 | University of Virginia record October 1, 1915 |  |
State Contest in Debating.
(Under the direction of the Jefferson and Washington Literary Societies.)
REGULATIONS.
1915-1916.
I. This contest is open to all secondary schools of Virginia, whether
public or private.
II. Each school shall furnish a debating team of two members.
III. The contests are open to boys and girls.
IV. The question for debate, including suggested arguments and
material, will be found in this bulletin immediately following these
regulations.
V. If any school desires to take part in this contest, the principal
shall notify the secretary of the same prior to the first of January.
Upon receipt of such notice the secretary will pair this school with
another school for the purpose of holding a preliminary debate. The
status and standards of the schools, their proximity, accessibility,
and convenience of location will be considered in making the pairs.
The secretary will be very glad if each principal will send a list of
the other schools with which he thinks such a contest desirable, and
as far as possible the secretary will try to arrange a contest for him
with one of the schools on this list.
VI. All preliminary debates between the schools must be held prior
to the fifteenth of March.
VII. Each debater shall be given fifteen minutes, no more than
five of which may be used for rebuttal. Debates can not be read in
toto, but reference may be made to notes.
VIII. The details of the preliminary debates are to be decided by
the principals of the two schools debating. It is suggested, however,
that one school shall have choice of sides, the other choice of
place, and lots shall be cast as to which of the two options a school
shall take.
IX. The school that wins the preliminary debate is entitled to send
its team to the University to compete in the final debates.
X. The final debates will be held at the University on the twentieth
and twenty-first of April.
XI. The teams coming to the University for the final debates must
be prepared to take either side of the question.
XII. To the school that wins the final debates a silver cup will be
presented by the Board of Visitors of the University.
XIII. All debaters coming to the University will be met at Union
Station, Charlottesville, Virginia, between 7 a. m. and 1 p. m. on
Thursday, April twentieth, and will be entertained as guests of the
Literary Societies while at the University. This entertainment will
be extended also to any principal or teacher who desires to accompany
his team.
XIV. It is suggested that those schools who expect to participate
in the debating contest as well as the public reading contest should
hold the contest in public reading with the same school with which
their debate is held, and that both contests take place on the same
occasion. However, this is merely suggested.
XV. No pupil who represents his school in the public reading contest
will be allowed also to represent his school in the debating contest.
XVI. All correspondence should be addressed to the Secretary of
the Virginia High School Literary and Athletic League, University, Virginia.
Prof. Chas. G. Maphis,
Chairman.
THE QUESTION FOR DEBATE.
Resolved: That the Federal Government should cooperate with
the States in constructing and maintaining post roads and rural delivery
routes.
The question as stated above will be debated in the preliminary
contests between the schools, and also in the final contests which
will be held at the University on the first and second of April.
SUGGESTED ARGUMENTS.
The arguments which are suggested below are not intended to be
exhaustive, but merely to intimate certain broad issues involved in
the question.
FOR THE AFFIRMATIVE.
I. Congress has the right under the Constitution to aid States in
the building of good roads.
II. Precedents for Federal aid.
III. Federal aid will lighten farmers' burden.
IV. Good roads will improve general health conditions.
V. Good roads will revolutionize school system.
VI. Federal assistance increases patriotic zeal.
VII. The national government uses the roads, therefore it should
help to maintain them.
VIII. Federal aid will arouse interest among States in the building
of good roads.
IX. Aiding States in the construction of roads is a function of the
national government.
X. Good roads will foster development of waste land.
FOR THE NEGATIVE.
I. Federal aid—unconstitutional.
II. Necessitates greater income for national treasury, thereby increasing
tariff and customs tax.
III. Method not adequate, because States will not exert same effort.
IV. Not function of national government to assist in such measures.
V. States receive benefit of roads, therefore should support and
maintain same.
VI. States are able to build roads.
VII. An invasion of States' rights.
VIII. Federal Government not able to look after roads over the
country.
IX. Benefits derived from Federal assistance not adequate to expense.
X. Federal aid will tend to increase practice of log-rolling in Congress.
MATERIAL FOR THE AFFIRMATIVE.
CONSTITUTIONALITY OF FEDERAL AID FOR GOOD
ROADS.
By Representative Stephens of Mississippi.
Extracts from Congressional Record, April 30, 1912.
The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to establish
post offices and post roads. Under this authority post-office
buildings have been erected at a cost of millions of dollars. Yet it
is argued that we have no right under the Constitution to extend
Federal aid in the construction of roads. The word "establish," when
referring to post-office buildings, is held to mean that such houses
can be erected, but when post offices are to be established it is contended
that it means that the Government shall designate over what
road the mail shall be carried, and that the Government has no right
to build roads.
I submit that, as the right to establish post offices and post roads
is given in the same sentence, that as the language makes no distinction
between the right in regard to offices and roads, this shows
clearly that it is not intended by the framers of the Constitution that
"establish" should be given one construction when referring to post
offices and a different and more restricted construction when referring
to post roads.
That Congress has the right to extend aid in the matter of constructing
and maintaining public highways is shown by decisions of
the Supreme Court of the United States, from which I quote:
Supreme Court Decision.
Without authority in Congress to establish and maintain such
highways and bridges, it would be without authority to regulate one
of the most important adjuncts of commerce. This power in former
times was exerted to a very limited extent, the Cumberland or National
Road being the most notable instance. Its extension was but
little called for, as commerce was then mostly conducted by water,
and many of our statesmen entertained doubts as to the existence of
in consequence of the expansion of the country, the multiplication of
its products, and the invention of railroads and locomotion by steam,
land transportation has so vastly increased, a sounder consideration
of the subject has prevailed and led to the conclusion that Congress
has plenary power over the whole subject. (California v. Pacific
Railroad Co., 127 U. S. 1, le. 39.)
Also:
Congress has likewise the power, exercised early in this century by
successive acts in the Cumberland or National Road, from the Potomac
across the Alleghanies to the Ohio, to authorize the construction
of a public highway connecting several States. (Lucton v. North
River Bridge Co., 153 U. S. 525-529; Indiana v. U. S., 148 U. S.
148.)
That the Federal Government has the right to extend aid in the
construction of roads was recognized by Jefferson when he said:
During peace we may chequer our whole country with canals, roads,
and so forth. This is the object to which all of our endeavors should
be directed.
Again, he said:
The fondest wish of my heart ever was that the surplus portion
of these taxes should be applied in time of peace to the improvement
of our country by canals, roads and useful institutions.
Henry Clay was always an advocate of internal improvements, and
was in his day the ablest and most persistent advocate of the building
of national roads. He said:
Of all the modes in which a Government can employ its surplus
revenue, none is more permanently beneficial than that of internal
improvements. Fixed to the soil, it becomes a durable part of the
land itself, diffusing comfort and activity and animation on all sides.
The first direct effect is on the agricultural community, into whose
pockets comes the difference in the expense for transportation between
good and bad ways.
Some have argued that this is a subject over which the States
have absolute control, and raise the question of State rights. One
of the greatest advocates of the State rights doctrine was John C.
Calhoun. He saw no encroachment upon the doctrine by Federal
aid to roads. While Secretary of War, in a report to the House on
the roads and canals, he said:
No object of the kind is more important, and there is none to
which State or individual capacity is more inadequate. It must be
perfected by the General Government or not be perfected at all, at
least for many years.
Precedents for Federal Aid.
Let it not be said that internal improvement may be wholly left
to the enterprise of the States and of individuals.
It is interesting to note that in the early days of our country's
history Congress did appropriate money for the purpose of building
roads. In 1806 Congress authorized the construction of a road
from Maryland, known as the Cumberland Road, and various appropriations
for it were made from time to time, aggregating about
$7,000,000. In 1811, 5 per cent of the sales of public land in Louisiana
were given by Congress to that State for the building of roads and
levees; in 1816 a like amount of a similar fund was given to Indiana
for roads and canals; and in 1817 a like sum was given to my own
State, Mississippi, for this purpose; in 1818, 2 per cent of a similar
in 1820, 5 per cent to Missouri; and in 1845, 5 per cent to Iowa.
Congress also appropriated money for a road from Georgia to New
Orleans, and one from Nashville, Tenn., to Natchez, Miss., as well
as many other public highways.
I think it has been thoroughly shown that Congress not only has
the power but has frequently exercised the power to contribute to
the construction of roads; however, this bill does not authorize the
construction of roads, but simply provides for the payment of a
fixed rental on all roads used by the Federal Government in carrying
the mail, if the road comes up to a certain fixed standard. It is
but right that the Government should pay for anything that it uses,
and in doing this it will encourage the people in the States to improve
their roads.
I realize, Mr. Chairman, that there has been so much written and
spoken upon the subject of good roads that there is little, if anything,
new to be said. If I needed any excuse for speaking on this
occasion it would be that it ofttimes requires a repeated statement
of facts to get it firmly fixed in our minds and to arouse us to the
necessity for action.
As I have said, a good deal of opposition to this measure comes
from Representatives of city districts. It is a mistaken idea that no
one but the farmer gets the benefit of good roads. Every citizen of
this Republic will derive direct benefit from the improvement of the
roads of the country, because the products of the farm must be
conveyed over country roads to market, and the consumer must bear
a part of the burden that is laid upon the producer because of bad
roads. Even the railroads are interested in good wagon roads, because
of the fact that in many sections of the country, owing to bad
conditions of the roads, the farmer is forced to convey his products to
the market at such time as he may be able to find the roads suitable
for travel, thereby placing most of the agricultural products for
transportation within a limited time. The farmer is also interested
for the same reason; that is, that he is forced to sell his products
within the same limited time.
We have heard much comment upon the fact that people are leaving
the farm and congregating in the towns and cities. One cause
of this has been the bad condition of the roads. In my judgment,
there is nothing that will tend more to the upbuilding of the country,
making farm life more attractive, than the improvement of the
road. There is no phase of life, either social or economic, which is
not affected by good roads. The value of lands, the attendance of
children at school, the social relations of the community are all affected
by roads. Good roads-make social intercourse and communication
between farm and town less difficult, thus destroying the isolation
of farm life, especially in the winter season. They increase
the productive area by making lands that have not been cultivated
more accessible. They increase values of property, reduce the cost
of transportation, cause greater interest to be taken in farming,
thereby increasing the general prosperity of the country.
Some Results of Good Roads.
Improved roads are breeders of traffic. It is generally found that
new industries, new and greater production, spring up upon the line
of well-built roads, which increase commerce and enlarge business.
On the other hand, bad roads keep a community from developing
and cause material loss in many ways. There are no statistics which
show the loss to the farmer due merely to the greater cost of transportation
is estimated that it amounts to many millions of dollars each year.
As I have said, every citizen is directly interested in improving the
roads of the country; that the farmer is not the only one benefited,
but if he were I should vote to improve the roads of the country,
because he is the first and most powerful producer of wealth and
he has a right to insist that a portion of the money that he pays
to the Government shall be returned to him by way of benefits from
the Government.
I care nothing for the suggestion made that a few great highways
be built from one end of the country to the other, because I believe
that that will be very largely for the benefit of those who desire to
take pleasure trips in automobiles, and that those who are entitled
to the benefits of good roads, or a very few of them at least, would
receive no benefit whatever. Rather do I prefer to expend money
in order to bring the farmer in closer touch with the towns and
the town man in closer touch with the farmer to the mutual benefit
of each.
