In discussing the effect of roads as a part of this creative force, MacDonald believed, according to Fairbank, that roads allowed the population to disperse throughout the country and away from the rivers and main rail lines. It served as a great unifying force between the “hayseed” and the “city slicker” with “freer and more frequent contacts of the two which the automobile and good roads facilitated.” There was a greater urban orientation produced in this country as the small towns, “long the centers of their tiny rural areas promptly became the mere satellites of larger nearby cities. . . .” The cities were also able to reach out more as people were able to move further from downtown and finally to the suburbs as the principal roads radiating out of the city were improved. Good roads were an important link in the creative force that is transportation that started from the waterways, to the railways, to roadways, and on to the airways.
A continuing theme throughout the Chief’s years with the Bureau of Public Roads was the importance of the principle of Federal-State cooperation in the framework of our form of government. Pyke Johnson describes this belief as “the continued achievement of an engineering job of the magnitude of our highway program [that] must rest upon the essential premise that here we are dealing with the lives of people. That being so, the people finally must make their choice. The Federal Government cannot successfully dictate to the States. It must continue to act in cooperation with them and initiation of undertakings must remain with the States.”
MacDonald was able to achieve the essential close cooperation with the States because he never forgot his first position as a State highway engineer and because of his active participation in AASHO. Thus, he was and remained fully acquainted with the views and sensitivities of State highway officials in respect to the Federal legislation and the Bureau. But he was also aware of the shortcomings of the various State highway departments. According to Fairbank, MacDonald
interpreted literally the requirement of the Federal-Aid Act that each State must have ‘a highway department adequate in the opinion of the Secretary . . . to cooperate with the Federal Bureau.’ He was unceasing, though without fanfare, in his efforts to bring about an elevation of the standards of engineering and administrative proficiency of all the State highway departments. This was done as occasion offered, through letters to our division and district offices or directly to the highway departments concerned. But he made effective use of personal contacts with the State highway officials at meetings of the AASHO and other gatherings. He made it a point to become personally acquainted as quickly as possible with the heads and principal officers of the departments of all the States when they took office after each political turnover, the frequency of which he deeply deplored.
In recognition of the sensitivity of State officials, if he could, he preferred working through the AASHO committees in developing standards and thereby avoiding the appearance of a Bureau crusade.
In developing standards, the Chief felt that research and factfinding must play a very important role, but the research that he stressed had to be of a nature calculated to yield results promptly applicable in the Bureau’s administrative or engineering practice. Thus, he strongly supported the undertaking of soil studies, pioneered by the Bureau, and the impact and circular track studies done to test the wear on pavements by wheels equipped with various kinds of tires. He gave enthusiastic support of statewide traffic studies that were carried out in cooperation with various State highway departments and which were later expanded and augmented by economic and financial studies. When research expenditures occasionally came under question by Congress or the senior Executive Department, he was able to ward off this challenge by pointing to the important results derived from this aspect of the Bureau’s work.
To many, MacDonald was the embodiment of official rectitude, and a stout defender of the independence of the State highway departments, as well as the Bureau, from political interference. For the sake of this independence, he was quite willing to have the Bureau remain a subordinate branch of an Executive Department. He believed that this system would sufficiently interpose a screen between executive action
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