Pike politician’s dirty campaign results in good

Editor’s note: Following is the final part of a story series by contributing writer Brent Engel.

The Missouri Good Roads campaign launched by Pike County native Elliot Major proved triumphant.

A two-day effort led by the governor in August 1913 attracted an estimated 250,000 people to upgrade highways and bridges. The volunteers did the work and the state paid for it.

But that was just the start.

Three months later, the United States Good Roads Association recognized the Missouri campaign by holding its annual conference in St. Louis.

The event was “for the purpose of arriving at some uniform method to ask and seek national highways,” Better Roads and Streets magazine said. “Few subjects are of more importance to the American people than the securing of the construction of national highways.”

In December 1913, Major testified before Congress about road priorities. He acknowledged American ingenuity in creating navigable waterways and building rail lines, but said that “until these highways stand abreast our broadest civilization, we will not be living up to our best privileges and the highest standard we can maintain in our civic and commercial life.”

Missouri Congressman Dorsey W. Shackleford got the ball rolling in 1916 with the Federal Aid Road Act, which provided $75 million in 50-50 matching funds to the states. More legislation followed, and in 1956 Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act.

Today, construction projects are funded with federal and state funds, gas taxes, user fees and license registrations.

Major remained a highway advocate. He turned away support for a presidential nomination and upon leaving the governor’s office in January 1917 returned to a St. Louis law practice. He died at 84 on July 9, 1949.

Louisiana businessman Frank Buffum was Major’s right-hand man in the Good Roads campaign. He served four years as the state’s first highway commissioner. He died at 63 on Nov. 12, 1922.

Major summed up the importance of the Good Roads effort by noting that it wasn’t about the number of miles repaired or structures improved.

“It is the road improvement spirit aroused and the educational features of the work in road building,” he said. “Once we know how to build roads, the rest will be easy.”

 

CUTLINE FOR PHOTO:

Missouri Gov. Elliot Major, left, and Kansas Gov. George Hodges – in ties and dress clothes – helped build a highway in Callaway County during Good Road Days in August 1913. (Missouri State Archives Elliot Woolfolk Major Manuscript Collection).