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Engineers and Government-Business Cooperation: Highway Standards and the Bureau of Public Roads, 1900–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Bruce E. Seely
Bruce E. Seely
Affiliation:
Bruce E. Seely is assistant professor of history atTexas A&M University.
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Abstract

Industrial standardization, when noted at all by historians, has usually been associated with the rise of large corporations in the late nineteenth century. In this article, however, Professor Seely contends that, in the highway industry, the introduction of uniform standards and specifications in the early twentieth century was spearheaded by federal engineers in the Bureau of Public Roads—the government's highway agency—through a variety of indirect and cooperative arrangements with state governments, trade associations, and professional organizations. Government leadership in the standardization of highway engineering practices and materials requirements, Seely concludes, suggests the significant role engineers played in the drive for uniformity. Linking nineteenth-century business-sponsored standardization efforts with the government-sponsored efforts of the twentieth century, engineers brought, despite a shift in institutional base, a singleness of purpose to the movement as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , Spring 1984 , pp. 51 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1984

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References

1 See Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency; The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1840–1920 (Cambridge, Mass. 1959)Google Scholar; Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Melosi, Martin V., ed., Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870–1930 (Austin, 1980)Google Scholar; idem, Garbage in the Cities; Refuse, Reform, and the Environment, 1880–1980 (College Station, Texas, 1981); Schultz, Stanley K. and McShane, Clay, “To Engineer the Metropolis: Sewers, Sanitation, and City-Planning in Late-Nineteenth Century America,” Journal of American History 65 (September 1978): 389–411CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Stine, Jeffrey K., Nelson P. Lewis and the City Efficient: The Municipal Engineer in City Planning During the Progressive Era, Essays in Public Works History, no. 11 (Chicago, 1981)Google Scholar; Foster, Mark S., From Street Car to Superhighway; American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900–1940 (Philadelphia, 1981).Google Scholar

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6 Census data clearly demonstrates the local orientation of the road materials industry. In 1902 there were more than 5,700 stone quarries but only 3 had more than $500,000 in annual sales; 96 percent had an output less than $100,000. Similarly there were almost 2,200 brick manufacturers by 1914. Bureau of the Census, Special Reports: Mines and Quarries, 1902 (Washington, 1905), 785, 839Google Scholar; idem, Census of Manufacturers, 1914, vol. 2: Reports for Selected Industries and Detail Statistics for Industries by States (Washington, 1919), 922.

7 On the early development of highways, see Rae, John B., The American Automobile; A Brief History (Chicago, 1965)Google Scholar; America's Highways, 36–90; Mason, Phillip, “The League of American Wheelmen and the Good Roads Movement, 1890–1905” (Ph.D. diss., 1957)Google Scholar; and Seely, Bruce E., “Highway Engineers as Policy Makers. The Bureau of Public Roads, 1893–1944” (Ph. D. diss., University of Delaware, 1982), chap. 1.Google Scholar

8 The activities of the Office can be followed in Department of Agriculture, Office of Road Inquiry, Report of the Agent and Engineer for Road Inquiry (1893–1898); idem, Office of Public Road Inquiry, Report of the Director of the Office of Public Road Inquiry (1899–1904); and idem, Office of the Public Roads, Report of the Director of the Office of Public Roads, (1905–1918) (hereafter OPR Annual Reports); abo Holt, W. Stull, The Bureau of Public Roads; Its History, Activities and Organization (Baltimore, 1923; reprint ed., New York, 1974).Google Scholar

9 Logan Page to railroad executives, 24 March 1908, File 270, General Correspondence, 1893–1916, Records of the Bureau of Public Roads, Record Group 30, National Archives, Washington National Record Center, Suitland, Maryland (hereafter Records of the BPR).

10 See OPR Annual Reports, (1894–1918); Seely, “Highway Engineers,” 30, 69–72.

11 An outline of Bureau efforts in the states can be found in America's Highways, 64–142; details have been drawn from the massive correspondence in Files 3 and 369, General Correspondence, 1893–1916, Records of the BPR, and OPR Annual Reports, 1893–1918.

12 Wiebe, , Search for Order, 161Google Scholar.

13 “Specifications for Bituminous Cement,” Engineering News 73 (April 1915); 641.

