1925: A Senior Government Official Focuses on Multimodal Transportation at a Conference in Chicago

May 28, 1925

William M. Jardine (1879-1955), who had started serving as U.S. secretary of agriculture on March 5 of that year and would remain in the position until 1929, was a featured speaker at the Mid-West Transportation Conference in Chicago.

This conference was held at the now defunct La Salle Hotel at the northwest corner of La Salle Street and Madison Street in the Windy City. The next day’s edition of the Chicago Tribune confirmed, “The conference was attended by leading representatives of steam and electric [railroads] and of the motor industry.”

Jardine spoke to these attendees about the need for collaboration over conflict with respect to various modes of transportation and the unique value of each within the framework of the national economy. He asserted, “Railroad, waterway and highway transportation should be coordinated in order that each shall be developed to its highest point of usefulness without taking from another the functions which the other can perform to the better advantage of the public.”

Jardine, who was on the first leg of a seven-week visit to farming and range regions west of the Mississippi River, also used his address at the conference to underscore the ever-growing importance of motorized transport and highways in expeditiously delivering milk, livestock, and other agricultural commodities throughout the country. 

“Look around you,” he told his audience. “Are the roads getting better or worse? Have we ever had such fine roads or so many of them? Have we ever before had fewer of them in a state of disrepair?” Jardine went on to proclaim, “The roads we are building now were built to accommodate the traffic they will be called on to carry.” (The accompanying photo of Jardine was taken that same year.)    

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Additional information on William M. Jardine’s 1925 address at the Mid-West Transportation Conference is available at https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/byday/fhbd0528.htm

For more information on Jardine, please check out https://millercenter.org/president/coolidge/essays/jardine-1925-secretary-of-agriculture