Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 49, number 4, summer, 1966

              CAMPBELL:  GOOD ROADS
did not actually occur until eighteen years later."'
In the following legislative session in 1895 State Senator James J. McGillivray, a Repub¬ lican and lumber manufacturer from Black River Falls, offered a bill that provided state funds for road construction. But state aid opponents killed the measure, and justified their action by citing the constitutional pro¬ hibition against the expenditure of state money for internal improvements. Confronted with this legal barrier, which they apparently hoped would be ignored, the good roads supporters now realized that a constitutional amendment was necessary. Consequently, the friends of the good roads movement urged this change during the decade that followed. Sparked by the legislative leadership of the impetuous Senator McGillivray, and aided during the 1890's by the lobbying activity of bicyclists and businessmen through the Wisconsin League for Good Roads, legislators sponsored proposals for an internal improvement amend¬ ment to the constitution during the next five biennial legislative sessions.^"
Success appeared close at hand in 1897 un¬ til the state senate blocked the nearly unani¬ mous approval of the assembly for a consti¬ tutional change, and even closer in 1899, when both houses agreed with little opposition to a state road aid amendment. According to the amending procedure in Wisconsin, the legisla¬ ture reconsidered the proposed constitutional change in the following session two years later. Although the lower house resolved once again in favor of the amendment, the senate failed to act, as conservative opponents in the upper house denounced the amendment as "paternalistic," a potential pork barrel, and generally unwise. Moreover, newly installed Governor Robert M. La Follette, facing a block of political recalcitrants in the senate, appar-
^' Wisconsin Assembly Journal, 1893, 1015; Wiscon¬ sin State Journal, March 14, 15, 1893; Pneumatic (April 15, 1893) ; Session Laws of Wisconsin, 1893, Chapter 284; Davis, Wisconsin Highway Development, 16.^
" Otto Dorner, "The Movement for Better Roads," in the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Trans¬ actions (Madison, 1896), 224, 226; Pneumatic (March, 1895, and April, 1897) ; Milwaukee Sentinel, February 11, 1895, March 12, 1897, and January 28, 1899.
RUIAL HIGHWAYS
Poor roads firt fltie fatfiily. "ill a nxt" and keep it there.
Good roads iBean opportunny for
I NeigliDOThoodjocial life a Consolidated jchoolj
3 Prompt mail jervice
4 Church attendance
5 Prompf medical attendance .  6 Cheaper hauling of
produce
Society's Iconogr.aphic Collection
Posters such as this helped to change rural attitudes towards slate-financed roads.
ently did not lend his full support to the amendment. Rather, in his 1901 message to the legislature he suggested "great caution in removing the barriers placed in the con¬ stitution" which prohibited state-financed in¬ ternal improvements. At the governor's re¬ commendation, however, the legislature in 1901 authorized the creation of a joint legis¬ lative Good Roads Commission to investigate the need for improving country roads, and La Follette appointed state aid enthusiast James McGillivray as chairman. Perhaps as La Follette expected, McGillivray's report to the legislature in 1903 recommended a con¬ stitutional amendment to permit state aid for
d23 s.
The observations of the Good Roads Com¬ mission made official what good roads lead-
"'' "Inaugural Message of Covernor Robert La Fol¬ lette to the Wisconsin Legislature, 1901," in Wiscon¬ sin Public Documents, 1899-1900, 1:36; Wisconsin Senate Journal, 1901, 1024-1025; "Report of the Good Roads Commission to the Legislature," Wisconsin Senate Journal, 1903, 242.
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