PUBLIC ROADS IN RELATION TO HUMAN WELFARE.
By Logan Waller Page
Extract.
The advantages of improved roads have been carefully computed
and estimated in dollars and cents, and so enormous have they been
thus demonstrated to be, that they present a convincing argument
of the necessity for road improvement. But there are other elements
of advantage which more urgently recommend the improvement
of our roads, advantages which deserve far more serious consideration
than any financial advantage which may accrue, and which
can not be measured according to any monetary standard, but must
be looked for in the elevation of our citizenship and the moral and
intellectual advancement of our people.
Most of our cities and towns have good streets and driveways,
which facilitate business and recreation and bring the schools and
churches within easy reach of all. Contrast the lot of the country
child on his way to school in the winter with that of his city cousin
with only a few blocks of paved street to walk. The country child
must leave home an hour or more before school opens, in order to
be there on time. The roads are wet and muddy almost all of the long and
cold winter months; in many places the country is open and the
cold winds are merciless in their attacks upon him, so that, by the
time he reaches the schoolhouse, which is oftener improperly ventilated
and poorly heated, his feet are cold and wet and his body so
chilled that he is unfit for study or recreation most of the day. This
produces a lowered condition of resistance to the attacks of pneumonia
and other disease germs, causes broken and irregular attendance,
and creates an aversion for school. Parents sometimes keep their
children at home rather than have them subjected to such conditions,
on the theory that the injurious effects upon the body from such exposure
will be greater than the beneficial effects upon the mind.
In many parts of the country the roads are impassible for pedestrians
at certain seasons of the year, which makes it necessary for
children living near railroads to walk to school over the tracks and
trestles. Many accidents occur every year in various parts of the
killed in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania while making their way
to school over railroad tracks.
Revolutionize School System.
That improved roads would revolutionize our country school system,
there would seem to be no doubt. Improved roads make it
possible to consolidate or centralize the schools and to establish
graded schools in the rural districts. Such schools centrally located
will accommodate all of the children within a radius of from four
to five miles. In many communities having the advantage of improved
roads, commodious buildings have been provided, more competent
teachers have been employed, and modern facilities for teaching
have been supplied at a minimum cost. For instance, since the
improvement of the main highways in Durham County, North Carolina,
the number of country schoolhouses has been reduced from
65 to 42, of which 17 are graded and have two or more rooms, and
employ two or more teachers.
Facilitate Rural Free Delivery.
The schools and churches of a community are its greatest moral
and educational forces. Next to them, perhaps, stands Rural Mail
Delivery, which brings the people of the rural districts in daily
touch with the cities and business world. It places in their hands
the daily papers, magazines, and all of the current literature of the
country, so that they may be as well informed as to what is transpiring
in the political, literary, and commercial world as their brothers
of the cities. The beneficial effects of this service upon the
happiness and home comforts of our rural population is immeasurable,
and nothing contributes to its efficiency and regularity more than
improved roads.
Improves Health Conditions.
The public road bears a direct relation to the public health. Although
this is sufficiently obvious to those who have given attention
to the matter, it is nevertheless a subject that has been overlooked
by the general public. Figures and statistics do not apply to the
discussion of this phase of the question, but experience and observation
will justify the statement that many an infant has been sacrificed
at birth, owing to the difficulty experienced by the doctor in
reaching the farm at the proper time. Every country doctor is an ardent
advocate of road improvement, since he knows better than anyone
else the direct bearing that the condition of the roads has upon
his ability to get about and provide the aid and succor which it is his
business to supply. The impossibility of rendering first aid to the
injured, whether child or adult, over bad roads, is undoubtedly responsible
for many deaths and deformities.
The danger of spreading disease by means of dust and poor drainage,
particularly in relation to tuberculosis and typhoid fever, emphasizes
the fact that the condition of the public highways is a subject
that can not be overlooked in any earnest inquiry into the compelling
reasons for systematic road improvement. It has been said
that the public road is the main dust factory of a nation, and the
thoughtful man can not deny the truth of the statement.
ERA OF GOOD ROADS.
By Congressman Saunders of Virginia.
Extracts from Congressional Record, April 30, 1912.
Mr. Chairman, the era of national aid to State roads has arrived,
and whatever form the opposition to that policy may take, whether
the form of constitutional quibbles, or form of freak or humorous
amendments, such as propositions to pay for the use of the sidewalks
in the cities, or the form of amendment ostensibly in aid of the bill,
but really an embarrassment to the true friends of the measure, who
have labored in season, and out of season to put this principle into
working shape, these efforts one and all will be found as futile to stop
the progress of this movement, as Mother Partington's mop proved
to be as a weapon of defense in her famous contest with the encroaching
waves of the Atlantic Ocean. This bill rests upon constitutional
authority, and its operation will interfere with no single
one of those State functions whose beauties and merits have been
so eloquently acclaimed by some of the participants in this debate.
The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Madden] spoke of the delight
with which he paid his local taxes in aid of good roads. It is not
proposed to interfere with the exquisite pleasure of that experience,
or to take anything from its felicitous charm. Under this bill he
may not only continue to pay local taxes with all the pleasurable emotions
attendant on that operation, but when so minded he may increase
the joy of that process by increasing his contributions to the
roads of his community. There is not a friend of this measure who
will seek to hinder him from pursuing this charming, this patriotic
course of aiding local enterprise, in the rôle of a cheerful giver.
The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. McCall] spoke of this
measure as interfering in some wise, not very clearly depicted, with the
functions of the States, and as tending toward centralization. I do
not recall that New England was affected with this form of apprehension
when we passed the law for the White Mountain Reserve,
a proposition for an expenditure of public money which rests upon
a far more narrow base, and is far more tenuously connected with
the Constitution, than the proposition to aid the construction and
maintenance of post roads in the States by means of a national appropriation.
Many gentlemen who have criticized the pending proposition,
have very clearly shown by the nature and character of
their criticism, that they are absolutely unacquainted with the terms,
the purport, and the purpose of this measure.
The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Slayden] in the course of
his remarks, referred with just pride to the liberal attitude of his
people toward the cause of good roads, and the extent of the local
contributions in aid of that cause. We are mindful of the fact that
many States in this Union have done splendid work in this direction.
The thrill of this movement for betterment of roads is being felt
in every State, and I rejoice that it is so. But may I ask my friend
from Texas, and the other gentlemen from other States who have
assailed this measure how, and wherein, will a supplemental fund derived
from the National Treasury by direct appropriation, paralyze
local effort, or hinder the work of local development?
In many of the States, notably in my own, the roads are established
and maintained by local taxation, with a supplemental State fund
that is afforded upon prescribed conditions. Just a moment ago I
was talking with a Member from New Jersey, and he mentioned
the fact that in his State, as in Virginia, the country and local contributions
that instance did State aid paralyze the arm of the community? Did
State aid cause a recession of local activities? On the contrary, as
a direct and immediate result of that coöperation of effort, the State
of New Jersey affords a most splendid illustration of what can be
done by united effort in the way of securing good roads of the highest
type. When county aid is supplemented with State aid, and
State aid is supplemented with national aid, pray tell me why this
aggregate aid may not be efficiently employed, or why national aid
would operate to paralyze local endeavor, when State aid has merely
served to energize it? In the great fight now in progress in the
Mississippi Valley between the States and the Father of Waters, do
the States disdain the help of the Nation on the ground of its paralyzing
effect on local activities?
There is no great nation of the modern world which has not aided
the local communities in respect of both construction and maintenance
of highways, and the nations pursuing this policy are noted
for the excellence of their roads. In this regard the Republic of
France is the wonder of the civilized nations. But to achieve her
present state of supremacy in the matter of improved highways
France, as a nation, has spent over 3,000,000,000 francs upon her
roads. This fact explains in large measure the present prosperity
of that country. A few days ago the French Government called on
its people for bids on a bond issue of $60,000,000. In the briefest
possible time bids aggregating over $400,000,000 were received. Comment
is unnecessary. Today France, which has done so magnificently
in the direction of national aid to roads, has in contemplation
a scheme of canalization of her rivers. This is but another form
of domestic improvement, in aid of internal commerce, and like her
roads, these canals will further increase the facilities and wealth of
that wise and thrifty people.
Why should this great Nation, a Nation that in other respects
stands in the very forefront of the nations, hesitate to pursue a course
that has been pursued in other countries with such splendid results?
Is our authority to enact this measure questioned? Consider for a
moment the authority of the Federal Government over rivers and
harbors. This Nation exercises at present the right to regulate the
height of bridges over navigable streams, to determine whether these
bridges shall be built or not, to provide that bridges if built, may be
built by private corporations, with the right to charge tolls, to provide
for the taking of private property to afford approaches to the
bridges, to provide that feeders leading into channels of interstate
commerce may be constructed, and to that end that the land of private
parties may be condemned.
Community Benefits.
Communities that have built good roads, will find their reward in
this bill. Communities that desire to build good roads, will be encouraged
to go forward. Every community will be stimulated to construct
more good roads, and to transform existing dirt roads into
improved highways, in order to receive the larger compensation attaching
to permanent roads falling in the two first classes. The
critics of this measure seem to fancy that the roads of the States
are to be exclusively constructed, or maintained by the appropriation
which it carries. Nothing of the sort. It is merely a supplement to
local efforts. A permanent road on which the State spends $25 per
mile, per annum, for maintenance, may not be very adequately maintained
by that expenditure. But the expenditure of $50 per annum,
of this bill to afford the additional $25.
The cost of maintenance for a well-constructed dirt road, depends
upon a number of factors, and is a fluctuating quantity. Many of these
roads can be well maintained during a large portion of the year, on
an expenditure of $10 per annum, per mile, and admirably maintained
on an expenditure of $25 per annum, per mile. This bill will afford
$15 per mile, and the local authorities will be required to provide the
additional amount needed to maintain the road to the prescribed
standard.
The State of New York will be entitled to something like $1,000,000
per year when its roads are conformed to the requirements of this
measure. Will the gentlemen from that State who either directly,
or indirectly, are opposing this plan of national aid to State roads,
undertake to tell this House that this large sum will be rejected,
or that if received as a supplement to State contributions, it will
not give impetus to the State and local activities in the great cause
of road improvement?
The State of Texas is interested in this measure to the extent
of about $800,000 per annum. That great State boasts of what it
has done in the way of road building, and it is conceded that its
record in this respect is altogether creditable. Will the Representatives
from Texas tell this House that the sum of $800,000 as an addition
to their State and local contributions, is a negligible item, or
that once in hand this considerable sum, will not energize and stimulate
the whole scheme of road building in that State? If road building
is a State function, a material increase of road funds will induce
a more efficient discharge of that function. Throughout the Union, in
every State, and in every community, the stimulating effect of the
compensation contemplated by this bill will be noticeably felt. The
sentiment of the country favors permanent roads, and the general
tendency is toward their construction, but for the present many communities
are unable to build them. During the transition era, and
until the existing roads are replaced by the ultimate form of permanent
roads, the dirt roads should be maintained in the form most
suitable for efficient use. Hence the provision of the bill in aid of
dirt roads.
