It is the belief of those most active in the work of the American Academy that the question of the Conservation of American resources outranks all other economic questions now before the people of the United States. It is especially important that National and local organizations should cooperate as fully as possible in educating the public as to the present condition of our resources, the manner in which they are being used, and the measures that should be taken to make these resources of permanent as well as of present value to the American people.
Respectfully submitted,
[Signed] Emory R. Johnson, Chairman
Frederick C. Stevens
Wm. B. Dean
W. A. Fleming Jones
Wm. L. West
Charles W. Ames
Committee
REPORT OF THE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
When the American Automobile Association was originally honored with an invitation to the National Conservation Congress it promptly accepted with two objects in view; first, to influence, if possible, the advocacy of a good highway construction and maintenance policy throughout the United States—National, State, and local—in its program in order to broaden and help the movement itself, and second, to enlist the friends of Conservation in advancing highway construction; in other words, to make the theory of Conservation cover not only the care and perpetuation of natural resources, but all broad economic activities, throughout the length and breadth of the country, concerning the care and betterment of property, whether natural or artificial. The resident in the East must feel that only by bringing within the scope of the Conservation movement these somewhat narrower and more artificial economic measures can any wide and deeply interested following be secured in the more thickly settled eastern States, as most questions of bulk ownership and management of natural property in this section have long since been settled in law and in fact. If you adopt this theory and definition of Conservation, and thereupon, among other efforts, give your help to advance the matter of good roads, then the advocates of good roads all over the country will have gained an ally, and you will have secured new friends.
The American Automobile Association is devoting the major part of its time, means, and enthusiasm to advancing and coordinating the activity of good highway construction and maintenance, and to the preparation and enactment of good National, State, and local legislation regulating traffic on these highways all over the country. The Association is organized in the large majority of all our States, with a large local following in every center, and with an effective central management cooperating with the most important like bodies abroad and with such associations at home as the U. S. Office of Good Roads; National Grange, Patrons of Husbandry; Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union; and League of American Wheelmen. It consists of State organizations in most of the States, comprising approximately 250 local clubs and over 30,000 members. It is an active force engaged in useful educational and constructive work to better our National life by improving in an intelligent and public spirited manner a very important branch of transportation. It is and has been for some years the leading spirit in this work, as witness the organization of the National Good Roads Convention with the above-mentioned cooperating associations to be held in Saint Louis toward the end of this month.
Transportation, broadly considered, has been the greatest ruling economic force in every civilization created by man. Its absence or limitation ever makes for barbarism or the decadence of the people so confined. It is the pioneer and prime moving force in the creation of progress and enlightenment. Each stage of the world's history that has witnessed some pronounced advance in transportation methods has been swiftly followed by a more than proportionate advance in progress, in wealth, and in happiness of the people affected. Witness the march of wealth and education following the practical operation of the steam railway in the later half of the last century, and the further advance following the practical perfection of electrical transportation during the last quarter of the same century. Steam has provided transportation for the great bulk of world life; electricity opened the way for relatively lighter and cheaper transport, thus opening sections otherwise not accessible for economic reasons. The motor-car and the public highway have crowned these achievements by providing a means for speedy, cheap, safe, and agreeable transport to any corner of the country, the qualities just described constituting the essence of what is best in transportation.
The public highways in the country, however, which premise the reasonable use of motor transportation, have not advanced either in quality or quantity with the means of transport itself during the past fifteen years. The very existence of steam transport when this country was young and sparsely settled and poor and badly developed, and even of electrical transport at a later day, had in themselves limited the development of a reasonable highway system, when comparison is made with other older countries of like wealth, population, and civilization. In earlier days military necessity did not compel this Government to build National highways for the movement of troops—the railroads did that. Economy of transport did not compel the several States to build highways—the railway, the steamboat, the electric tram cared for that. It was not until the advent of the practical modern motor-car that the almost savage condition of this country with respect to highways became apparent. Since then, say within the past ten years, the force moving all over the country toward reasonable highway development, maintenance, and regulation (which had its great inspiration in the army of motor-car tourists acquiring a knowledge of the geography and the beauties of this country by a new and independent method of travel, and which has more recently turned into a flood of growing purpose and organization for better highways because of the conviction of the farmer and the business man of the United States of their economic value in reducing the cost of ton-mile detail haulage to the lines of bulk transportation), as well as toward the moral uplift of the entire farming and country life, due to releasing the country resident from the unhealthy isolation of former times—this force must now be recognized and satisfied, and this Conservation Congress is a logical forum for exploiting and advancing these aspirations.
A recent phase of this great new interest and industry has been the abuse heaped upon it by certain special interests that have been touched by the change the motor-car has wrought over the country. The Reverend Sam Small once remarked that if you threw a brick in the dark and heard a dog howl you knew that you had hit him. The misrepresentation and denunciation and apparent lack of understanding of the true meaning of this new interest seems to come near those financial and bulk transportation interests—with their affected fear of largely mythological mortgages—from which the motor-car user in the aggregate has detached some profit either in transport or in investment. It needs no fine intelligence in these times to understand the weight and purpose of this opposition which has assumed an almost proscriptive right to the collection and handling of the loose money of the unorganized individual all over the country. What is this doctrine that the banker has become the censor of the individual's needs and actions with his own money? Have the farmer and the business man of this country recently become so poor or reckless or so much in debt as to apologize to their fiscal agents for the purchase of a motor-car with their own money or lose credit? Does this not logically lead to an equal apology and loss of credit for owning a decent home instead of a miserable one, or wearing good clothing, or eating good food, or getting a good education, or buying a carpet, a piano, or any of the other things which in the sum constitute the high environment of American life? The tens of thousands of users of motor-cars that are today deriving health and pleasure and, in a far greater number of cases than generally known, profit from the purchase and use of motor-cars, are deflecting interest and capital from channels which have long enjoyed them to their great benefit. That is the origin of the detraction of the motor-car industry and the individuals who created it and who are enjoying it today.
Fair and intelligent consideration is not generally given to the fact that speedier transportation wherever possible is inevitable in human history; that, when a farmer or a doctor or a real estate agent, or a business man of any sort, finds that, at the same cost, he can do, with the same personal effort per day, four times more work in a motor-car than with a pair of horses, provided decent roads exist—when this fundamental economic fact reaches the masses, then good roads teeming with motor-cars and trucks and reasonable universal legislation will be demanded and gotten. When added to this, the same investment provides the means of winging off where fancy leads on a healthful and charming tour or visit, who shall deny that the individual is wise to avail himself of this new facility?
Finally, sufficient weight is not given to the fact that every ton of freight in this broad country must be carried from its primal source, not once but several times, to a railroad or steamboat or tram, before it reaches the goal of the final user. The perfected motor-wagon and truck made in quantity at reasonable cost, provided the good highway exists everywhere, is the inevitable source of such reasonable transport: and, from the standpoint of utility, or effectiveness, or congestion of street areas, or speed—from any standpoint whatsoever—it is as distinct an advance over animal traction as was the electric tram thirty years ago over animal traction in that field of enterprise. The millions of dollars going into this industry spread out through the people, irrigating the total prosperity of the country through its appropriate channels, just as money spent on everything else the individual buys throughout the country, adds its appropriate quota to our National prosperity, and should be quite as immune from attack and misrepresentation.