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.[1]
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.[2] 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.[3]
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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Address by Hon. Wm. P. Borland, Proceedings, Third American Road Congress, (American Highway Association, Washington, D.C., 1914) p. 76.
- ↑ 64 Cong. Rec. 1353 (1916).