NOT CLASS LEGISLATION.
By Congressman Bowman.
Extract from Congressional Record, April 30, 1912.
Mr. Chairman, the district which I represent contains not only
large and important cities, but also an important farming community,
and they are both equally interested in the construction and maintenance
of good roads. The majority of the people of Pennsylvania
are interested in the construction of good roads. In my judgment
there is no other thing which will so advance civilization as that
which promotes the interchange of intelligence and commodities between
the different parts of a country and the different peoples who
reside in that country. It is a difficult matter to excite sufficient
interest to construct a road. It is still more difficult to secure the
continued interest which will keep that road in repair. I consider
this measure as most admirably framed to produce that result. The
amount which is proposed to be given as rental for the use of the
different classes of roads would not amount to the interest on the
the class named in the measure, but it will be an inducement to keep
those roads in good repair. It has been stated that it would require
$16,000,000 the first year in order to meet the provisions of this
measure. If it did take $16,000,000, that would mean that there were
about 800,000 miles of road kept in good condition throughout the
United States. At present in this country there are less than 200,000
miles of improved roads, and if by an expenditure of $16,000,000
you could have 800,000 miles of road that were passable at all times
of the year for vehicles of all classes, that were graded in conformity
to the topography of the country and "with ample side ditches, so
constructed and crowned as to shed water quickly into the side
ditches, continuously kept well compacted and with a firm, smooth
surface," it would reduce the expenses of transportation from the
present high figures to what it now costs in France, namely, 7 cents
per ton per mile. This measure would permit the farmer, the fruit
or the truck raiser to get his produce to the market at a much less
rate, and thereby it would be a benefit not only to him but to each
person using his products in different parts of the country. It would
permit the merchant in the city to carry or send anything he had
of value to the farmer at a much less cost, and the result would be
an economy to each individual as well as to the Government, as the
mails that were transported over the roads would be carried at a
much less actual cost, which would result in a diminution of the cost
per mile to the Government from what it is now paying for this
service.
Something has been said about the cost of inspection. Each man
in charge of a rural delivery route would be a constant inspector of
the road he covers, and the man who is sent out as a general inspector
could, with a small expenditure of time in addition to that
he now occupies, discover the condition of the roads. I consider the
measure of great importance to this country, and will do as much,
if not more, to advance civilization than any other measure that I
have seen introduced in this Chamber.
GOOD ROADS VERSUS BAD ROADS.
By Senator Swanson of Virginia.
Extracts from Congressional Records, July, 1911.
Mr. President: There is no question before the American people
today more important than the improvement of the public roads and
highways. The progress of this Nation in nearly all directions has
been phenomenal. We have established our preeminence in most
things. We have become the greatest manufacturing people in the
world, the products of our factories exceeding those of Britain and
Continental Europe combined. Our mines furnish the world more
than one-half of its mineral products and wealth. Our plains and
prairies are recognized as the granaries of the world. Cotton continues
the king of plants, and the world's comfort and clothing are
dependent upon the white fields of the South. We occupy today the
foremost place in the world's commerce, our exports now exceeding
those of Great Britain. Our wealth today is greater than that
of any other nation. Recently we have become supreme in finance,
our banking capital being the greatest possessed by any people. The
world's financial heart now throbs in New York, and its pulsation
affects the world. We now surpass all other nations in the amount
of colleges and splendid universities. In miles of railroad, navigable
rivers, and improved harbors we are unsurpassed. Our progress
in these directions has been so wonderful that its story reads
more like romance than history.
Yet, Mr. President, as amazing as are these varied achievements,
it is admitted that today we have the poorest public roads and highways
of any civilized nation. Of the 2,155,000 miles of public roads
within the United States, less than 200,000 miles are macadamized
or improved with hard surfacing. Thus, more than nine-tenths of
the public roads and highways of the United States during rainy
seasons are almost impassable. No other enlightened people in the
world are cursed with such a wretched condition. Our energies and
our money have been generously expended in every other direction,
except in the betterment of our public roads.
After careful examination and thoughtful consideration I am satisfied
that our neglect in this respect has been one of the greatest
misfortunes that has affected us as a people and should be remedied
as quickly as possible. No one can over-estimate the annual loss
incurred by our people in traveling and hauling over these wretched
public roads. Our internal commerce exceeds the interforeign commerce
of the entire world. It is estimated that 90 per cent of our internal
commerce must first or last be hauled over the public roads.
The average haul of this vast commerce over the public highways,
after careful investigation, has been estimated to be on an average
of a little more than 9.4 miles. The same careful investigation fixes
the average cost of hauling these products at 23 cents per ton per
mile. The cost of hauling per mile over the splendid roads of France
is on an average of about 7 cents per ton per mile. The average cost
in England and Germany is about 11 cents per ton per mile. If the
more important and main lines of our public-road system were improved
as are those of France, Britain, and Germany, it is estimated
by good authorities that our products could then be hauled over our
entire system of roads at a cost of 12 or 13 cents per ton per mile.
This would result in an annual saving in this item of hauling alone to
the people of the United States of more than $250,000,000. This is
the annual "mud tax" paid each year by the people of the United
States in hauling their products over poor roads. This loss, if wisely
and properly expended, would in 20 years macadam or furnish hard
surfacing to all the public roads within the United States. But this
does not include all the loss occasioned this country by its bad country
roads. The poor condition of the roads makes it unprofitable to
market much of the products of the farm. If the cost of transportation
and the cost of production exceed the selling price, it makes
it impossible for the producer to dispose of his products at a profit;
hence production is arrested. In many sections farmers fail to raise
certain crops because the cost of hauling them over miserable country
roads is so great that they sustain loss instead of profit. The national
loss from this source amounts annually to many million dollars. Our
bad roads, making it impossible in many sections to market certain
products of the farm, have prevented a great diversification of crops
which exists in France, England, and Germany, with their splendid
road system. We can not overestimate the loss and injury to agriculture
resulting from this source.
Bad Roads Cause People to Leave Country.
Another great detriment that has come to this Nation from its
wretched country roads is that it has forced the people to leave the
disclosed by the census returns. In 1790 only 3.4 per cent of our
population dwelt in our cities; in 1850, 12.5; in 1900 the percentage
was 40; in 1910 it was 46. This explains why so many acres of
fertile land still remain untilled, while the city, with its unsanitary
and unwholesome tenements, is crowded with human beings whose
standards of living and methods of life result in their mental, moral,
and physical decay. Statistics gathered by the Office of Public Roads
and compared with the reports of the United States census reveal
that in 25 counties, selected at random, possessing only 5.1 per cent
of improved roads in 1904, the decrease of population averaged 3,112
for each county for the 10 years between 1890 and 1900. The records
of this department further show that in 25 counties similarly selected,
which possessed an average of 40 per cent of improved roads,
there was an increase averaging 31,095 to the county. These significant
facts show more eloquently than language the great benefits accruing
from improved roads. Statistics gathered from the same
source show how education and school attendance are affected by
improved roads. These statistics show that in five States in which
about 34 per cent of the roads are improved 77 out of each 100 pupils
enrolled regularly attend the public schools. That in other five States
in which the improved roads only amount to 1.5 per cent only 59 out
of each 100 pupils enrolled regularly attend the public schools. These
figures prove more forcibly than language the advantages accruing
to education from good improved public highways.
Each census discloses that our urban population is very rapidly
increasing at the expense of our rural sections. This is not desirable.
It means an immense national loss, not only financially, but morally,
intellectually, and physically. The pleasures and profits of country
life are largely dependent upon the condition of the public roads.
Social intercourse and pleasure are only possible in those sections
where comfortable traveling is possible over the roads.
Good school facilities and good public roads go hand in hand.
They are companions which can not be separated. Carefully gathered
statistics disclose that efficient country schools and the attendance
of scholars are invariably dependent upon the condition of the
public roads.
The country has been the great nursery which has furnished the
men of genius and patriotism who have builded this mighty Nation.
We should do what we can to encourage our population to remain
there, and develop our wonderful soil and agricultural resources.
Then, the agricultural people of this Nation are the mighty sources
of patriotism and courage who will preserve this Nation in the coming
hours of storm and stress.
Bad Roads Hinder Development of Waste Land.
Another great loss sustained by this Nation on account of its
wretched public highways is that it has left undeveloped and uncultivated
more than 400,000,000 acres of available and desirable land in
the United States. If our roads were properly improved this land
would be at once occupied by thrifty and prosperous farmers, thus
adding greatly to the national wealth and power. Farm lands would
greatly increase in value from improved public roads, and the country
population would rapidly increase, greatly to the betterment of
the Nation, both morally and materially.
Some economists have estimated that the annual loss to this Nation
on account of wretched country roads exceeds more than
$400,000,000 annually. I do not believe this is an exaggeration.
There are 850,000,000 acres of improved and unimproved farm land
in the United States. It is estimated by the Agricultural Department
that good roads would increase the value of this land from $2 to $9
per acre. This great increase of value would more than pay for the
cost of improvement.
I feel justified in saying that one of the paramount questions before
the American people to-day is the improvement of our public-road
system. The farmer, in the future, in order to increase his
profits, must reduce the cost of transportation. As the farming lands
of Canada, South America, and Africa are opened and developed, the
farmers of this country will have greater competition. To meet this
competition, they will have to reduce either the cost of production
or the cost of transportation. I hope this Congress will not adjourn
without reducing greatly the cost of production. The cost of production
in this country is greatly enhanced by the excessive tariff
duties imposed upon everything purchased, on account of the Payne-Aldrich
bill.
The Democrats of the House of Representatives have sought to
bring the farmer relief from these excessive exactions by passing a
bill known as the farmers' free-list bill, which, if enacted into law,
will greatly reduce to him the cost of living and the cost of production.
I hope the Senate will promptly concur in the passage of this
bill, and this deserved relief will come to the great agricultural masses.
The cost of transportation to the farmer is composed, first, of hauling
over the public roads, and then over the railroad or steamboat
lines to the markets. Within the last 70 years the cost of transportation
over the railroads and waterways has greatly decreased, while
the cost of transportation over the country roads has been increased.
In 1837 railroad rates were 7⅓ cents per ton per mile. Now it is
estimated that the average cost of hauling by rail is 7.8 mills per
ton per mile, or about one-ninth of the original rate. Seventy years
ago the charge for hauling on the old Cumberland Pike was 17 cents
per ton per mile. This charge permitted a profit. It is now estimated
that the cost to the farmers, without profit, is 23 cents per ton
per mile. Thus, while transportation over railroads has decreased
to about one-ninth of what it was about 67 years ago, transportation
over the public roads has increased about 35 per cent. Water transportation
has so decreased that it now costs the farmer 1.6 cents
more to haul a bushel of wheat 9.4 miles from his barn to the depot
than it does to haul it from New York to Liverpool, a distance of
3,100 miles. This fact strikingly illustrates the importance of road
betterment not only to the farmer, but also to the rest of the country,
who are users and consumers of farm products. The greatest saving
to accrue in the future to farmers from reduced transportation will
come not so much from reduced railroad transportation as from reduced
cost of transportation over the public roads, resulting from
their improvement.
Who Uses Roads.