14 For information on early efforts to prepare specifications, see America's Highways, 44; Report of the ARBA Committee on Standards, 11 December 1913, in North Carolina Geological Survey Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; “American Society for Civil Engineers' Annual Meeting,” Engineering News 73 (28 January 1915); 186–87; W. W. Crosby, “Standardizing Road Building Terminology,” folder 4, W. W. Crosby Lectures, Special Collection, Folger Library, University of Maine, Orono, Maine; Older, Clifford, “Standard Plans Solve Problems of State Highway Bridge Supervision in Illinois,” Engineering News-Record 78 (5 April 1917); 31–34Google Scholar; ibid., “Kentucky Road Department Has Standard Bridges,” 79 (9 August 1917): 255; Mississippi Valley Conference of State Highway Departments, Historical Highlights, 1909–1974 (n.p., n.d.), mimeograph copy at Iowa State Department of Transportation Library, Ames, Iowa, xii-48, xii-49; “Committee on Lincoln Highway Ideal Section Named,” Engineering News-Record 85 (16 September 1920): 576.

15 “Object Lessons in Road Building,” Scientific American 106 (16 March 1912): 232. On the Office's work in preparing and distributing standards and specifications, see correspondence in File 470, Classified Central File, 1912–1950, Records of the BPR; America's Highways, 67; and a large number of bulletins and circulars issued by the Bureau through the Department of Agriculture from 1911 to 1924. These include Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Public Roads, Typical Specifications for Bituminous Road Materials, by Hubbard, Prevost and Reeve, Charles S., Department Bulletin no. 691 (Washington, 1918)Google Scholar; idem, Typical Specifications for Nonbituminous Road Materials, by Hubbard, Prevost and Jackson, Frank H. Jr., Department Bulletin no. 704 (Washington, 1918Google Scholar); and idem, Standard and Tentative Methods of Sampling and Testing Highway Materials, Department Bulletin no. 949 (Washington, 1921).

16 “Paternalistic Standardization,” Engineering News-Record 83 (30 October-6 November 1919): 782.

17 OPR Annual Reports (1911), 786; Department of Agriculture, Office of Public Roads, Progress Reports of Experiments in Dust Prevention and Road Preservation, 1911, Circular no. 98 (12 December 1912), 17–27; Correspondence in File 335, General Correspondence, 1893–1916, Records of the BPR.

18 On links between the Bureau and the ASTM, see correspondence in Letters Sent Regarding the Society for Testing Materials, and in File 470, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR; American Society for Testing Materials, Fifiy-Year Index of ASTM Technical Papers and Reports, 1898–1952 (Philadelphia, 1952)Google Scholar; idem. Yearbook of the American Society for Testing Materials (Philadelphia, 1905–20).

19 On cooperation between the Bureau and the brick and cement trade associations, *see the correspond ence in Files 29 and 27, General Correspondence, 1893–1916, Records of the BPR.

20 On the federal-aid bill of 1916, see Seely, “Highway Engineers,” chap. 2; on the federal-aid principle, see MacDonald, Austin F., Federal Aid: A Study of the American Subsidy System (New York, 1928).Google Scholar

21 Unconfirmed Minutes, Joint Meeting of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, Society of Automotive Engineers, Bureau of Public Roads, and Advisory Board on Highway Research, 8 January 1923, file 001.11, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR.

22 W.D. Uhler to AASHO committee members, 19 October 1917, File 481 General; and Correspondence between Uhler and P. St. J. Wilson, June and August 1917, File 470, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR.

23 On the Bureau's involvement with AASHO, see American Association of State Highway Officials, AASHO. The First Fifty Years, 1914–1964 (Washington, 1965), 343–49Google Scholar; also correspondence in File 481 General, especially Thomas H. MacDonald to W. D. Uhler, 3 May 1920; T. Warren Allen to P. St. J. Wilson, 6 March 1920, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR; and American Association of State Highway Officials, Policies in Geometric Highway Design (Washington, 1950).Google Scholar

24 Thomas H. MacDonald to G. P. Coleman, 12 December 1916, uncatalogued papers of Thomas H. MacDonald, Texas A&M University Archives, College Station, Texas (hereafter MacDonald Papers); American Association of State Highway Officials, “Report of the Committee on Highway Research Activities,” Fourteenth Annual Meeting, 12 November 1928, 3. In 1920 the BPR spent $150,000 on research as opposed to $175,000 from a total of twenty-two states. By 1928 the Bureau supplied $400,000 of the $775,000 spent by all highway research agencies in the country. National Research Council, Highway Research Board, Ideas and Actions: A History of the Highway Research Board, 1920–1970 (Washington, 1971), 9, 181.Google Scholar

25 See BPR Annual Report (1922), 493; P. St. J. Wilson to C A. Hahn, 30 September 1930, File 440—Pennsylvania, General; H. S. Fairbank to Charles E. Petterson, 5 November 1938, File 470, Classified Central File, Records of the BPR; Johnson, A. E., “Committee of AASHO,” in AASHO: The First Fifty Years, 1914–1964 (Washington, 1965), 103Google Scholar, Minutes of the AASHO Executive Committee, 4 June 1923, Minutes of Executive Committee, MacDonald Papers, AASHO, Policies on Geometric Highway Design.

