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.[1]
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.’ . . .
- ↑ D. Shackleford, supra, note 10, p. 63.
