One hundred years ago, Horatio “By Gum” Earle, president of a bicyclists’ association called the League of American Wheelmen, met with three other men in the Cadillac Hotel in New York City. They approved a constitution of an association of road builders that is today a major force in the transportation and construction industry.
The constitution provided for a president and three vice presidents and created eastern, southern, central and western divisions. The annual membership fee was $5. “This is not a cheap affair and cheap members will not be tolerated,” Earle wrote.
At the time of the Feb. 13, 1902, meeting, only 14,000 cars — which farmers dubbed the “red devils” — were registered in the United States. The country included millions of bicycles. Both the early motorists and the cyclists were mired in mud, especially on country lanes.
The meeting founded the American Road Makers (ARM), which was renamed the American Road Builders Association (ARBA) in 1910, and became the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) in 1977. Thus this year is ARTBA’s 100th anniversary, marking a century of astonishing advances in transportation.
Prophetic Vision
Earle, who had been a classmate of future president Calvin Coolidge at a private academy in Ludlow, VT, recognized the exciting future of the automobile. He had lobbied hard for improved roads for cyclists. Now, in calling the meeting and founding the ARM organization, he actually envisaged what would become the interstate highway system for cars.
Earle began a letter inviting 200 road supporters to the meeting with the words: “There is a deep laid plot, of which I am cognizant, for an uprising to overthrow a certain monarch, and I assume your acquaintance with me leads you to believe that that monarch’s name is Mud.” He wrote that he was determined to “bury this monarch underneath of load of stone" and said the ARM “would never lower its arm until its purpose, ’the Capital Connecting Government Highway,’ is attained, connecting every state capital with every other state capital, and every capital with the United States Capital — Washington.”
Earle was the right man at the right time. Such a highway, he said, would be “the eighth wonder of the world” and would facilitate national defense. And, by gum, speaking for the nation’s highway system, it has come true. Earle proposed that a federal government appoint a special commission (including the president of the cyclists’ league and of the farmers’ Grange) “to map out this highway, estimate the cost, secure the appropriation for carrying out the same, and report to the next Congress.”
He hoped to complete the national highway in a decade, writing that “it may be possible that you and I will hand in our accounts before we shall have the satisfaction of seeing the last mile of the Capital Connecting Government Highway built” but asserting that “I am confident that we will have the pleasure within 10 years of riding to the annual congress of the American Road Makers upon this great highway.”
By Gum proved to be a prophetic nickname. “’G’ stands for God’s, ’U’ stands for
Using and ’M’ stands for Me,” Earle wrote. “And the whole stands for By God’s
Using me, this world shall become a better world, By Gum.”
The founder’s vision came true, though it took a little longer than 10 years. Dwight D. Eisenhower personally experienced the mud and ruts of the nation’s roads while leading a convoy of Army trucks to the West Coast. The 46,000-mi. Interstate Highway System, which he began as president in the latter 1950s, was basically what Horatio Earle envisaged.
Need for Pavements
The League of American Wheelmen, which Earle had headed, fought for the privilege of building bicycle paths along the site of public highways, and for equal privileges with horse-drawn vehicles. In his autobiography, Earle wrote that "the bicycle, with its allied interests, without question was the pioneer of the good roads movement in the United States.”
Earle experienced opposition. Some farmers actually opposed building new roads. Earle quoted a letter saying that “if owners of the ’red devils’ (meaning automobiles) wanted any better roads, they should buy the right-of-way and build their own roads, and not use the farmers’ roads and scare their ’hosses.’”
A resident of Detroit, Earle was known as the “Father of Good Roads in Michigan.” He had called the first International Good Roads Congress in Port Huron, MI, in July 1900, for bicycle enthusiasts, founded the Michigan Good Roads Association, and helped found several companies including Good Roads Supply Co. and Genesee Gravel Company of Detroit.
“By Gum” was part of a good roads movement which had begun in the early 1890s. Nearly all highways outside cities lacked hard pavements at that time and were lucky to be of macadam or gravel surfaces. Even in cities, nearly half the streets were unpaved. Recognizing the problem, over 1,000 people attended the charter meeting of the National League for Good Roads, which Gen. Roy Stone, one of the important early pioneers in the movement, called together in Chicago in Oct. 1892.
At its second meeting, in 1893, the League called for the creation of a National Highway Commission. Also in 1893, Congress established the Office of Road Inquiry — with Stone as special agent and engineer — as part of the Dept. of Agriculture to investigate road conditions and disseminate information on good road construction practices.
The nation was beginning to realize that roads were much better in other countries. After the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Stone wrote: “Men coming from all parts of the land and from every walk of life drew aside from the contemplation of the triumphs of American civilization to counsel together on one great reproach to that civilization, the common roads of this country.”
Farmers and bicyclists were prime movers behind the early movement, the former recognizing that roads could tip the balance against railroad monopolies, the latter, usually well-heeled urban individuals, wanting smoother surfaces, instead of mud, for weekend spins in the country. Over one million bicycles were produced in 1900.
Thus the stage was set for a new organization that would help meet the need to conquer the monarch named Mud.
Movement Grows
The newly formed American Road Makers played a significant role in the revolt against King Mud. When “By Gum” founded ARM in 1902, total expenditures for good roads in all states totaled an estimated $500,000 per year. These expenditures grew fast as the Red Devils proliferated.
Henry Ford had completed his first automobile, a single-seat affair on bicycle wheels, in his Detroit workshop in 1896. By 1910, at least 458,000 cars were on roads which were increasingly hard surface.
The Road Makers helped the auto industry grow, and grew with it. The mileage of paved roads grew to 204,000 in 1910, and 369,000 in 1920. The value of roads put in place in 1915 totaled $302 million.