26 Interview with G. Donald Kennedy, Michigan State Highway Engineer, 1932–1940, and Highway Commissioner, 1940–1941, Wilmette, Illinois, 19 August 1980. Kennedy served on the federal committee appointed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 that prepared the first plans for the Interstate Highway System and later was a highway engineer with the Automotive Safety Foundation and President of the Portland Cement Association.

27 MacDonald, Thomas H., in “The Functioning of Federal-Aid in the Development of Highway Trans portation,” American Highways (2 June 1923): 7Google Scholar; see also Americas Highways, 88.

28 The Bureau-Michigan relationship unfolded in correspondence in File 481: Plans, Specifications, and Estimates—Michigan, Classified Central File, 1912–1950, Records of the BPR. On the 1917 episode, see Memorandum: Prevost Hubbard to A. E. Loder, 26 December 1917, Ibid.

29 Ibid.; MacDonald, Federal Aid, 114–115.

30 P. St. J. Wilson to J. T. Voshell, 1 May 1926, File 481: Plans, Specifications, and Estimates—Michigan, Classified Central File, 1912–1950, Records of the BPR.

31 Seely, “Highway Engineers,” chapter 3, examines in detail state-federal relations under the federalaid system. See also America's Highways, 198–237.

32 America's Highways, 158–59, 390–94.

33 On the Bureau's claims, see BPR Annual Reports (1919–40); on the Oklahoma scandal, see “Where Graft Reached Epidemic Levels,” U.S. News & World Report 92 (11 January 1982): 44; and “67 Out of 77 at Least,” New York Times, 13 September 1981, p. 39 on bid rigging, see “DOT Chief Tells Critics Politics Don't Affect Grants,” Engineering News-Record 203 (13 December 1979): 19; “Bid Rigging Nets State $1.9 Million Settlement,” Ibid., 207 (2 July 1981): 70–71; “New Federal Charges of Bid Rigging on Road Construction,” Wall Street Journal, 18 June 1981, p. 18 col. 3. On BPR and politics see Seely, “Highway Engineers,” chaps. 1 and 2.

34 For links between the ASTM and the Bureau, see correspondence in File 470, Classified Central File, 1912–1950, Records of the BPR; BPR Annual Reports, (1919–1938); and ASTM, Yearbook, (1920–1940). These ties are developed more fully in Seely, “Highway Engineers,” chap. 5.

35 For information on the Bureau's work on crushed-stone sizes, see correspondence in File 470 for 1917–1923, Classified Central File, 1912–1950, Records of the BPR; Jackson, F. H. and Mitman, S. W., “The Commercial Sizes of Broken Stone Aggregates,” Public Roads 1 (June 1918): 35Google Scholar; idem, “The Commercial Size of Crushed Stone Aggregates,” Public Roads 2 (June 1919): 35–40; BPR Annual Report (1920), 497; American Society for Testing Materials, Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting 20, pt. 1 (1920): 432; and Scherer, R. W., “Standard Sizes of Crushed Stone From the Viewpoint of the Producer,” Public Roads 1 (September 1918): 17.Google Scholar

36 Davis, Harmer E., Troxell, George E., and Wiskocil, Clement T., The Testing and Inspection of Engineering Materials, (New York, 1941), 11Google Scholar. “ASCE Tackles Standards,” Civil Engineering 47 (August 1976): 67; and K. A. Godfrey, Jr., “ASTM—Number One on Consensus Standards,” Ibid., 51 (May 1981): 68–70.

37 The later trade association contacts can be traced in the correspondence in a number of Bureau files; File 481 Culvert Specifications, Files 450.35, 450.40, and 470, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR.

38 Thomas H. MacDonald to T. H. Burton, 1 August 1931, File 450.40, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR.

39 This situation was exactly analogous to that sketched by Bruce Sinclair in the successful development of a boiler code by the ASME in 1914. Sinclair, Centennial History, 46–60, 144–57.

40 Cuff, Robert, The War Industries Board; Business-Government Relations During World War I (Baltimore, 1973), 234–40Google Scholar; Adams, “National Standards Movement,” 21–26; Hudson, Ray M., “Government Cooperation in National Standards Movement,” Mining Congress Journal 13 (April 1927): 265Google Scholar; idem, “Organized Effort in Standardization,” Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science 137 (May 1928): 6; Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards, Measures for Progress; A History of the National Bureau of Standards by Cochrane, Rexmond C. (Washington, 1966), 229–37, 253–98Google Scholar; Herbert Hoover, “The Crusade for Standards,” in National Standards in a Modern Economy, 3–4.