The travel over our roads now is national, State, and local. The
travel being national, State, and local, the cost of constructing and
maintaining roads should be national, State, and local. It is not just
to expect local communities to construct and maintain roads over
which the travel of State and Nation far exceeds the local. It is utterly
impossible for local communities to bear the expense of constructing
macadam or hard-surface roads. To do so would require
such a heavy tax as to practically bankrupt the communities. A system
The only way that this can be accomplished is by the appropriation
of money out of the State and National Treasuries.
The cities are as much interested and are as much benefited by
good country roads as are the people in the rural sections. Good
roads enable the people of the country to easily come to market not
only with their produce, but also to make purchases. The trade and
commerce of cities are greatly enhanced by being surrounded by
splendid roads. In addition, it adds to the comfort and pleasure of
those living in the cities. Thus, good roads enhance the value of
property alike in city and country. Many of the cities, when permitted
to do so by their charters, have united with country communities
in appropriating money for the construction and maintenance
of public roads. The charters of many of the cities prohibit them
from making such appropriations. The best and the fairest way to
enable the cities to aid rural sections in the construction and maintenance
of good roads is by appropriating a fair share of money for
this purpose out of the State and National Treasuries. By this means
the cities and rich communities are enabled to share with the country
sections their fair burden of road construction and improvement.
Since both city and country receive benefits from good roads,
each should share its part of the burden. I believe this is willingly
conceded alike by the citizens of the city and country.
Mr. President, in addition to the reasons previously presented
as to why the National Government should extend its aid for the
improvement of public highways of our country there are other considerations
of justice and fair dealing which demand this. The United
States Government now uses more than 1,000,000 miles of the public
roads of this country in carrying its mails over them, either through
its star-route contractors or its rural-delivery carriers. It uses daily
this vast mileage of roads without giving to the States or communities
a cent of compensation. Last year this Government paid to the
railroads of this Nation $50,142,200 for using their tracks to carry its
mails over their roads.
The counties and States contribute their money for the construction
and maintenance of these country roads as much as do the
stockholders of the railroads for the construction and maintenance
of their railway tracks. If it is just and fair that the Government
should pay this vast sum of money for utilizing the tracks of the
railroads, it is equally as just and fair that the Government should
contribute a fair compensation to the States and communities for
using their roads for the conveyance of the Government's mails. An
argument for the one is equally as conclusive as for the other.
Hence, I insist that as the carrying of mail is a Government function,
and entirely monopolized by the Government, that the Government
should make just and fair compensation to the States and communities
for the use of their roads. The time has come when the
States and local communities should insist upon this.
Good Roads Is a Saving to the Government.
Another consideration which strongly presents itself to my mind
as to why the Government should extend national aid to road improvement
is that it would result in the saving of a great deal of
money to the Government. The Government now expends $42,000,000
annually for rural delivery. The average route of a rural-delivery
carrier is about 24 miles. The carrier is unable to make a greater
distance than this on account of the bad condition of the public roads.
If these roads were properly improved, a carrier could easily and
if the roads of the country were properly improved that in the
reduced expenses incurred in its star-route service, in its present Rural
Delivery Service, and in the extensions which will certainly come in
the future, the Government would save $8,000,000 or $9,000,000 annually.
Patriotism and wisdom alike demand that the Government
should make this great saving and at the same time add materially
in the advancement and prosperity of our country by generously aiding
road improvement.
Mr. President, I am unable to see any strong reasons why the
Federal Government should further hesitate in the extension of a
proper and liberal appropriation for the construction and improvement
of public highways. To contend that it has no constitutional power
to do so is absurd. No one has ever disputed that the Government
has not power to establish, maintain, and repair post roads. It has
established through its star-route and Rural Delivery Service more
than 1,000,000 miles of post roads, which it daily uses; hence it not
only has the power under the Constitution, but aso has imposed
upon it the imperative duty to bear its fair share of the burden of
improving these roads and keeping them in proper repair.
Webster, Clay, Jefferson, and even Calhoun, who was very strict
in his construction of the Constitution, all advocated national aid for
the construction of public highways.
Prior to the Civil War the Federal Government had appropriated
$14,000,000 to aid in the construction of public highways.
The 1,000,000 miles of public roads now made post roads by the
uses of the Federal Government are the main roads traveled and the
ones most needing betterment; hence no objection on constitutional
grounds can be found for the Government undertaking to bear its
fair share of the burden of improving the roads that it daily uses.
Besides, this Government has spent large sums of money in the
betterment of the public roads of Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands,
and also Alaska. If it has the authority to expend the public
money there for these purposes, it has equal authority to expend the
public money for these purposes in this country.
I believe that the American people have greater demands upon the
Public Treasury, filled with their contributions, than have the people
of Porto Rico, the Phillippine Islands, and Alaska.
MATERIAL ON THE NEGATIVE.
FEDERAL APPROPRIATION—UNNECESSARY STRAIN ON
NATIONAL TREASURY.
By Congressman Ayres of New York.
Extracts from Congressional Record, April 29, 1912.
Mr. Chairman, pretty nearly every class of citizens in the United
States seem to want to dip their hands in the Federal Treasury and
pull them out with an appropriation sticking to them. One session
it is the shipowners who want subsidies for sailing their ships and
carrying their freight, and then next session it is little towns of two
or three hundred population who want $75,000 post-office buildings.
If it is not one thing, it is another. Anybody who finds it hard to
can not accomplish any particular work he has in hand wants to
turn it over to Uncle Sam to do for him. Last week I had a letter
from a valued constituent, who said that it was no longer profitable
to breed good horses in the State of New York now that betting on
races was illegal, and if I wanted to immortalize my name I should at
once introduce a bill to have the Federal Government breed horses
on a large scale, so that horse lovers in the different States could
have them cheap. Yesterday a telegram came from an enthusiast
who thought that Uncle Sam should send enough revenue cutters
or Dreadnoughts towards the Arctic regions to personally convoy
each iceberg that got loose till it melted into the Gulf Stream, firing
off blank cartridges during the night to warn off all ships in danger.
In every part of this land of the free there are men or classes of
men who do not want to do some kind of work they think ought to
be done and so they want Uncle Sam to do it.
In many parts of our glorious country at the present time there are men
or communities who have not good roads and who know they ought
to have them, but they do not want to spend the money, and so—
let Uncle Sam do it. And these communities get after their Congressmen
and say, "We ought to have these roads, and if you are
any good as Congressmen you will get them for us." And so the
poor Congressmen, who know better all the time, come here and
introduce bills and argue gravely that, having given the rural communities
free postal carriers, it is now our duty to provide the roads
for the carriers to travel on, or to keep them up. I tell you, gentlemen,
it is not "conscience that doth make cowards of us all," but
our constituents.
Fifteen years ago, when the Rural Free Delivery Service was proposed,
it was talked of as a boon to the rural population, as a gift
which would cost the rest of the country many millions. No one
ever supposed the time would come when the country would be
asked to pay for the privilege of making this annual gift.
What are the facts? For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, the
Rural Delivery Service cost a little more than $37,000,000 and the
total postal revenue that originated on these routes was just over
$14,000,000. And now, what does this bill propose? That for the
first year the United States shall pay for the privilege of using the
roads the carriers travel on—$25 a mile for one class of macadam
roads, $20 a mile for another class of roads, and $15 a mile for another
and poorer class. It was estimated by one of the gentlemen in
favor of the bill that the cost the first year would be $16,000,000.
Now, the cost of constructing good macadam road varies from $3,000
to $15,000 per mile, according to the character of the soil, the grades,
and the thickness and width of stone surface. It might be safe to
say that the average cost is $5,000 per mile. The interest on an
investment of that much is $300 per year, and it costs at least that
amount to keep a macadam road in repair.
That is the cost in the State of New York.
How many communities will be led to expend $5,000 a mile in
order to secure a vearly rental of $25 a mile? We all know how
these things go. If this bill should by any unfortunate chance become
a law, the next year the gentlemen who now favor this bill
would come in with an amendment asking $50 a mile on macadam
roads and argue gravely that even that would not be Uncle Sam's
rightful share to pay. And the next year they would come in with
another amendment asking that 50 per cent of the upkeep of these
roads be given them by Congress. And then after this had been in
would show that long usage proved that it was the duty of Congress
to keep up these roads and that if any accident happened to a traveler
on account of their imperfect condition he should have a right
for damages. If this bill shall pass, in 15 years the Federal Government
will be paying a hundred million dollars a year on account
of it.
Advocates of this bill have argued that inasmuch as the Post Office
Department paid for the use of the railroads that it should therefore
pay for the use of rural post roads. But the department does
not pay for the use of the railroad right of way or the use of the
rails. It pays the railroads for a service performed, for transporting
the mails over the rails and right of way. And it now pays the
rural carriers for a similar service, the transporting the mails over
the rural roads. If the railroads came here with a bill like this and
asked $15 per mile for any kind of rusty old track, and $20 per mile
for fairly good standard-gauge track, and $25 a mile for first-class
two-track road, and argued that if we paid them these bonuses it
would be an incentive to them to improve their tracks, what gentlemen
in this House would be the first to howl? If the department
is to pay for keeping rural roads in shape, over which it is already
paying to have the mails transported, just as it pays the railroads,
why could not the superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railway come
in here with equal justice and say, "We are thinking of putting in
new ties and ballast between Philadelphia and Baltimore, and if you
give us $25 a mile we will do it."
We are all in favor of good roads. There is no more important
subject before the American people to-day. But let us go at the
problem in an honest and square fashion. Let each State that desires
good roads build them for itself. That is good Democratic
policy. We are awake to this matter in the State of New York, and
we who live in that great State have just enough pride in our State
to want to build our own roads. We do not ask your aid in our road
building, and we do not want to pay for doing in any other State
what it ought to do for itself.
FUNCTION OF COUNTY AND STATE.
By Congressman Slayden of Texas.
Congressional Record, April 29, 1912.
M. Chairman, if the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Langley]
was right, I am now proceeding to align myself with the minority
of this House, but conscious of the rectitude of my position, entirely
confident that it is not only rational, but soundly Democratic and
soundly patriotic, I cheerfully take the hazard of such a position.
Mr. Chairman, I do not believe that there is a Member of this
House who has a higher appreciation of the advantages of good
roads than I have. Now and then for years I have shared humbly in
the effort to arouse the people to a better understanding of the economic
and social importance of good highways. I have worked and
in a small way I have spent my own means in an effort to promote
the good-roads movement. My interest in it can not be questioned.
I want to see the roads improved just as fast as the people who
must pay for them can afford the expense of their construction.
I also want to see the best roads that can be built running through
every neighborhood in each of the 48 States. This much it is proper
to say, because an effort has been made—and, no doubt, will be made
again—to create the impression that those who do not sympathize
with this bill are against improved highways.
If the subdivisions of the Federal Government—the States and
the counties—have any proper function whatever, it would seem to
be the construction and maintenance of roads. If there is any reason
for the existence of States and counties, certainly the maintenance
of the means of transportation between counties and neighborhoods
is an obligation, a responsibility, and one that should not
be shunted off on the Federal Government.
This is a proposition to have the Federal Government assume
those obligations.
Supporters of the measure seem to think that the Government of
the United States is an association of individuals altogether different
and apart from those who reside in their congressional districts.
