F. Rogers, an engineer from Port Huron who had worked diligently at his side in the campaign to legalize a state reward law.
The new legislation allocated $20,000 for the first year and $50,000 for the second year as "rewards" to counties and townships which built roads in accordance with minimum specifications. State payments of S25O to $1,000 a mile typically paid about one fourth of the total cost.
Earle's ideas were a mirror of future road progress. He advocated use of trained civil engineers to plan and supervise construction of roads and used his state office and the state reward system to encourage local officials to do the job professionally and well. In 1907, he persuaded the Legislature to abolish the ancient and highly inefficient statute labor system for road improvements. It allowed a farmer and a team of horses to work out in a day or two his share of local road taxes. In its place, the Legislature enacted a much more productive cash tax system. The ceiling was set at 50 cents per $100 of assessed property value, and the revenue could be used only for permanent road improvements, not maintenance.
Earle predicted counties and cities and the state, even the federal government, eventually would cooperate to build good highways and connecting roads. He was the first to urge a statewide system of roads, not just farm-to-market, hit-and-miss roads that ignored cross-country traffic. He also played a key role in construction of the nation’s first full mile of rural concrete highway. It was built on Woodward Avenue in Detroit between Six Mile Road and Seven Mile Road, a 17-foot, eight inch-wide marvel that drew observers from all over the world. The three-year-old Wayne County Road Commission started work on April 20, 1909, and finished on July 4. The cost was $13,354.
Earle had encouraged the project and approved a $1,000 state reward to the county nine days before his term expired. His successor, by appointment of Governor Warner, was Townsend Ely, a retired farmer and former state senator from Alma. Earle had crossed swords with Warner several times during his four years as highway commissioner and had even run against him for governor in the Republican primary election of 1908.
Warner decided to replace the strong-willed commissioner with a less aggressive man of more conservative bent. Ely had worked with Earle on early road legislation, including the cash tax system for road financing. He was an honest, sincere, kindly man with a strong sympathy for the farmer and for local governments. Even his personal conversation and speeches were sprinkled with references to "wagon roads," not
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