41 Adams, “National Standards Movement,” 22–23; “Standards in Industry,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 137 (May 1928): 1–258; Peck, E. C., “Standards Must be Sold to Industry,” Electrical World 84 (15 November 1924): 1079–80Google Scholar; “Wider Use of Standards Should Be Promoted,” Engineering News-Record 82 (24 April 1919): 800; Burlingame, Luther D., “Standardization vs. Individuality,” Mechanical Engineering 46 (September 1924): 529–30, 538Google Scholar; and MacDonald to Dr. George A. Burgess, 29 May 1926, File 470, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR.

42 On MacDonald's promotional efforts, see letters to the oil and tar industries in 1930 and 1931 in File 450.40; for the crushed stone association ties, see File 470; for involvement with the metal culvert manufacturers, see correspondence between MacDonald and F. B. Milhoan, 1919–22, in File 481 Culvert Specifications, Classified Central File, 1912–50, Records of the BPR.

43 On cooperative capitalism, see Hawley, Ellis W., “Herbert Hoover and Economic Stability, 1921–1922,” in Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice, ed. Hawley, Ellis W. (Iowa City, Iowa, 1981), 43–79Google Scholar; Huthmacher, J. Joseph and Susman, Warren I., eds., Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 3–33Google Scholar; Hawley, Ellis, “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative State,’ 1921–1928,” Journal of American History 61 (June 1974): 116–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Crisis of American Capitalism, 8.

45 Seely, , “Highway Engineers,” chaps. 2, 3, and 5; Cuff, War Industries Board, 4–5Google Scholar; Nash, Gerald D., United States Oil Policy, 1890–1964 (Westport, Conn., 1968), 30–40.Google Scholar

46 See Hawley, , “Hoover and Economic Stability,” 43–79; and Crisis of American Capitalism, 3–33Google Scholar.

47 The highway industry's respect was clear in the voluminous correspondence of the BPR, but it was brought home most forcefully to the author in an interview with G. Donald Kennedy, the former Michigan highway official and friend of MacDonald.

48 In 1940, for example, MacDonald vetoed the entire federal-aid program submitted by Oklahoma because it failed to consider the criteria then in effect—consideration of defense needs. America's Highways, 142–44. But the usual pattern is apparent in correspondence with the states in File 481, Classified Central File 1912–1950, Records of the BPR; and in Gomez, R. A., Intergovernmental Relations in Highways (Minneapolis, 1950), 51.Google Scholar

49 Significantly, the only strong voice raised in opposition to the federal highway policy in general was that of the railroads. Ironically, the railroads had been the largest corporate supporter of federal highway construction from the 1890s until about 1915, seeing roads as feeders to rail lines. With the establishment of a national highway network that began to compete with the railroads after 1920, railway corporations launched a drive that has continued ever since, arguing that federal highway expenditures represented an unfair subsidy to trucking and bus companies. The amazing point is that the BPR's policy in the face of this charge was generally to ignore it, although on occasion federal engineers prepared figures to refute the railroads. Almost certainly because of the public support for roads, the railroads have little to show for their fifty years of campaigning.

50 See Seely, “Highway Engineers,” chap. 4.

51 Discussion following the article by Wilson, P. St. J., “Surveys and Plans and Suggested Charges to Meet the Shortage of Engineers,” Public Roads 2 (December 1919): 48–49.Google Scholar

52 Pratt, Joseph, “Creating Coordination in the Modern Petroleum Industry: the American Petroleum Institute and the Emergence of Secondary Organizations in Oil,” Research in Economic History 8 (1983): 179–215Google Scholar; and idem, “Letting the Grandchildren do it: Environmental Planning During the Ascent of Oil as a Major Energy Source,” Public History 2 (Summer 1980): 28–61.

53 Nash, United States Oil Policy, 93–111.

54 An examination of the Engineering News-Record's coverage of the abortive proposal to create a cabinet-level Department of Public Works to oversee all government construction demonstrates the fate of such grand schemes. See Engineering News-Record, 82–86 (January 1919-June 1921).

55 Hawley, “Hoover and Economic Stability,” 65–66.

56 Sinclair, , Centennial History, 47Google Scholar.

57 Veblen, Thorstein, The Engineers and the Price System (New York, 1921).Google Scholar