About 1898 Martin Dodge advanced the idea of steel track wagon roads by exhibiting sections of steel track at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha. The advantages were that steel track was less costly to install and maintain, more durable, and the power required to move a vehicle was only a small fraction of that needed over any other kind of road. This demonstration shows an 11-ton load being hauled by one horse on a steel track while it would take 20 horses to haul this load on an ordinary road of that day.
For 2 years, prior to General Stone’s resignation, Congress had turned a deaf ear to his entreaties for more funds to expand the demonstration road program. When Mr. Dodge took office in 1899, the budget was still only $10,000 per year, and for another 2 years he had no success in getting it increased. This resistance was due, in part at least, to fear on the part of some people that the OPRI was the entering wedge for national roads under Federal control. Seeking to allay this suspicion, Dodge wrote in his report for 1901:
It is proper just here to call attention to a misconception which appears to exist in the minds of some to the effect that increased appropriations for this work may lead to National aid. It should be distinctly understood that the work of this Office, like that of many other Divisions of the Department, is purely educational. In requesting an increased appropriation it was not the intention to shift the burden and responsibility of constructing improved roads from the States and counties to the General Government. Such a plan is not feasible, and even if it were, it would not be desirable, for there could be no surer way of postponing the building of good roads than by making them dependent upon National aid. Under such a system States and counties would wait for National aid and little or nothing would be done.[1]
Director Dodge’s plea for more funds did not bear fruit until 1903 when Congress increased the OPRI’s budget to $30,000. In the meantime, to better keep in touch with local developments and economize on travel expense, Dodge divided the country into four “divisions,” with a special agent in charge of each. To head the Eastern Division, he appointed Logan W. Page, a geologist who at the time was also Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry’s Division of Tests. Page had been invited to Washington in 1900 to set up a materials laboratory in the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture and to conduct a study of road materials on a national scale. The other division heads were Professor J. A. Holmes of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, J. A. Stout of Menominee, Wisconsin, and James W. Abbott of Denver, Colorado.
All of the division agents, except Page, were parttime employees, and their available time was fully employed attending conventions, writing articles and collecting information on the progress of legislation. An idea of the duties of these agents can be gleaned from Dodge’s summary of Special Agent Abbott’s work for 1901. In addition to traveling more than 12,000 miles by railroad,
He attended and participated in the work of four very important conventions, at two of which he read papers. He has written several articles for publication in leading newspapers, and numerous interviews have been published giving accounts of his movements and work. He spent some time in consultation with the road committees of the Colorado legislature and assisted in framing a carefully prepared road law. He visited many places in Colorado, Utah, and California, and gave advice where it was desired regarding specific or general road improvement. Mr. Abbott visited, practically at his own expense, this Office and the highway departments of New York, Massachusetts, and California. . . .
. . . He has, by personal interviews and private letters, brought the subject of road improvement to the attention of governors and other State officials, the editors of leading newspapers, professors in institutions of learning, presidents and managers of railroads, prominent civil and mining engineers, members of the legislatures, boards of county commissioners, road supervisors, the heads of leading industries, manufacturers of road machinery, besides a large number of influential private citizens.[2]
All this for $1,500 per year! Obviously, Special Agent Abbott also had a private income to draw upon, as did the other division heads.
Until 1903 the OPRI had only one object lesson road construction team, which was managed by Special Agent and Road Expert E. G. Harrison until his death in February 1901. This team was shipped from place to place by rail on a prearranged schedule, building eight or nine roads per year, each ½ to 1½ miles long. After a sufficient amount of road had been built at each location, a “good roads day” would be arranged, and the farmers of that and the adjacent counties would be invited to attend. Special Agent Harrison would lead the crowd—often as many as 500 persons—along the new construction, lecturing on the fundamentals of drainage, stone surfacing and road maintenance. Harrison would arrange for the lecture to be printed in the local newspaper. The following is a brief quote from one of these accounts:
‘We are not here to build city streets, nor boulevards. Cities are able to pay for their expensive streets and know how to build them. But the U.S. is interested in
