PLANNING GOOD ROADS.

The New York Times
December 19, 1909

St. Louis Autoists Developing System Leading Soutward.

Special to The New York Times.

ST. LOUIS, Mo., Dec. 18.—The movement started by Col. Lyman T. Hay for the survey and development of a system of automobile roads leading from St. Louis southward is receiving considerable attention from the people of towns along suggested routes.  The first idea was for an automobile road from St. Louis to Little Rock and Hot Springs, but this has expanded until it embraces tentative plans for the agitation of the movement from Chicago to New Orleans and Mobile, with St. Louis as the centre.

Suggestions which have been made contemplate two routes from Chicago to St. Louis, one direct and the other running from Chicago to Terre Haute, there to connect with a proposed automobile road from Indianapolis to St. Louis.  From St. Louis two routes through Arkansas are under consideration, one by way of Cape Girardeau, Sikeston, and Brinkley to Little Rock and Hot Springs, and the other from St. Louis to Poplar Bluff, Newport, and Jonesboro, Ark., and thence to Little Rock and Hot Springs.  The section from Little Rock to Hot Springs already has been built by convict labor, and the same plan would be pursued with relation to other sections of the road in that State.  In Missouri it is the plan to invoke the passage of a law by which the State pays one-half when the local authorities provide the other half for State highways.

Arrangements for removal to St. Louis of the Webb Motor Fire Apparatus Company of Vincennes, Ind., are being made by President A. C. Webb, who now is here.  The company has a five-year lease on a building at Vandewater and Washington Avenues, which is now being remodeled.

The meeting of the Automobile Show Committee, held Thursday, called for the purpose of allotting space to early applicants, adjourned without completing its work.  The committee will meet at the armory late to-morrow afternoon, when it expects to finish the work in hand.