They seem to be under the impression that contributions from
the Federal Treasury are not paid by the people themselves, but
are drawn from some mysterious outside source or deposit. At
least that is the impression that is sought to be made, that must be
made if gentlemen are to reap the political advantage from this ill-considered
measure that they have maneuvered for. I can not so
understand it. I can not, to save me, separate the citizen who is a
taxpayer in the counties and States from the citizen who pays taxes
to the Federal Government. The vast expense of all our governments—National,
State, and local—must be borne by the citizen.
The question that should most concern him is an economical and
wise administration of his public contributions. Whether it filters
through the hands of Federal or State or local agents, he must pay,
and what he ought to do is to see to it that his tax money goes
to its allotted work with the least possible expense. Now, I believe
that whatever is done through Federal agents is apt to be
more expensively done than if handled by a local agent. I believe
that when the public treasure is collected through a system of indirect
taxation more is taken from the people than is absolutely
necessary, and that is spent with less regard for their interests. That
is one of the evils of the indirect or customs-tax system. People seem
to think more of the dollars that they pay directly into the hands
of the tax-gatherers than of the dollars that they pay by a concealed
additional charge on the tobacco they use or the clothes they wear.
Increases Tariff and Customs Taxes.
Pass this bill and customs taxes can never be reduced. All pretense
of economy will be abandoned when a majority of this House
says by its vote that they mean to commit the General Government
to the policy of building highways, conducting a freight express
business, and, ultimately, the ownership and operation of railways.
It makes one skeptical as to the sincerity of those gentlemen who
say they want a simpler and cheaper Government, but invariably
vote for extravagances that compel higher and higher taxes.
I also oppose this measure because it is not needed to secure good
roads. Where the people have the intelligence to understand their
advantages and the energy to do something for themselves they are
getting them.
Vast sums are now being spent for highway development. There
is an enthusiastic and general movement in that direction which is
most encouraging to every advocate of the policy of better highways.
and proud to beg the Federal Government to do what she
can do better for herself, and ought to do for herself, has, I understand,
just finished the expenditure of $50,000,000 on her public
roads and is about to undertake the further investment of fifty millions
more in the extension of her highway system. Pennsylvania
and other States have spent or are now spending proportionately
large sums. It is, I am afraid, those States that are laggards in the
discharge of their plain duty that are behind this measure. They
seem to prefer mendicancy to independence.
I further oppose this bill because, in my opinion, it means increasing
appropriations in the future by you, or by more complacent
Members who will follow you here, and, finally, Federal jurisdiction
over State roads. The tendency to concentrate power in the Federal
Government is now almost resistless. Certainly we can not expect
that the Federal power will not follow large Federal appropriations.
Jefferson, who sought to magnify the importance of the States and
to preserve local self-government, had the best of Hamilton in theory,
but in practice, when associated with the temptation of large appropriations,
it begins to appear that the latter will win. We are bartering
away the dignity of the States and exchanging a great constitutional
birthright for a Federal mess of pottage.
To me it appears perfectly plain that the States can not retain
dignity and importance while they avoid all the responsibility of
that position.
Method Not Adequate to Promote Good Roads.
I also object to this bill because, although it will cost an enormous
amount, it is wholly inadequate for the purposes for which it
was designed. When you apply the maximum rental per mile to the
whole of any particular rural postal delivery route it will not be
discoverable. To spend $25 per mile per year will be, in my judgment,
sheer and inexcusable waste. It will cost the General Government
dear, but is not enough to tempt any locality to the development
of a better road system. It would be a mere suggestion to
the local authorities to apply for more, and would, I feel sure, lead
to a complete abandonment of local or State effort.
Mr. Chairman, that, to me, is one of the most deplorable features
of this bill. I believe it will paralyze the good-roads movement. I
believe that no State not yet equipped with an admirable and excellent
system of highways will undertake to do anything for itself,
can be inspired to do anything for itself, because, when they turn
their eyes toward Washington, they will see gentlemen here clamoring
for appropriations out of the Federal Treasury to do for them
locally what the obligation in honor and decency rests upon them
to do for themselves.
FINANCIAL BURDEN.
By Representative Fitzgerald of New York.
Extracts from Congressional Record, April 29, 1912.
I made the statement, that States are building a system of State
highways. I intend to discuss it more fully. It illustrates the tendency
and the desire of localities to escape the burden they should
assume. In 1899, if I recall correctly, a law was enacted in New
was extended to localities. The law provided that 50 per cent of
the cost of construction should be paid by the State, 35 per cent
by the county, and 15 per cent by the town. Very soon it was
ascertained that to some of these communities the burden was irksome,
or in excess of what the people desired to contribute. Good
roads were desired and the wish was equally strong that the cost
should be borne other than by the localities benefited. An amendment
was enacted by which it was provided that the contribution
of the counties and towns should be 2 per cent on the assessed valuation
of real property in the county and 1 per cent in the town,
but in no instance should the county or town pay in excess of the
35 and 15 per cent proportion. The result is that in some instances
the State is expending 91 per cent of the cost of the roads and the
localities 9 per cent. The tendency is natural; it is human. The
desire to make some one else pay is overpowering. Shift the burden
from locality to the State, from the State to the Federal Government.
It is as effective to avoid the eventual burden as the ostrich
in escaping danger by hiding its head in the sand. The State
of New York is expending $6,000,000 annually on its roads, and with
this enormous expenditure it has not enough roads, if all used by
the postal service were of class A, to receive, under this bill, 20
per cent of what it is itself expending.
But my objection to this legislation is fundamental. It is not
predicated upon expenditure alone. It is aimed chiefly at the theory
upon which the legislation is based. It introduces a new, a novel,
a curious principle into our government system. It purports to
require the Federal Government to pay localities for the privilege
of furnishing some service to the people which is legitimately within
the proper functions of the Federal Government. It is based on
the theory that the Federal Government is something distinct, separate,
apart from, superior to, and superimposed upon the people of
the country; that it has some means of acquiring wealth or resources
or moneys other than by obtaining them by taxation from the people,
to be distributed for their benefit. The gentleman from Missouri
[Mr. Shackelford] spoke of the Federal Government being
liberal in its treatment of the people. This is a strange doctrine to
be enunciated by a Democrat. It is a peculiar notion that seems to
be spreading. The Government should be liberal in its treatment
of the people! Such a statement is strange to men who have
been brought up to believe and to realize and who know what
our Government is and means. Free institutions are organized by
the people in order to maintain order and permit them to live in
the most orderly, free, and happy manner possible consistent with
the rights of others, and are predicated upon the theory that all
men have certain inalienable rights, and that to preserve them governments
are organized.
Not Function of National Government.
This idea that the Federal Government is something like the Government
of the Russias, or some other imperial government, in which
the people are subjects, beneficiaries, supplicants, and mendicants,
who beg and plead as if some great father would be persuaded to
scatter his resources with generous hand and give to the people
something apparently not belonging to them is a new and unheard-of
and astonishing doctrine in our land. Mr. Chairman, why not charge
the Federal Government for the privilege of conducting Federal
troops over country roads and through city streets? If the Federal
of existence? It would be simple for the people to punish the Government
by imposing burdens it could not bear. Under the Constitution
exclusive jurisdiction is placed in the Congress over all
places purchased by the consent of the legislatures of the States
required for forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful
buildings. Under section 355 of the Revised Statutes no money
can be expended upon any site or land for the erection of any public
building, fortification, or similar work unless the consent of the
State is first obtained to the acquisition of the property. Why not
abandon the policy heretofore followed and consent that the Federal
Government shall pay taxes upon its Federal buildings, taxes upon
the land occupied for fortifications, and other public purposes? It
is the same principle underlying this bill carried to the logical conclusion.
It is something new and novel. It is merely a cloak or a
cover to get the hands of the various localities into the Federal
Treasury.
People shut their eyes and dream that the money they take is
to be obtained from some place else than from their own pockets,
but it will come from there eventually and no other place. There
seems to be a widespread notion that the resources of the Federal
Government are boundless, that the Treasury is overflowing. The
methods by which the Federal Government obtains money are indirect
and remote from the people. Its gathering hand is invisible;
yet it takes its mite from every article, from every commodity that
is of use to the people. It may be difficult to trace the tax; that
makes some people the more ready to have it imposed. To enter
this new policy means additional taxes, additional burdens, It is
futile to talk of reducing taxation, of relieving the people from grievous
burdens, of reducing the cost of living, if at every turn we are
to be confronted with some new scheme to filch money from the
Federal Treasury.
Great Expense to National Government.
There is one source of expense to which no one has given much
attention but which is a very important matter. The compensation
for these roads, if there be dispute, is to be fixed by the Department
of Agriculture.
The condition in which the roads are to be maintained is to be
determined by the Department of Agriculture. How is the Department
of Agriculture to obtain the information necessary to discharge
the obligation imposed? Only by the maintenance of a force
of inspectors that shall continuously keep under supervision and observation
all of the roads which will be entitled to compensation
because of their use by the Federal Government. It will require an
army of new employees to swarm through the country. It will be
inevitable that crying abuses will result from such surveillance. Congress
has consistently heretofore refused to pave streets in front,
of public buildings and it has refused to make any contribution for
the construction of sidewalks about its property, and yet gentlemen
now seriously propose to compel the Government to pay the people
of the various localities for the privilege of rendering an important
public service to them. Why not charge the Government for every
public service rendered, in the hope that in some providential manner,
like manna from heaven, funds will come into the Public Treasury?
[Applause.] Mr Chairman, this legislation should not be enacted.
It can not be justified upon any sound theory. It is unwise. It will
lead to evils that will be deplored. It cultivates among the thoughtless
it subjects the Federal Treasury to burdens for nothing
essential to the discharge of its legitimate functions. It is an idle
attempt to get something for nothing. Whatever is expended upon
our roads will be paid for by the people. It will be better if they
keep the work and the expenditure close to home. They may yet
succeed in frittering away rights and privileges of inestimable value,
obtained only by the expenditure of vast quantities of blood and
treasure, for the unsatisfactory boon of a Federal appropriation and a
dominant and irresponsive and unsympathetic Federal Government.
CLASS LEGISLATION.
By Congressman Madden of Illinois.
Extracts from Congressional Record, April 29, 1912.
Mr. Chairman, the gentlemen who designate themselves as statesmen
of the mud roads, in nearly every instance represent constituencies
of not only farmers but of people living in villages and cities.
There is no district in this country that does not contain within its
borders some village or some city, and I ask those men who are
warbling in the name of the mud lark, in the name of the farmer,
whether they propose to represent all of their constituents or only
50 per cent of them. This amendment which I have just proposed
gives to every community an equal distribution of the funds that
are paid out of the Federal Treasury. My friend from Iowa [Mr.
Prouty] just a moment ago said that he believed in an equal distribution
of the Federal funds. If he does he will vote for this
amendment, because this amendment proposes that men who live
in municipalities as well as those who live on farms shall participate
in the improvements that are to be made as a result of the expenditures
proposed under this bill. I want to ask you gentlemen
who represent rural communities whether you want to go back to your
people and say that you are in favor of spending money out of the
Federal Treasury for the purpose of maintaining roads throughout
the rural districts and against the payment of money out of the Federal
Treasury for the purpose of maintaining roads in the villages
and cities of your district. You will have an opportunity here by
this amendment to say by your vote whether you are really a representative
of your district or whether you simply represent that
part of your district in which the farmer lives. The men who live
in the villages and cities of the United States are equally entitled to
the consideration which this bill proposes along with the farmer.
