Getting Out of the Mud: The Alabama Good Roads Movement and Highway Administration, 1898–1928
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.63 (835 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0817319557 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 264 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-08-09 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Many Alabamians wished to travel beyond their local communities in all seasons without getting stuck in the mud of rudimentary rutted dirt roads. Olliff reveals how middle-class reformers secured political, economic, and social power not only by fighting against corporate domination and labor recalcitrance but also by proposing alternative projects like road improvement and identifying the interests of the rising middle class as being the most important to public interest. The onset of the automobile age bolstered the need for roadmaking, alerting both automobilists and good roads advocates to the possibility of a new transportation infrastructure. The Good Roads Movement began promoting farm-to-market roads, then highways that linked cities, then those that connected states. Martin T. Martin T. With the development of national markets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans began to regard the nation as a whole, rather than their state or region, as the most important political entity. Olliff’s study of how Alabamians dealt with strained resources and overcame serious polit
“Olliff weaves a unique combination of history, sociology, political science, and economics to create a three-dimensional fabric.” —David O. Whitten, author of Andrew Durnford: A Black Sugar Planter in the Antebellum South and coauthor of The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860–1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise