From Out of the Mud to On the Open Road
“O public road, you express me
better than I can express myself.” – Whitman1
In any
careful analysis, the highway is inseparable from the automobile. While these
two technological systems are quite different in terms of engineering
expertise, materials and construction/production techniques, they intersect in
critical respects. For example, the design of the modern automobile’s – in
terms of power plants, suspension, and safety features – was largely determined
by the highways on which it traveled. Automobiles are engineered either to
transmit the “feel” of the road (a more recent American priority forced upon us
by the Europeans), or eliminate it (the living room ride of Detroit iron during
the 1950s, for example). Similarly, highway construction, in terms of width,
grade, surface, drainage, and layout, is planned only after taking into account
the nature of the vehicles that will traverse the land. Safety is a major point
at the intersection of these two systems, although sadly that has not always
been the case.
Which Came First: Good Roads or the Automobile?
The interrelated
topics of adoption of the automobile and the construction of good roads in
America have been the focus of a “chicken and egg” historiographical debate
during the past twenty years. The central question is whether the coming of the
automobile resulted in the development of improved roadways, or conversely,
that existing roads in a number of cities were critical to the acceptance and
growing popularity of the car. The interpretation that the car led to good
roads was primarily the result of work done in the 1960s and 1970s by John C.
Burnham, John Rae, and James Flink, whose interpretations corroborated reports
written in trade magazines and popular literature dating back to the beginning
of the twentieth century. Rae wrote in 1971 that, “When mass production of
motor vehicles was introduced, it preceded any major improvement in the highway
network. The historical principle that the highway is built for the vehicle,
rather than vice versa, holds good for the automobile.”2 Later,
these scholars were labeled by urban historians Eric Monkkonen and Clay McShane
as “technological determinists.” Monkkonen asserted that politics had a primacy
over technology related to urban transportation when he stated that “good roads
are purely political creations.”3 Monkonnen was settling scores with
interpretations that were far more sweeping than those written by automobile
historians. Yet to extend his analysis to the sphere of America both urban and
rural, Monkonnen was traversing dangerous ground.
Clay
McShane, whose previous work had been on urban infrastructures, followed
Monkonnen’s lead in Down the Asphalt
Path: The Automobile and the American City. McShane also took a position
contrary to that of Rae’s, remarking, “The decision of American municipalities
in the closing decades of the nineteenth century to adopt asphalt and brick
pavements played vital roles in the emergence of the auto. Policy conflict over
the regulation of vehicles and the provision of smooth pavements provides the
crucial background for automobilization.”4 In particular, McShane,
who has taken a position as a “social constructionist,” argued that bicyclists
and their influence on the improvement of urban highways should not be ignored,
nor should the fact that the automobile had its roots in a number of cities,
especially New York City. To some degree, this scholarly spat is the result of
discussions concerning moving targets. One’s answer concerning whether politics
or technology drove road construction depends specifically on when and where.
Circumstances were quite different in 1903 than in 1910 or 1920 or 1930, and
what held for explanations concerning the automobile and the road in New York
City is hardly similar to that what took place in Mississippi, Louisiana, or
for most of America.5 That said, it would be an egregious omission
to avoid tackling the topic of the history of roads in twentieth century
America in any serious study of the history of the automobile.