Is there any reason why the post roads running through a town or
village or city should be discriminated against?
Is there any reason why these eight, ten, fifteen, twenty, or fifty
million dollars proposed to be expended on public highways should
be paid wholly to the farmer? Is there any reason why the city
dweller, who has an equal vote with the farmer, should not have
equal rights and equal treatment under this bill? I ask you men
who come from country sections of the Nation, are you willing to
go back home and say to the men who live in the villages and the
cities that we do not recognize them as any part of our constituency?
Are you willing to go back home and have them say to you, How
did you deport yourself on the question of the payment of money
taken out of the Federal Treasury for the rent of the highways of
voting for this bill?
States Able to Build Roads.
I assume that the gentlemen who come here favoring the enactment
of this legislation believe—because they would not act as they
do unless they did believe—that the mail distributed to the rural constituency
is simply done as a matter of accommodation to the Government
or to the post office authorities. I do not believe, Mr. Chairman,
that any dollar of the public money should be paid out of the
Federal Treasury for the upbuilding of any road now in the United
States, I am frank to say.
I do not believe that any Federal money should be paid to aid
the States in the construction of highways. The States of the Union
are amply able to build their roads for themselves. The people who
live in those States are patriotic, they are willing to pay their taxes,
they have paid them in most of the Northern States of the land,
and their roads are being constructed and will continue to be constructed
out of the pockets of the local taxpayers.
CONFLICTING JURISDICTION.
By Congressman Kent of California.
Extract from Congressional Record, April 23, 1912.
Mr. Chairman, the next matter of peculiar interest to me, not in
the bill but in the discussion, is the bill suggested with the intent
of granting Federal pay for improving country roads. That proposition,
in the form it takes, is one with which I must disagree. The
bill contemplates turning over sums of money to counties scattered
throughout the country which can produce evidence that roads over
which rural postal deliveries pass have been of a specified quality.
There are a million miles of such roads now, and the immediate
subsidy would amount to about $20,000,000. There would be necessitated
an enormous expense for inspection on the part of the
Government and to my mind the expense would not lead to anything
coherent or systematic in the way of road building. It would
be a case of easy money and therefore of wasted money. While I
believe thoroughly and fully in Federal help for great national highways,
I can not conceive of proper expenditure in such scattering
through innumerable counties. The counties in my California district
have supervisors, who have very little to do except look after
roads. I do not think the Government would be satisfied with the
uniformity of roads they build. If the Government went into the
inspection business and saw to it that these roads were properly
built, Congress could next take over the rest of the local governments,
and we could have county day in this House, as many county
days as there are counties, just as we now waste our time on District
of Columbia Day, when 5 commissioners with authority could
govern Washington better than 400 Congressmen and 90 Senators.
This bill is a piecemeal, patchwork sort of scheme, and much as I
believe in the necessity of improving the highways of the country,
I do not believe that the Federal Government should chop up its
efforts into small, incoherent fragments, that must necessarily result
in waste. Moreover, if a given road in a given county receives
Government help on account of its being used for rural postal transportation,
from every direction to shift the rural routes to other roads or to
get as many rural routes in each county as possible, just for the
sake of the subsidy, whether or not such additional routes are justified.
In the way this bill is drawn it is a tremendous temptation,
and I am afraid that at least some few supervisors scattered here
and there throughout the Nation might get into trouble. I once
heard of a man who was an exile in Canada because, as he said,
he had forgotten to build a church.
The question has arisen as to how taxes ought to be raised to
construct roads. To my mind the Government might well help in
the construction of great national highways where the work should
be uniform in character and where there would be a chance for
pride in the thoroughness with which the great arteries were built.
The States may properly play their part, and in many cases are so
doing by aiding with State highways. The little rural route is a
local affair, a matter for the counties and the minor districts. The
expense can and will be properly borne by these communities by
whatever system of taxation they may choose. It is impossible to
have a just system of pay for roads based on a frontage tax. There
is no question about the iniquity of that as a final scheme. A frontage
tax to support a great highway which passes a farm upon which
the owner has trouble in subsisting is an obvious injustice. On the
other hand, when we find cases where land for profit is subdivided
for speculation owners certainly ought to pay all the primary cost
of roads on a frontage basis. The question of taxation for road
purposes, as well as for other purposes, will probably be best worked
out under the Oregon system of giving counties the right to determine
the nature of their own taxation. The Federal treasure never
ought to be scattered in the heedless way this bill would scatter it.
If the bill is a bona fide attempt to create national highways, it ought
to provide for national highways; but if it is an attempt to scatter
Federal money throughout the country for the popularization of
reelectable Congressmen, that result could be much better attained
by paying a subsidy on eggs, 30 cents a dozen for strictly fresh, 15
cents a dozen for fresh, and 10 cents for plain eggs.
GOVERNMENT COMMITTED TO A SOCIALISTIC POLICY.
By Congressman Driscoll of New York.
Extracts from Congressional Record, April 29, 1912.
Mr. Chairman, efforts have been made nearly all the time since I
have been in this House, by a certain gentleman and certain sections
of this country to commit the Federal Government to the construction
of the ordinary roads throughout the country. And those agitations
and efforts to commit the Federal Government to the policy of
construction of ordinary country highways have come largely from
Southern and Western States of the Union. Because these States
are large in territory and sparse in population and taxing power they
would like to have the Federal Government to build their roads.
I will not assume to discuss the constitutional aspect of this question.
I do not think it is constitutional, but I certainly believe if it
is within the limits of the Constitutional power for the Federal Government
to go into the State of New York and build common, ordinary
highways, then it is within the same power to go into the
concrete sidewalks.
I analyzed a batch of bills introduced into this House for the
construction of roads several years ago. I found there were then
eighteen of them, nearly all by Democrats and the great majority
Southern Democrats, although there were some Republicans from
Kentucky who had introduced bills. I do not know but that the
late Mr. Brownlow of Tennessee was the father of these good road
bills. These bills were of two or three classes. Some provided
that the surplus in the treasury every year be divided among the
States pro rata for the construction of roads, the money to be spent
by the executive officers of the State. Those bills were introduced
by the State-rights Statesman of the House. But none of
them were fair, because they all provided that in the distribution of
these funds among the States the cities would not be counted in
the population in order to determine the proportion of the money
to be given to the several States.
Some of them provide that cities of fifty thousand should be excluded
from the count, and some provide that cities of thirty-thousand,
and some that cities as low as ten thousand, should
be excluded. Everybody who introduced a bill figured up the
cities in his own State, and estimated the proportion that his
State would receive, by the exclusion from the count of cities above
the figured population in order to give his State the greatest possible
advantage. I opposed those bills then and I have opposed them
in every possible form in which they have come up since, because
a law providing for the distribution of money according to the
population and excluding cities would exclude eighty per cent of
the population of New York State, and that State would get only
one fifth of what it would be entitled to according to its population,
because New York is a State of cities, although it is a splendid
agricultural State as well. Those bills were introduced by States-rights
Democrats who did not want, in theory at all events, the
United States of America government to send its agents into the
States and build the roads. They wanted the money delivered to
the officers of the State and the roads built by them. There was
another class of gentlemen who introduced bills providing that the
Federal Government send its agents into the several States and
construct the roads and maintain them.
States Fully Able to Build Roads.
I shall attempt to analyze in a few minutes the bills introduced
in this House, and I think there are thirty-nine such bills and resolutions
providing for the construction of such roads by the Government.
Twenty-nine have been introduced by the Democrats and
ten by the Republicans, but not one from an Eastern State, not
one from a middle State, very few from the Mississippi Valley, but
all from the great broad States of the South and West, of large areas,
long roads and sparse population and small taxing power.
The farmers in those States have been unusually prosperous during
the last ten or twenty years, and there prosperity has been increasing
from year to year. The mortgages and other encumbrances
which were on their farms a few years ago have been lifted. Many
of them have deposits in the savings banks and many others are
able to afford automobiles. I saw a statement a short time ago that
there were 76,000 automobiles owned by farmers west of the Mississippi
River. Those machines are luxuries; and usually automobiles
a cheap wagon would do their necessary business quite as well,
whereas those are used for comfort and pleasure, because the farmers
are so prosperous that they can enjoy the luxuries of life. But
they are not satisfied. They are jealous of the manufacturers and
business people of the East, who they think have been getting more
than their share of the country's wealth. This jealousy, envy and
antagonism have been manifestly developing during the several years
past, and while they were not in a nebulous condition they were
constantly developing and organizing for a general assault on what
they considered concentrated wealth in the East, and just now it
is in the form of a wave of national socialism, sweeping up the great
West and Southwest. It is very largely the same spirit and motive
which is back of this proposition to buy up all the express companies
of the country. They want to commit the Federal Government,
not only to build the country's roads, but to the policy of
buying up all the old junk of the many express companies of the
country—the old wagons, horses, trucks, and old stuff of every kind
—which will be of no use to the Post Office Department when once
acquired.
The Federal Government did not authorize or encourage the organization
of the express companies, and the Federal Government
is under no obligation to them in any possible way. It can develop
its parcel post or postal express if it seems wise to do so, and if
they act on that proposition the Government tends to reduce the
profits of the express companies or drive some of them out of business,
they have no cause for complaint against the Government or
against the people, whose agent the Government is, for they have
taken advantage of their opportunities and have made all the profits
their business would stand without regard to the complaints of the
people who were obliged to patronize them.
Paternalism Would Be the Outcome of Federal Aid.
What next? Why if the Government goes into the business of
postal express it will need the use of many cars in order to handle
the express business. The railroad companies are now charging the
Post Office Department very much higher rates for transporting
its mail matter than they are charging the express companies for
transporting express matter; and if the Department can not make
what the people or Congress consider satisfactory rates, will the
railroad companies? In the future the people will demand that the
Government buy its own cars and fit them up for express business,
which will be more commodious, and it will be claimed that they
will be cheaper. Then if the Government buys one car, why not
two? Why not ten? Why not the whole train? The express company
will be very large if carried out according to the conceptions
of the gentlemen who agitated this measure. This means the nationalization
of all railways and also all the ships and steamboats in
this country, and it means national socialism.
Your people from the South and West who have been agitating
for the construction of the country roads by the Federal Government
are bent on getting money into the treasury with one hand
and drawing it out with the other to build your roads, and do many
other things in the way of domestic improvements which the States
or the municipal divisions thereof should do for themselves.
The people in this country have got the idea into their heads that
with a parcel post or postal express the express wagon will come
apples, berries, grapes, chicken, hens and turkeys, and that they can
put a two-cent postage stamp on the box and that the express
agent will haul them away.
That may be the next step in this comprehensive scheme of paternalism.
They think that for that stamp they will send these
things to the consumer in New York City or Chicago or St. Louis
or San Francisco. Then they expect to buy everything they want,
from a piano to a paper of pins from the catalogue department house,
and that all those things will come back and be delivered in nice
packages, and set on their front porch, all for a two-cent stamp.
