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 OCTOBER 15, 1918

 BULLETIN NO. 4

 ADDRESS BY HONORABLE WILLIAM C. REDFIELD SECRETARY OF COMMERCE

 AT CONFERENCE OF REGIONAL CHAIRMEN OF THE HIGHWAYS TRANSPORT COMMITTEE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE WASHINGTON, D. C. SEPTEMBER 19, 1918

 [Illustration]

 RESOLUTION PASSED BY THE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE

 "_The Council of National Defense approves the widest possible use of the motor truck as a transportation agency, and requests the State Councils of Defense and other State authorities to take all necessary steps to facilitate such means of transportation, removing any regulations that tend to restrict and discourage such use. _"

 WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1918

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING REGIONAL AREAS Highways Transport CommitteeCouncil of National Defense]

_Recognizing the national value of our highways in relation to, andproperly coordinated with, other existing transportation mediums, andmore particularly the necessity for their immediate development thatthey might carry their share of the war burden, the Highways TransportCommittee was appointed by, and forms a part of, the Council ofNational Defense. _

_The object of the committee is to increase and render more effectiveall transportation over the highways as one of the means ofstrengthening the Nation's transportation system and relieving therailroads of part of the heavy short-haul freight traffic burden. _

_National policies are directed from the headquarters of the nationalcommittee in Washington to the highways transport committees of theseveral State Councils of Defense. These State organizations, which byproper subdivisions reach down through the counties to thecommunities, are grouped together into 11 regional areas, as shown bythe map used above. The State committees of the different areas areassisted by and are under the direct supervision of the 11 regionalchairmen of the Highways Transport Committee, Council of NationalDefense. _

 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE. HIGHWAYS TRANSPORT COMMITTEE. WASHINGTON, D. C. 

 ADDRESS BY HON. WILLIAM C. REDFIELD, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, BEFORE THE REGIONAL CHAIRMEN OF THE HIGHWAYS TRANSPORT COMMITTEE, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1918. 

MR. CHAPIN AND GENTLEMEN: It would be a truism to say that I havealways been interested in transportation. It has always been a subjectof keen interest to me, I presume, because I was born with it. By thefortune of birth I came to live in a region where transportation hasbeen through every one of its stages in this country. If you go backinto the history of the Colonies, you will find the two first lines ofthrough transportation in America were east and west--the St. LawrenceRiver and the Lakes--while for over a century the one great centralnorth and south line was the Hudson River, Lake George, and LakeChamplain. In that entire length from the St. Lawrence to New YorkHarbor there was but about 13 miles that could not be traveled bywater with such boats as they used. You will recall that greathistoric events of our early history centered about thistransportation line. Burgoyne's surrender, Arnold's treason, the greatcontests of the French wars, Macdonough's victory on Lake Champlainwere all associated with this water route. Such names as Montcalm, Schuyler, and Champlain are linked to it. Historically, it is trueboth for war and peace that transportation has been formative andcontrolling in our national life. One of the early evidences of thegrowth of transportation in this country, and therefore of ournational progress, was the act of connecting the Great Lakes by theErie Canal with the Hudson River. 

The largest number of railroad tracks paralleling any navigable streamfollows to-day the line of the Hudson. There are six much of theway--four tracks on one side and two on the other. I am going to makethat historical line of water and rail transportation the basis for alittle study with you, to see what the normal development oftransportation is, and whether, as I believe, the particular form thatconcerns you is a natural outgrowth of all that has gone before. If itis so it is here to stay. If in the process of transportationevolution we have reached the normal use of the highway, together withthe waterway and the railway, then you are doing a constructive workfor your country. But if that work is not normal, if you are trying toimpose upon the body politic something strange and artificial, thenyour work will, and ought to, fail. 

The transportation system of the United States is not a unity. It cannot be run on what we may call unitarian lines. It is a trinity, andhas to be run on trinitarian lines. You must link up railways andwaterways and highways to get a perfect transportation system for thiscountry. If there were no railroads we would have littletransportation. If there were no waterways there would be insufficienttransportation. If we had an abundance of railways and waterways andlacked the use of highways, we should have imperfect transportation. We should fail to bring it to every man's door, and it must be broughtto every man's door to be perfect. 

The early transportation in the Hudson River Valley was by sloop. Thehistory of the river is full of the traditions from the old sloopdays, when it was sometimes five and sometimes nine days from New Yorkto Albany by water. The river was just as navigable then as it is now;the difference lies in the tool that was used. Now in that use of thefit tool for the route lies the whole truth in transportation, and yetso far as I know the full bearing of the application of the tool tothe job is almost new to our discussions of the several phases oftransportation. In due time comes Robert Fulton and the _Clermont_begins to flap flap her weary 36 hours from New York to Albany. A newtool but the same route. In time she passed into a more modern type. The steamboat developed, and came the canal with its mule power. Howstrange it seems in these days to think of mule power ever having beenconsidered. Yet I have in my possession a letter to the constructingengineer of the Erie Railroad urging that it should be operated byhorses between New York and Buffalo and giving 10 very excellentreasons why horses were far better than steam locomotives could be. Ittook a lot of argument to keep the horses off the Erie Railroad. 

