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"Good Roads Train" of construction equipment touring the Michigan Thumb in 1908. These helped promote public support for good roads.
bled—a traction engine, road roller, sprinkler, dump wagons and farm wagons. They carried the delegates to a newly laid, one-mile stretch of macadam road built of layers of crushed stone. It was built as an "object lesson" to show what ought to be done nationwide. Two years later, Earle became national president of the league.
It wasn't until the opening years of the 1900's that he became concerned about good roads for "automobilists," as they were then called. In those days, automobilists had a choice: bad roads or worse. They were a rare breed caught between the horse-drawn wagon and buggy and the bicyclists. Even in the larger towns the roads were in miserable condition. In rural areas, except where there was a lakeport or a railroad depot, roads were mud tracks in wet weather, dust bins in dry. Railroads and burgeoning systems of electrified rail cars known as "interurbans" carried passengers from town to town. Streetcars furnished public transportation in the cities.
The Detroit Bicycle Club convinced Earle that the way to get things done was to become a member of the State Legislature, where laws were made and money appropriated. In 1900, running as a Republican from Detroit, he was elected to the State Senate, campaigning almost exclusively as a good-roads promoter. He became known as "Good Roads" Earle. As a lawmaker, he contrived to mention the need for better roads in nearly all his speeches and was named chairman of a committee to study the need for road improvements and offer a plan to bring them about. The committee's main recommendation: set up a reward system to provide state financial aid for improvement of local roads.
The proposal gathered dust for two years. Farmers feared that more roads would increase their property taxes, chiefly for the benefit of despised automobilists. They thought existing roads of sand and clay should be kept intact for movement of their products to market, not for joyriders by the owners of noisy motorcars which
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