miles), it was enthusiastically received by farmers along the routes and widely praised in the press. Herbert Hoover, the Federal Food Administrator, hailed the service as a means for saving food, 50 percent of which was rotting in the field for lack of transportation. Others pointed out that rural express would relieve draft animals from transportation duty, releasing land devoted to growing animal fodder for the raising of human food. Still others envisioned public food markets in the cities, supplied direct from the fields by parcel post. And, of course, the service would enable farmers to devote more time to raising food and less time to taking it to market.[1]
The Government established eight routes, mostly in the Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia area, and operated them with 19 Government-owned 1-ton trucks. The Department kept precise records of all direct and indirect expenses, including Department overhead and depreciation on the vehicles. For the 6 months ending May 31, 1918, the Postmaster General reported to Congress that only one route, between Philadelphia and Atlantic City, had lost money and that the operation as a whole had grossed $152,217 in 6 months against total expenses of $29,100, for net earnings of $123,118.[2]
Projecting these enormous profits on a theoretical nationwide rural express network of 10,000 miles, the Postmaster General estimated gross revenues of $80 million per year, with a surplus of about $40 million per year above all operating and Departmental expenses. This surplus, he recommended, might well be spent to improve the roads of the network to a high standard to reduce vehicle operating costs and ensure reliable daily service. Such roads should be of concrete or brick, at least 16 feet wide and 9 inches thick, and would cost about $20,000 per mile, or $200 million for the network.[3]
Earlier in the 2d session of the 65th Congress, Senator Claude A. Swanson of Virginia had introduced a bill that would permit the Postmaster General to establish a Federal network of motor express routes and to devote one-half of the gross revenues from these routes to improve them for motor truck operation. Despite the statistical support of the Postmaster General’s optimistic report, this bill failed in committee. Congress, instead, included an item of $300,000 in the Post Office appropriation for fiscal year 1919 to be used by the Postmaster General for experiments in motor truck delivery in the vicinity of large cities “. . . to promote the conservation of food products and to facilitate the collection and delivery thereof from producer to consumer, and the delivery of articles necessary in the production of such food products.”[4]
This was July 1918. By the time the Postmaster General came back to Congress with his next report, the war had ended and conditions had radically changed. Private enterprises such as the Farmers’ Cooperative Association of Harford County had moved into the transportation vacuum the Government hoped to fill and were doing the job for much less than the fourth class mail rate. The motor route service did not materially increase new postal business, and the service was made to show a profit only by diverting fourth class mail to the Department’s trucks that would otherwise have gone by train.[5]
Post Roads Versus Through Roads
The first impact of the war on the Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering was a loss of men, some in key positions, who volunteered for military service.[N 1] When the Secretary of War requested engineers to plan and supervise the building of roads for the Army cantonments, Director Page assigned 18 experienced men to this work for periods of a year or more. Page also assigned engineers to map the Army truck routes and channeled most of his laboratory’s efforts into war work.
What personnel remained after these losses and assignments were concentrated on the Federal-aid program. Although severely crippled by manpower shortages, the States continued to submit Federal-aid projects for approval throughout the war. By July 1918, the OPRRE had approved 572 projects, totaling 6,249 miles in length, estimated to cost $42.28 million, of which $16.05 million was Federal aid. However, only five projects, totaling 17.6 miles, had actually been completed.
The Federal Aid Road Act provided that the Federal funds could be spent only in the construction of “rural post roads,” defined as “any public road over which the United States mails now are or may hereafter be transported, excluding every street and road in a place having a population, as shown by the latest available Federal census, of two thousand five hundred or more, except that portion of any such street or road along which the houses average more than two hundred feet apart.” The Act also provided that the Secretary of Agriculture and the State highway departments “shall agree upon the roads to be constructed and the character and method of construction.”
The Secretary, acting through the OPRRE, at the outset of the program tried to eliminate haphazard roadbuilding by asking each State to submit an overall plan or scheme showing where the State proposed to spend its share of the 5-year Federal appropriation. This wise requirement forced the States that did not already have established highway systems to begin classifying their highways and setting up systems. This kind of planning and the organization and strengthening of the several State highway departments were the principal accomplishments of the first 2 years of the Federal-aid program.[6]
Very early in the program the States began to have difficulty scheduling improvements to their major system roads that would also follow the rural post routes. In keeping with good system planning, the State trunkline roads were laid out along comparatively direct lines between county seats and major cities. The post routes, on the other hand, meandered through the country to enable the carriers to serve the greatest number of patrons with the least travel. The Attorney General held that to prove the post road requirement would “require the submission of evidence to show that the mails are actually carried over the road proposed to be improved or that there is a reasonable prospect that this will be done.”[7]
- ↑ Of 187 male employees on the rolls when war was declared, 52 or 28 percent had entered the military service by June 1918. When the war ended, 79 were in the service.
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- ↑ Regional Highway Transport Directors Meet, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 81, No. 13, Sept. 26, 1918, p. 599.
- ↑ Report Shows Results Of Motor Parcel Post Service, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 81, No. 2, Jul. 11, 1918, pp. 90-91.
- ↑ Id., pp. 90-92.
- ↑ 40 Stat 753.
- ↑ Cong. Rec. 65th Cong., 3d Sess., Vol. 57, App., p. 386.
- ↑ P. Wilson, Operations of Bureau of Public Roads Under the Federal Aid Road Act, Public Roads, Vol. 1, No. 10, Feb. 1919, p. 22.
- ↑ S. R. 666, 65th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 3.
