Address by Honorable William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highways Transport Committee Council of National Defense — Reading Notes

From Mud to Motor: The Simple Revolution

Redfield repeatedly returns to the idea that the most transformative changes are also the simplest. He observes that 'mud is one of his worst enemies' yet people are 'sort of friendly toward the mud,' suggesting a psychological barrier to recognizing the motor truck's potential. The speech contrasts the complexity of railway systems with the straightforward utility of a truck on a rural road. Redfield predicts that within a few years, farms will be advertised based on having a 'rural express' on one or two sides—a vision he grounds in the existing rural postal-delivery system, calling the motor truck 'just one step forward' from parcel post. This rhetorical strategy makes the revolutionary seem inevitable, a matter of 'common sense' rather than radical change.

The Pribilof Islands as Proof of Concept

One of the address's most striking passages describes motor trucks on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, 250 miles north of the Aleutian chain. Redfield explains that a seal rookery 13 or 14 miles from St. Paul Island had been inaccessible for skinning because transport was impossible. With two motor trucks, the skins could be brought down 'without the least difficulty'—and the trucks themselves carried materials to build the road they ran on. This circular logic (trucks building the road for trucks) illustrates Redfield's pragmatic approach: infrastructure and vehicle develop together. He extends the example to isolated fishery stations, where 'little Ford trucks' changed the effectiveness of operations. These remote cases serve as microcosms for the national transformation he envisions.

A System of Scales: National, Regional, Local

The address's structure mirrors its subject: a hierarchical transport network. Redfield describes the Highways Transport Committee's organization, from national headquarters in Washington down through 11 regional areas, to state committees, counties, and communities. This layered framework is not merely administrative; it reflects a belief that transportation policy must operate at every level simultaneously. The speech itself moves between these scales: from the Council of National Defense's resolution to the regional chairmen before him, to the individual farmer or fisherman. Redfield's language shifts accordingly—formal and declarative when citing the resolution, anecdotal and plainspoken when describing a Ford truck on a remote island. This structural flexibility reinforces his central argument that highways must be 'properly coordinated with other existing transportation mediums.'

The Rhetoric of Inevitability

Throughout the address, Redfield frames the motor truck's rise as both natural and unstoppable. He asserts that widespread truck use 'will be considered normal' and 'as accepted as such things as the rising of the sun.' This language of inevitability serves a persuasive purpose: it encourages his audience of regional chairmen to act decisively, removing regulations that 'tend to restrict and discourage' truck transport. Yet Redfield also acknowledges resistance, noting that 'the simple things are sometimes very hard to bring about.' He contrasts the appeal of complexity—'if we bring to a man something that is difficult and complex it catches the mind'—with the difficulty of convincing people that mud is a serious enemy. The speech thus balances visionary confidence with a realist's understanding of bureaucratic and psychological inertia.

Redfield's address is best read as a document of its moment—1918, the final year of World War I—when the Council of National Defense sought to mobilize every resource for the war effort. Yet its arguments about infrastructure, scale, and the interplay between local and national systems remain pertinent. Readers interested in the history of transportation policy, wartime logistics, or the rhetoric of technological change will find in this speech a compact case study. The excerpts available here capture the address's core logic and its most vivid examples, though the full text may contain additional regional data or committee details not reproduced in this edition.

There’s something touching about Redfield, in 1918, tracing roads from seal rookeries to mail sacks—the quiet faith that connection itself was the goal. It reminded me, oddly, of the patience in Children's Rights: A Book of Nursery Logic — A Closer Reading, how both trust small, deliberate steps over grand pronouncements. Some arguments just age into tenderness.