Came the steam locomotive. Now the rail was not new any more than theriver was new. The railroad or tramway in England is far back, earlierthan the railroad in America. There were tracks laid many years beforeanybody thought of a locomotive engine. The invention lies not in therailway but in the tool put upon it. Again the principle of the toolto the job. Also a new principle that the way, whether it was waterwayor railway or highway must adapt itself also to the most effectivekind of tool that could be put upon it. You could apply it butpartially to the river. When canals came along later, it becameapparent that you must not only have the best tool for your waterway, but must suit the latter also to the tool. We understand this aboutrailways; we have not been so clear about it as to waterways andhighways. 

It is within two years that the governor of a great State hassuggested to me that the use of large motor trucks be forbiddenbecause they destroyed highways. I ask you if you will warrant theremoval of locomotive engines because they are made 100 tons heavierand would break the light rail made 40 years ago? The problem is aduplex one. The best tool must be had for the job and the opportunitymust be provided for the tool to do its work. 

So the railway came along and since the mechanical engine fitted soperfectly into the American temperament and the national needs, therailway and the tool for the railway developed together side by side. Still with the coming of the railroad we thought of transportation asa unity. Highways did not amount to very much. Men went by horsebackoften, because they had to, not always because they wanted to. Andafter the railroad came, the waterway was all but destroyed, becausewe thought of transportation as a unity of railroads. Up to a very fewyears ago all of us who are not far-seeing would have thought ofpublic transportation as meaning essentially the railroads. Yet sorapidly in the last five years has the law of transportation beendeveloped that it is a little bit difficult for us to keep up with therush of this movement. 

There came into the world a new tool--the internal-combustionengine--destined to work almost as great a change in the human life asthe steam engine in its time, making possible a tool for the waterwaythat the waterway had never had before, making it possible to use forthe highway what the highway had never had before, making necessarythe alteration of the highway to suit the new tool built for it. Ithas never been true until now; it has just now become true that thewaterway and highway have been, as regards the tools for their use, ona technical and scientific level with the railway. The Government isjust putting in operation this month the first great barges for theMississippi River intended to carry ore south and coal north, madepossible because of the internal-combustion engine. The tool has come, the internal-combustion engine is altering the face of the marineworld. So that we do not really need but over 6 feet of water in thenorthern Mississippi to carry 1, 800 tons of ore in one boat. We lookupon the development of the New York State barge canal with acertainty of its profitable use for the Nation, for with a 12-footdraft we know we can carry 2, 500 tons in any vessel constructed forthe purpose, driven by internal-combustion engines. The tool for thejob and the way made ready for the tool. 

I go into my shop to put up a hammer. What is the essential feature ofmy hammer's operation? The foundation. It may be the most powerfulhammer made, but unless given a sufficient sub-structure it can onlybe destructive. So for the waterway, so for the highway. You may havethe most perfect equipment for their use but the instrument must workin a proper environment. So the waterway, then, the last few years--infact, very recently--has come rapidly into its own. It is within 18months, gentlemen, that I stood upon the first load of ore going southon the Mississippi River and saw it enter the port of St. Louis. Itwas only yesterday that I sent to the Senate my formal report urgingGovernment ownership and operation of all the northern coastal canalsfrom North Carolina to New England, with the certainty that adequateand efficient vessels could be provided for their use. 

Now, these three ways of transporting developed to their full are nothostile to each other. In the days of our ignorance we thought theywere. In other times the railroad bought canals to suppress them. Butwe have learned a larger outlook now and the congestion so recently asa year ago taught us that there are certain kinds of goods, certaintypes of transportation, that the railways of this country can notafford to do. Certain great items of bulk freight they must alwayscarry. We should starve for steel if we had to depend upon ourrailroads to bring the ores from Minnesota to Pittsburgh, and theNorthwest would be in a hard case if we had always to send coal tothem by rail from the region of the East. We are learning that thereis a differentiation in transportation. So these two enemies of thepast are likely to operate as friends to-day. It is not a strangething that the internal waterways of the country are at this timebeing operated by the Railroad Administration. It means an advance inthought. 

I told the Director General of Railways that two-thirds of the job wasfairly well in hand, but that he had left out one-third, and that Ithought he would not get his unity complete until he made it a trinityby taking in the highways. I told him that the highways as atransportation system and their development both as to roads and as tomeans of using the roads were quite as essential to the country as theother two. In reply he suggested that it was a larger job than hehimself could undertake, with the railroads and the waterways on hishands, and asked me if I would not do it. To my regret I was obligedto refuse. The law does not give me authority. I should have been gladif I could have had more of a part in it, because, given yourperfected railroad--and I speak as a friend of the railroad and afriend of the waterway, which I think is also coming into its own--Iam convinced that neither will reach its normal place as a servant ofthe people unless linked up with motor-truck routes. 

There is a steamboat line running from New Haven to New York. At NewHaven lines of motor trucks radiate out in several directions. Fromthis radius around New Haven for many miles in three directions themotor trucks come down in the evening to the boat. The boat leaves alittle before midnight and arrives in New York in the morning, whenthe freight is transferred and goes out on the early trains for theWest. It is a good system of interlocking service such as we have gotto have. 

My conception of the future of the New York Barge Canal and the canalacross New Jersey and the Chesapeake and Ohio and all the waterways isthat the companies operating on them shall pick up and deliver atevery important terminal point by lines which shall radiate out bymotor trucks from 50 to 100 miles, and they shall take from theseplaces goods thus brought to their station. So that if when, forexample, they were delivering goods from Kentucky to Illinois, itmight start from a farm or from an inland village by motor truck andgo to the nearest waterway station, there to be picked up by a vesseland to be carried down the Kentucky and Ohio to a point sufficientlynear in Illinois to where it was to go, there to be picked up by motortrucks which would carry it to its destination, and it should bebilled through by one bill of lading. That would definitely establishthat the vehicles and highways are not accidental or incidental but anessential factor. That, it seems to me, is what we are coming tobefore very long. I imagine we will come to it almost before we thinkof it. 

From that are a number of inferences. The public authorities have gotto be sufficiently educated to make a good thing possible. They havegot to learn, as many a farmer has to learn, that the most costlything in the world is a bad road; that as compared with seal-skin fursand platinum mud is far more costly an item; and that there is no suchevidence of a muddy state of mind in a community as a muddy state ofhighways in the community. They go together--mental and physical mud. 

Now, let us see whether our idea is false or true in its application. The Hudson River has by it six tracks of railroad. The fleet ofvessels upon the Hudson River was never as great, never so new or wellequipped as to-day. The vessel with the largest passenger capacity, orat least second largest (6, 000 persons), is in operation on thatriver. The freight carried on the river amounts to over 8, 000, 000 tonsa year by water. I put a factory at Troy because I could get by waterexpress service at freight rates, loading machines on the boat in theevening and have them delivered in New York the next morning, while toship the same material by railroad to New York would require three tofive days by freight. 

Directly back from the river bank on either side are two of our finehighways. Neither the railroad nor the river meet all the needs of themen living on those roads. You might build the railroads up until theyare 10 tracks wide, but you do not fully help the farmer 10 miles awayto get his produce to market. And you might fill the river withsteamers, and he may be still isolated. There must come something tohis farm which transports his produce easily and systematically and inharmony with other methods in duplex action going and coming. So ourfriend the farmer must have the rural express or its equivalent, whichcomes to his door, which in the morning connects him up with all theround earth and brings him what he wants of the earth's products backto his door that night. 

I can not think of that except as a matter of common sense. It is athing which has got to be, and in a very few years, at least, will beas accepted as such things as the rising of the sun and the setting ofthe sun. It will be considered normal. You will even find, if you havenot already found, farms offered for sale on the basis of having arural express coming and going on one side of it--perhaps on two sidesof it as we get into it more thoroughly. The whole ruralpostal-delivery system was the promise and pledge of the ruralexpress. What we do when we send the motor truck through the ruralcenters is to push the rural free-delivery and the parcel-post servicejust one step forward. I have had motor trucks put on the PribilofIslands, in the Behring Sea. They are building the roads to run onbefore they can run on them. And there, 250 miles north of theAleutian Islands, we can make motor trucks pay for themselves in asingle year by the force they add in effective transportation. We havea seal rookery 13 or 14 miles from the village of St. Paul Island. Wehave not been able to kill seals there, because we could not get skinsdown to the village. Now a couple of motor trucks bring them downwithout the least difficulty, and in order to get the road there theycarried down materials to build the road. So in the same way we have agreat many fishery stations isolated. You can not put fish hatcheriesin towns. We get them as far off as practicable. The problem is to getsufficient water and isolation, and so those stations are ratherdifficult to reach. In those places to-day we have put motor trucks. Here with these important stations 6, 8, 9, and 10 miles and sometimesmore away, it was perfectly obvious that the best, simplest, andquickest means of access was necessary and for several years now wehave been putting little Ford trucks in there, if you can call themtrucks, and I presume some of you anyway still do. They have changedthe effectiveness of the whole thing. 

That is all very simple. I imagine that one great difficulty in thisworld is that the simple things are sometimes very hard to bringabout. It is true in a certain sense that if we bring to a mansomething that is difficult and complex it catches the mind by itsvery complexity and strangeness. But if we come to him and say thatmud is one of his worst enemies it seems hard to him that it could beas bad as it really is, as he is sort of friendly toward the mud. Somany are familiar with the automobile--not as familiar, I believe, asthey are going to be--that it seems hard to think it can work asrevolutionary a change in their life as it is going to do. But I amperfectly certain that there abide these three elements oftransportation--railway, water way, and highway--that they are one, and that none of them will reach its full value to the communitywithout the other, and that each is the friend of the other. 

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