The organization was also becoming more active as an industry organization. In 1909, ARM held in first “road show” in Columbus, OH, and, in 1910, substituted Road Builders Association for Road Makers, reflecting more widespread activities.
Growth has been steady over the century. Since the four men met in New York, the association has grown to more than 5,000 members from all segments of the construction and transportation industry, with 32 state contractor chapters (and a 33rd to be added shortly). It is the only organization that focuses exclusively on transportation and construction issues.
Promoting Legislation
The road building association has had a major impact on U.S. transportation policy ever since those early years. “We’re still doing what we’ve been doing for 100 years, which is to protect and build the construction market for our members,” says Matt Jeanneret, ARTBA’s vice president of communications in Washington, D.C.
ARM held its first convention in Detroit on Feb. 23, 1903. It lobbied in these early years for keeping responsibility for roadbuilding at the state level while maintaining a federal role for subsidies.
“I believe it is best for states, counties and townships to do everything they can for themselves, rather than to transfer all their business to governmental affairs in Washington,” Earle wrote. (Earle’s ARM leadership coincided with a very active role in building Michigan’s highways. When the state legislature created a “Highway Educational Department” in 1902-03, the governor appointed him as commissioner of highways. Earle served without pay for two years after the state attorney general declared the law unconstitutional. Then, in 1905, the legislature passed the “State Reward Road Law,” which Earle wrote, and he was appointed the “constitutional” commissioner.)
In 1907, Earle drafted a “National Reward Road Bill” that he sent to each member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He called for establishing a U.S. Highway Dept. in the Dept. of Agriculture "to provide for national reward for the improvement of the public wagon roads.”
In 1916, the association was part of a coalition that helped pass the Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916. This important legislation established a federal role in road construction, including the first sizable appropriation of federal funds for road improvements, and apportionment formulas for the funds.
The 1916 Act spurred roadbuilding. By 1920, the value of roads put in place rose to $656 million.
Major Accomplishments
The roadbuilding association has been a major force in subsequent federal transportation policy and legislation. It was closely involved in creating the 46,000-mi. Interstate Highway System in the 1950s under President Eisenhower.
“It all started with a person 100 years ago who had a vision for the interstate system, which became one of our nation’s great achievements in transportation,” Jeanneret says.
In the 1960s, the association successfully sought congressional approval for creation of a cabinet-level U.S. Dept. of Transportation, expanding its activities in 1969 to include other modes of transportation, with advisory councils for highways, airports and public transit. Other advisory groups for safety and railroads were added in 1974 and 1976.
In the 1970s, the American Association of Road Builders proposed the original legislative concepts for the federal government’s 4-R program of highway resurfacing, reconstruction, rehabilitation and replacement, and for the federal bridge repair and replacement program. These are now the fastest-growing segments of the construction industry.
After establishing a Transportation Officials Division in 1977, the association adopted its present name that year. In 1982, as ARTBA, it successfully pushed the first federal gas tax increase for road construction in 23 years, leading the movement to dramatically increase the level of federal funding for highway, airport and mass transit projects.
The association held the first national conference on highway work zone safety in 1985, followed by a second conference in 1994 and an international conference in 2001.
In the 1990s, under Dr. T. Peter Ruane, the association’s current president/CEO, ARTBA was a major advocate leading industry coalitions pushing the ISTEA and TEA-21 highway bills that provided record federal funds for highways, bridges and mass transit. It did this through campaigns, such as “Building a Better America Through Transportation.”
Legislation that the association actively promulgated also included such major steps as passing the Byrd-Gramm Amendment that redirected 4.3-cents-per-gallon of the federal gasoline tax from the General Fund to the Highway Trust Fund. ARTBA led the formation of the “Alliance for Truth in Transportation Budgeting,” which helped spur the legislation establishing budgetary firewalls around the four federal transportation trust funds.
“We’ve become a valuable source for Congress for information on transportation policy-related issues,” Jeanneret says. “Our Economics and Research Division under Dr. Bill Buechner, for instance, has completed numerous cutting-edge economic reports on our industry which have been widely circulated and used on The Hill. This year, for the new Congress, we’ve prepared three-and-four-inch-thick briefing binders explaining the impact of the construction industry; even localizing the information for congressional districts.”
Besides focusing on national funding, ARTBA also greatly expanded its activities in the regulatory and legal areas during the 1990s. It filed its first environmental lawsuit to protect industry market interests in 1993.
Accomplishments included successfully suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers on proposed expansion of wetlands and clean air regulations, and organizing a strategic litigation alliance for the industry, called the Advocates for Safe and Efficient Transportation (ASET).
In 2000, an ARTBA-led coalition secured passage of AIR-21, increasing federal airport capital investment by more than 60 percent.
The Washington, DC, headquarters, which includes about 30 staff members, is a many-faceted advocacy and information group. Besides maintaining many personal contacts with Congress, it has expanded its public relations and advertising.
“We are one of the first organizations to do advocacy advertising in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper which targets members of Congress and their staff,” says Jeanneret. “We also have a toll-free hotline giving members direct contact with members of Congress and the White House.”
ARTBA also conducts conferences, with its next annual meeting scheduled for March 17-21 in Las Vegas, NV, publishes a newsletter, magazine and educational materials, and has a Web site (www.artba.org). It maintains standing committees, policy advisory councils and professional development sections that work on issues, and also conducts training programs.
The association has eight membership divisions: contractors, planning and design, transportation officials, traffic safety, materials and services, public-private ventures in transportation, education and research and equipment manufacturers.
Today, the industry that ARTBA represents generates more than $185 billion per year in U.S. economic activity and employs 2.2 million people. Horatio’s letter started it all. He did it, by gum. CEG
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