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
RESOLUTION PASSED BY THE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE.
"The Council of National Defense approves the widest possibleuse of the motor truck as a transportation agency, and requeststhe State Councils of Defense and other State authorities totake all necessary steps to facilitate such means oftransportation, removing any regulations that tend to restrictand discourage such use."
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1918
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 Ihave always been interested in transportation. It has always been asubject of keen interest to me, I presume, because I was born with it.By the fortune of birth I came to live in a region wheretransportation has been through every one of its stages in thiscountry. If you go back into the history of the Colonies, you willfind the two first lines of through transportation in America wereeast and west—the St. Lawrence River and the Lakes—while for over acentury the one great central north and south line was the HudsonRiver, Lake George, and Lake Champlain. In that entire length from theSt. Lawrence to New York Harbor there was but about 13 miles thatc