They are going to eliminate the small merchant, not only in the
village but in the city. They are going to save all the expense and the
farmer is going to get all that the consumer pays, less the two-cent
stamp. That is the idea some people have now, and that is what
has been drummed into some farmers' heads by the champions of
this measure, who are putting before us this first step in socialism.
Can these dreamers expect to persuade any considerable part of
either the city or county residents that this service can be done
without being paid for by somebody; and if done by the Government,
do they not know that it will cost very much more than if
done by a private concern? Do they not know that all work done
by the Government costs at least fifty per cent more than if done
by private concerns or individuals? This service will be paid for
out of one pocket or the other; either by the people who patronize
the Government express or by the people at large in making up the
deficit in the Post Office Department, and I am one of those who believe
that a service of this kind, either in the form of parcel post
or parcel express, should be paid for by the people who patronize
it; in the transportation and distribution of merchandise the people
for whose benefit it is done should pay the necessary expense of the
service, and not shift the burden on the body of the people.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to say a word to those thirty-nine gentlemen
who prepared those thirty-nine separate bills. Some of you
who in theory are States-righters would prefer to have the money
sent to your State and there spent by your own officials. But you
can not always have your own way in this regard, and when an appropriation
is before you by which your district or State may get
some advantage it is then a condition and not a theory that confronts
you. You are human, and yield to the demands of your people at
home who are constantly looking for help from the Federal Government,
and you waived your academic views and grabbed for the
appropriation. This is your practical notion of States' rights, to
dip into the Federal treasury as deep and as often as possible.
You came together, you thirty-nine gentlemen, and made up this
composite bill. You have reduced thirty-nine to one. You think it
looks mild and harmless and that it will appeal to one State as
much as to another and thus commit the Congress to a policy of
giving Federal aid to country roads. But let us not be deceived;
when you get this bill into law on the statute books you will demand
more. You will then demand that the Federal Government
build your roads in some States, and send the money into others for
that purpose.
I have been watching the development of this Federal aid for ordinary
highways movement for some years, and I think I understand
the motive of the gentlemen who are back of it. There is a
National Good Roads Association of which some years ago Mr.
![illustration](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:113116/full/!1600,1600/0/default.jpg")
Final Contestants in Reading
MISS ATKINSON
MISS ELIZABETH RICE
KEYSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL
NEW LONDON ACADEMY
KEYSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL, WINNER
1914-1915
in that organization. He went into the State of New York, as I
was informed, and made some speeches and circulated some literature and
persuaded some New York Grangers to submit to this policy. I
made a speech here in Congress against it and the Grange of my
county sent for me to come home and explain my position. I did
so and discussed the matter before them for two or three hours and
explained to them that it was to their advantage to stay in partnership
with New York and other great cities of the empire State for
the construction of country roads in our State rather than go in
pool with North Dakota, Montana and other large States with long
roads for the construction of country roads out of the Federal treasure
and at the common expense, and I think they saw it that way.
ROAD CONSTRUCTION NOT FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
FUNCTION.
By Congressman Madden of Illinois.
Extract from Congressional Record, April 22, 1912.
Now, I wish to call to the attention of the House another matter
that is proposed to be inserted in the bill, but which was not recommended
by the committee, and that is the provision which calls
for expenditures from the Federal Treasury for the construction of
highways in the rural districts of the country. In the State from
which I come the people gladly contribute of their own funds for
the construction of highways, and I may say that this is true of
almost every other Northern State. I believe that we ought to
have good highways. I am a believer in good roads. I believe that
everything ought to be done that ingenuity can devise to make the roads
of the country the best that can be had. But I believe that this
is strictly a State function, and that it ought to be done by the States
themselves. As a property owner in the State where I live, I have
gladly contributed of what means I have had to help build the roads
in my neighborhood. Illinois levies a tax on the abutting property.
This tax is paid into the treasury of the township.
The township trustees or the highway commissioners have jurisdiction
over the expenditure of this money. They expend it wisely.
We are getting good roads. We are meeting the conditions. We
are abreast of the times. We are moving forward. We
are making progress. We have no complaint to make. We make
no complaint because we are called upon to pay out of our own
pockets for the construction of the roads that we use. Why should
not every community throughout the land pay for the improvements
that the community requires? Why should the Government of the
United States be called upon to build the highways of the country?
Oh, the gentleman is technically correct; but we ought not to
be dealing in technicalities. We ought to face the measure squarely.
It does not matter whether you use the language that this money
is to be paid out of the Federal Treasury for the purpose of paying
the State for the use of highways used as post roads or whether
the money is to be taken out of the Federal Treasury to put the
foundations into these roads and put the surface on the foundations.
It amounts to the same thing. Now, of course the people of the
United States are not taxed directly for the maintenance of the
that the expenditure of money from the Federal Treasury does not
take it out of their pockets; but the truth is that it comes out of
their pockets just the same; and if they were called upon to pay
a direct tax, out of which should be paid the money for the construction
of highways, they would object to it; and I, who have already
been paying a direct tax for the purpose of constructing roads
in my neighborhood, object seriously to it.
Mr. Byrnes of South Carolina. I understood the gentleman to
say that he favored taxing the adjoining landowners, as is the system
in his State?
And then I wish to say, in addition to that, if the highways in
the rural districts are to be considered as post roads, the highways
known as the streets in the great cities of the country are also to
be considered as post roads, and that if the highways in the country
are to be paid for because of the fact that the mails go over them,
then the men who live in the great cities of the country will demand
that payment shall be made out of the Federal Treasury for the
construction of the streets in the great cities which are also used
as post roads. I see no distinction. I see no justice in the contention
that the man who lives in a city and owns property abutting
on a street should be taxed for the construction of that street while
the man who lives in the country and owns property abutting on
a highway is to be relieved from such a tax. The same rule ought
to apply everywhere. If country roads are post roads, then city
streets are post roads. The Government of the United States has
the power to come into the city of Chicago and tear up any street
in that city without asking the consent of the local authorities.
They can tear the streets up, they can build their pneumatic tubes,
they can operate these tubes without regulations from the local authorities.
If that be true, why should not the Government of the
United States be placed in the same position toward the citizens of
the great centers that you seek to make with relation to the people who
live in the more sparsely settled sections of the country? We are asking
for no appropriation for any purpose out of the Federal Treasury that is
not justified under the Constitution of the United States. The people
who live in these cities are making no demands to put their hands into
the Treasury of the United States for the construction of their
streets. The people of the country districts are coming here and
making demands that the Federal Treasury shall be used to construct
their roads, and we object unless we are placed on an equality
with the men that make those demands. We are citizens of the
United States and our rights are equal to theirs. We have every
right to make complaint, and the Constitution never intended that
one class of citizens should do one thing and another class do another.
The Constitution of the United States never contemplated the
expenditure of money for the construction of highways in one place
that it did not accord to every other place, and as a representative
from one of the great cities of this Union I solemnly protest on
behalf of the people of that city to the expenditure of one dollar
of public money out of the Federal Treasury for the construction
of any highway, anywhere, that does not give equal justice to the
people of the territory from which I hail.
COUNTRY ROADS VERSUS CITY STREETS.
By Congressman Moore of Pennsylvania.
Extract from Congressional Record, April 23, 1912.
You are preaching economy by introducing a proposition which
proposes to saddle upon the taxpayers of this country the business
of the express companies and their pay roll of 50,000 men, together
with all their equipment, contracts, and damage claims, all of the
risks, and labor conditions, and all those other conditions that are
incident to Government control. Preaching economy! Yet you propose
by this bill to make the Government of the United States, whose
money are sent here to justly and wisely appropriate, take this money
out of the Treasury, the people's money, under the guise of an appropriation
bill for the benefit of clerks and free rural delivery carriers,
and to do what? Expend it on three classes of roads, to be
supported by the Government of the United States, upon the pretense
that somewhere, at some time, they are to be used by a wagon
carrying the mail of the United States, or are to be footed by some
one who has a mail sack upon his back. If you want to be fair in
your proposition, why do you not make provision for another class
of roads to be paid for by the Government of the United States,
namely, the highways of the city, within the limits of the various
congested centers, where the people have already paid for them, and
where the heels of the carriers and the wheels of the wagons do as
much damage as they do upon any country road in the United States?
Are you going to make provision for the sidewalks used by the
letter carriers in carrying the mails of the United States, or are you
going to continue by your policy of economy to provide only for
one section of the United States and leave the others entirely out
of consideration?
Oh, in this bill you propose another radical change in regard to
the parcel post. You propose that those of us who live in the cities
shall pay 12 cents a pound upon packages which we deliver through
the mails, and that that rate shall be fixed and uniform with regard
to us, but so far as the residents of the country upon rural routes
are concerned, you provide a sliding scale of rates which means, in
the last analysis, that if we move out of a city and live in the country
we can have our packages carried in the mails on Government-built
roads by rural carriers at 5 cents a pound. In other words, you
are specializing as between the city and the country—we pay 12
cents and you pay 5—and you are violating the very essence of the
Constitution of the United States.
We might as well be frank about these matters. Why do your
States not go and build your own county roads? Why do you come
to the Government of the United States and ask us to use the money
of the people, the money of your people, the money of my people,
to build the roads that you ought to build yourselves? You ask, Do
we build our roads? I answer, Yes; we do, because we are industrious,
because we are saving and because we want to thrive and
prosper. The great Commonwealth of New York has appropriated
millions and millions of money to provide roads which are used by
every farmer who wants to use them, by every man who wants to
carry the mails, by any man, whether he comes from California or
whether he comes from New Mexico or whether he comes from
Austria. Why do not you build roads in order that the rest of the
roads for ourselves accord to others? The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
has just made provision for the construction of roads to
the extent of $50,000,000 and yet my good friend from Iowa comes
into this House, along with others who are now preaching this good-roads
doctrine, because it carries an appropriation and because it
pleases the farmers and because it pleases the rural-delivery men,
and says that he wants the Federal Treasury to build roads in Iowa.
Some other gentleman wants the Treasury to build roads in his State.
What are you doing for yourselves?
References.
The University of Virginia Faculty has generously provided a package
library on this subject for debate. A package of pamphlets and
books will be sent to any principal of a high school for a term of
two weeks, free of cost, save postage, by his writing and asking Mr.
John S. Patton, University Librarian, to send a package for the use
of a certain school.
A wealth of material can be gotten from the Congressional Records,
which can be procured for a mere song.
Regulations for Package Libraries.
A package library service has been organized and will be in effect
January 15, 1916. These packages will be made up of pamphlets and
other publications containing information needed in these debates.
Package libraries are lent through the principals or superintendents
of schools.
They are lent for a period of one or two weeks, as may seem desirable,
and the loan may be renewed if renewal will not inconvenience
other borrowers.
The person to whom the package is lent is held responsible for the
return of every item in it.
The package is dispatched by parcel post or as third class mail
matter, the cheaper carriage being used. The borrower is expected
to pay the cost of transportation both ways.
All communications touching package libraries should be addressed
to John S. Patton, Librarian, University, Va.
Periodical Speeches and Articles.
Bankhead, John H. Rural delivery routes, improvement of country
roads. Speech in the Senate, Apr. 24, 1908. Congressional Record,
60th Cong. 1st sess., v. 42, pt. 6, 5152-5158.
Bell, Thomas M. Good roads for the states aided by national appropriations.
Speech in the House, Mar. 25, 1908. Congressional
Record, 60th Cong. 1st sess., v. 42, pt. —, 3924-3927.
Clay, Henry. "The American system." Mr. Clay's internal improvement
policy, v. 1, pp. 450-474: "On internal improvement."
Speech in the House, Mar. 13, 1818, v. 6, pp. 115-135.
Francis, William B. Federal aid in the construction of highways.
Speech in the House, Jan. 16, 1912. Congressional Record, 62d Congress,
2d sess., v. 48, no. 31 (current file), 1186-1198.
French, Burton L. Speech in the House, Mar. 12, 1912, on Federal
aid in road building. Congressional Record, 62d Cong., 2d sess., v.
48, no. 84 (current file), 3821-3823.
Gaines, John W. Power and duty of Congress to build rural route
roads. Speech in the House, Apr. 2, 1908. Congressional Record, 60th
Cong., 1st sess., v. 42, pt. 5, 4291-4298.
Lee, Gordon. Government aid in road building. Good Roads Magazine,
Aug., 1906, n. s. v. 7, 619-622. "Speech delivered in the House
of Representatives, April 5th, 1906."
Morgan, Dick T. National aid in the improvement of our public
highways. Speech in the House, June 20, 1910. Congressional Record,
61st Cong., 2d sess., v. 45, app., 356-380.—National aid for the improvement
of our public highways. Speech in the House, Aug. 22,
1911. Congressional Record, 62d Cong., 1st sess., v. 47, pt. 5, 72-73.
Prouty, S. F. Speech in favor of Federal aid and supervision in
the construction of highways, in the House, Feb. 26, 1912. Congressional
Record, 62d Cong., 2d sess., v. 45, no. 65 (current file), 2675-2678.
Swanson, Claude A. Improvement of rural-delivery roads. Speech
v. 47, pt. 3, 2714-2719.
Towner, Horace M. Agriculture Appropriation Bill—The improvement
of public highways. Speech in the House, Mar. 12, 1912. Congressional
Record, 62d Cong., 2d sess., v. 48, no. 87 (current file),
3995-3996.
Arguments for national aid. Editorial in Good Roads Magazine,
Dec., 1908, v. 38, 414-415.
Benton, Thomas H. Thirty Years' View; or, A History of the Working
of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850.
New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1854-56. 2 v. Internal improvements,
v. 1, pp. 21-27; Veto on the Maysville road bill; v. 1, 167.
Holmes, J. A. Functions of the government, the state, and the
county in American highway improvement. In U. S. Office of Public
Roads Bulletin, Washington, 1901, no. 21, pp. 39-45. Internal improvements.
Southern Quarterly Review, Jan., 1846, v. 9, 243-272.
Jefferson, Thomas. The writings of Thomas Jefferson. Definite
ed., Washington, D. C., Issued under the auspices of the Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1905. 20 v.
in 10. "The solemn declaration and protest of the commonwealth of
Virginia, on the principles of the Constitution of the United States
of America, and on the violations of them." v. 17, 442-448. Draft
of proposed resolutions in opposition to Federal legislation for internal
improvements. The resolutions were drawn up by Jefferson
and submitted to Madison in December, 1825.
Johnson, A. B. The constitutional power of Congress over public
improvements. United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, Feb.,
1851, v. 28, 148-154.
The power of the general government to construct roads or railroads,
as post roads, within the states and territories. Southern Quarterly
Review, Jan., 1855, v. 27, 87-115.
Stewart, John A. Federal aid for roads. Manufacturer's Record,
Jan. 11, 1912, v. 61, 51.
United States President, 1809-1817 (Madison). Message vetoing
the bill entitled "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for
internal improvements." Mar. 3, 1817. (In United States President—
Compilation of the messages and papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897.
Washington, 1896. v. 2, 584-585).
United States President, 1817-1825 (Monroe). Veto message (vetoing
the bill entitled "An act for the preservation and repair of the
Cumberland road"). May 4, 1822. (In United States President—Compilation
of the messages and papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897. Washington,
1896. v. 2, pp. 142-183. "Views of the President of the United
States on the subject of internal improvements." pp. 144-183).
United States President, 1829-1837 (Jackson). Message vetoing the
bill to authorize "a subscription of stock in the Maysville, Washington,
Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company." May 27,
1830. (In United States President—Compilation of the messages and papers
of the Presidents, 1789-1897. Washington, 1896. v. 2, pp. 483-493.)
Young, Lafe. Self-help better than government aid. In U. S.
Office of Public Roads Bulletin. Washington, 1903. No. 26, pp. 65-66.
Driscoll, M. E. Agricultural appropriation bill; building of ordinary
country roads at expense of national government, under whatever
pretext, is an invasion of State rights and an assumption of State
and municipal obligations and very advanced paternalism. Congressional
Record, 60th Cong., 1st sess., v. 42, pt. 5, 4249-4253.
Bourne, Jonathan, Jr. National aid to good roads. Article from
the North American Review of September, 1913. Washington (Govt.
438.)—National highways and national drainage. Washington, D. C.,
1914. 7p. National aid: p. 6-7.—Shall the United States build highways?
Twentieth Century Magazine, March, 1913, v. 7, 114-116.
Elliott, William F. Conflict of jurisdiction over highways. Case
and Comment, July, 1914, v. 21, 91-93.
Gross, H. H. The duty of the nation to the highways. In Illinois
Farmers' Institute Annual Report, 1908. Springfield, Ill., 1908. —. 249257.
The latest bill for national aid in road improvement. Engineering
Record, Jan. 18, 1913, v. 67, 58.
Logan, Thomas F. Uncle Sam, road agent. Country Life in America,
Jan. 1914, v. 25, 53-54.
Page, Logan W. The profit of good roads. How they increase
land values by $10 per acre.—The work of the State highway departments
and of the American association for highways improvement
to correct the incompetency of present road management and to provide,
not only for the construction, but for the maintenance of good
roads. World's work, Oct. 1912, v. 24, 675-679. "National aid not
the solution:" p. 676.
Parmley, J. W. Good roads and finance. American Banker. Aug.
10, 1912, v. 77, 2742-2746.
Brown, William G. Good roads and parcel post. Speech in the
House, Apr. 13, 1912, v. 48, pt. 5, 4759.
Byrnes, James F. Speech in the House, Apr. 22, 1912, on federal
aid to roads, v. 48, pt. 5. 5145-5148.
Byrns, Joseph W. Speech in House, Apr. 22, 1912, on federal aid
to roads by way of compensation for their use in carrying mails, v.
48, pt. 5, 5137-5139.
Dies, Martin. Post office appropriation bill. Speech in the House,
Apr. 29, 1912, v. 48, pt. 6, 5564-5566.
Opposed to government aid.
Driscoll, Michæl E. Post office appropriation bill. Speech in the
House, Apr. 23, 1912, v. 48, pt. 5, 5218-5222.
Opposed to government aid.
Kent, William. Speech in the House, Apr. 23, 1912, on the post
office appropriation bill, v. 48, pt. 5, 5215.
Opposed to government aid to country roads.
Madden, Martin B. Speech in the House, Apr. 22, 1912, on the
post office appropriation bill, v. 48, pt. 5, 5144-5147.
Opposed to federal aid.
Mondell, Frank W. Condemnation of express property—Rent of
rural roads. Speech in the House, Apr. 23, 1912, v. 48, pt. 5, 5237-5240.
Opposed to taxing the government for use of rural roads.
Prouty, S. E. Speech in the House, Apr. 23, 1812, on lobbying
and Federal aid for roads, v. 48, pt. 5, 5201-5206.
Towner, Horace M. Post office appropriation bill. Speech in the
House, Apr. 26, 1912, v. 48, app., 131-132.
In favor of government aid.
Borland, William P. Authorities and decisions on the power of
the Federal Government to construct or to aid in the construction
of rural highways. Speech in the House, Jan. 13, 1913, v. 49, app.,
11-12.
Byrnes, James F. Providing aid to States in construction and maintenance
of roads. Speech in the House, Feb. 5, 1914, v. 51, no. 42
(current file), 3125-3127.
Candler, Ezekiel S., Jr. Rural postal roads. Speech in the House,
Feb. 7, 1914, v. 51, no. 50 (current file), 3662-3663.
Estimates appropriations and expenditures by States for year 1912.
Davenport, James S. Rural post roads. Speech in the House, Feb.
7, 1914, on H. R. 11686, v. 51, no. 67 (current file), 4645-4647.
Flood, Henry D. Rural post roads. Speech in the House, Feb. 7,
1914, v. 51, no. 49 (current file), 3592-3594.
Powers, Caleb. National prohibition and temperance—Good roads.
Things done in Congress. Extension of remarks in the House, May
27, 1914, on H. R. 15578, v. 51, no. 145 (current file), 10609-10624.
Buckley, Ernest R. Public roads, their improvement and maintenance.
Jefferson City, Mo., The H. Stephens Printing Co. (1907),
124 p. (Missouri Bureau of Geology and Mines. Reports, v. 5, 2d ser.)
Johnson, A. N. The State in its relation to the improvement of
the highways. (In Illinois Farmers' Institute Annual Report, 1908.
Springfield, Ill., 1908, v. 13, pp. 257-263.) Virginia Highway Commission
Annual Report. 1906/07-1910/11. Richmond, 1907-11, 5 v. in 3.
Machen, A. W. Rural free mail delivery in relation to road improvement.
(In U. S. Office of Public Roads Bulletin. Washington,
1901. No. 21, pp. 92-96.)
The National government as a factor in highway development.
Good Roads Magazine, Nov. 1909, v. 39, 402-404.
Collier's. 46:Supp. 5-9. Jan. 7, 1911. Setting New Standards for
Road Construction. T. L. White.
Cosmopolitan. 34:355-58. Jan., 1903. National Aid to Road Improvement.
W. P. Brownlow.
Engineering News. 57:428-29. Apr. 18, 1907. New Figures for the
Cost of Transportation by Wagon on Common Roads.
Engineering News. 60:416-17. Oct. 5, 1908. The Story of a Remarkable
Propaganda. I. O. Baker.
Engineering News. 66:183. Aug. 10, 1911. A Critique of the "Good
Roads" Propaganda.
Engineering News. 66:345. Sept. 21, 1911. Some Good Road Problems
and Fallacies.
Engineering News. 66:509-10. Oct. 26, 1911. What Do Cities Get
for Their Heavy Contribution for State Highway Improvement?
Engineering News. 67:49-97. Mar. 14, 1912. Who Should Pay for
Building and Maintaining Good Roads?
Engineering News. 67:937-38. May 16, 1912. A Project for 51,000
Miles of National Highways.
Engineering Record. 65:422. Apr. 20, 1912. The National Road Aid
Mania.
North American Review. 157:622-30. Nov. 1893. How to Improve
Our Roads. R. P. Flower.
North American Review. 161:125-28. July, 1895. The Need of
Better Roads. Martin Dodge.
| University of Virginia record October 1, 1915 | |