at we now hear increased demands for national identification cards which would allow our government to number us like slaves and literally keep track of our every movement? Why do our automobiles and pickups have to be registered with our state governments, when our computers, photocopiers, television sets, power tools, and other personal property do not? Why does the government require that we pass a state test in order to operate "our" cars? Why do we have government- issued driver's licenses, rather than ones issued by our insurance companies, driver's schools, or private safety institutes? Why is the federal government now calling for standardization of state-issued driver's licenses? What is the history of these government imposed requirements and could all of this be part of a long- term pattern - deliberate or otherwise - that is leading directly to national ID? The purpose of this paper is 1) to shed some light on the history of driver's licenses and state vehicle registration; and 2) to explore the implications of government-issued driver's licenses and vehicle registration. These topics are important to understand because the calls for national identification cards would be far fewer if we did not already embrace state-issued documents certifying our birth, identity, and driving "ability." If we accept the principle that government ought to be involved in birth certificates and driver licensing, then why shouldn't it be involved in issuing national I.D.? By what principle of logic do you endorse the one and oppose the other?

Although we expect the federal and state governments to build and maintain the roads, the development of the automobile was strictly a free market phenomenon, largely spawned by individual entrepreneurs and inventors, such as Ransom Olds, James Packard, and later Henry Ford, whose ideas about mass production revolutionized car manufacturing. These backyard American tinkerers took machined steel, crafted their own internal combustion engines, and mounted them on their old farm wagons and horse-drawn buggies. The results were some of the earliest self-propelled vehicles, which they soon refined and offered for sale. From the very start of this process, government had no involvement. The steel, the wagons, the motors: all were the private property of those who built automobiles. Hence, there was no inherent necessity or reason that these new automobiles had to become subject to government regulation. In fact, "during the early years of the motor age, any person could drive an automobile or truck without restrictions ... . One [was] as free to operate a motor vehicle as to drive a span of horses." Private roads could have evolved without government controls, much like in the early petroleum industry, where private parties constructed their own pipelines on private property. But since the roadways had always been owned, operated, and regulated by local or state governments (federal aid did not begin until 1916), few people were ready to question the state's jurisdiction over the automobile and driver.

Before 1901, state governments had little to do with motoring. Most early legislation affecting the automobile and other wheeled vehicles "was the product of the cities, towns, and villages." For example, in 1898 the city of Chicago had in force a law which required that the owners of "wagons, carriages, coaches, buggies, bicycles, and all other wheeled vehicles propelled by horse power or by the rider" pay an annual license fee. (The law was ultimately declared unconstitutional.) A year later, Chicago passed another ordinance which "required the examination and licensing of all automobile operators" in the city. At the same time, New York City had an ordinance which required that drivers of steam powered cars be licensed engineers. Mitchell, South Dakota, (population 10,000: a city supporting two newspapers and a university) imposed a total ban on the use of motorized vehicles!

From these humble beginnings, government regulation of vehicle operation and operators has evolved to the point where millions of American adults have state driver's licenses; hundreds of thousands of their vehicles carry state license tags, registration cards, and state certificates of titles. Short of issuing every adult a federal identification card, the driver's license (and its companion non-operator identification card) is the most widely government provided and used means of identification in the United States. Legally, a driver's license is to be carried on one's person whenever one is operating a motor vehicle on a government road, so millions of Americans have been conditioned to use a government-issued card to prove who they are and to show that they have been granted a state privilege of operating a vehicle. It is only a small step to visualize millions of Americans carrying a federally-issued smart card programmed to serve as their personal identification, their driver's license, bank card, credit card, and as dossier of their medical history. Hence, I believe it is quite accurate to describe state driver's licenses as the pre-cursor of national ID cards.

Driver Licensing

Although there is no comprehensive history of the establishment of automobile driver's licenses, personal anecdotes, government legislative records, and histories of the automobile offer us many details about early licenses. (By a driver's license, I refer to the requirement that motor vehicle drivers have a valid, state-issued piece of paper in order to legally drive; and by driver license examination, I mean the operator has passed a state-administered written and/or oral test about driving rules, passed a vision test, and a state-administered driving test proving his skills.) One thing is clear from the historical record: While the justification for government licensing of automobile operators was sometimes a safety issue, in a majority of the states, driver competency examinations were not used until years after the initial licensing regulations were in place.

In the early days of motoring, every American learned to drive without any help from their local, state, or federal government; most of them learned to drive safely; and most of them never had any sort of government document to identify themselves or to prove that they had ever passed any sort of government driving test. The states of Massachusetts and Missouri were the first to establish driver's licensing laws in 1903, but Missouri had no driver examination law until 1952. Massachusetts had an examination law for commercial chauffeurs in 1907, and passed its first requirement for an examination of general operators in 1920. The first state to require an examination of driver competency was Rhode Island in 1908 (it also required drivers to have state licenses as early as 1908). South Dakota was both the last state to impose driver's licenses (1954), and the last state to require driver license examinations (1959). Our contemporary belief that driver's licenses were instituted to keep incompetent drivers off the road is a false one. The vast majority of Americans who drove already knew how to drive safely. Why the state governments demanded that they have a state-issued license and pass a government test appears to be more a matter of "control" than of public safety. Why early 20th Century Americans didn't resist licensure and didn't see where it might lead is another question.

Personal reminiscences of many old-timers verify this assertion. For example, one author in VINTAGE JOURNAL wrote that "I remember when the first driver's licenses came out. They cost 50 cents and you didn't have to take a test." Here are a few other comments found on the internet:

In Jefferson County, Kansas "on July 8, 1947, someone from the county seat (Oskaloosa) came to Meriden to issue driver's licenses. Anyone who was 16 years or older and paid the fee was immediately issued a driver's license. No test. The date was easy to remember because I was 16 on that day and did get my driver's license." [Licenses were first required in Kansas in 1931, and driving examinations in 1949.]

During the 1930s in Georgia ... "you didn't have to take a test for driving. You sent for the permit by mail." [There were no driver's licenses in Georgia until 1937, and no driving examination until 1939.] In Missouri the gas stations sold driver's licenses - "no test. For 25 cents, they gave you a stub you had this until the 'real' license came in the mail." [As noted, Missouri was one of the first states to require licenses (1903), but examinations were not required until 1952.]

In Washington state driver's licensing was started in 1921. "Applicant must furnish signatures of two people certifying that the person is a competent driver and has no physical problems that would impair safe driving." [Driving examinations were not begun until 1937.]

James J. Flink presents a different point of view in his book, AMERICA ADOPTS THE AUTOMOBILE (1970). In his discussion of "Licensing of Operators" (pp. 174- 178) he points out that "Automobile interests were well ahead of municipal and state governments by 1902 in recognizing that the compulsory examination of all automobile operators would be desirable.... Officials of both the American Automobile Association and the Automobile Club of America publicly advocated ... that the states should certify the basic competence of all automobile operators by requiring them to pass an examination before being allowed on the road." It is clear, however, that widespread public sentiment did not exist to support these opinions. It was years before all the state governments passed such laws. In summarizing, Flink concludes that

Despite the motorist's own desire to have their competence examined [an assumption which I would challenge] and certified, state governments still remained reluctant to take adequate action at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. As of 1909, only twelve states and the District of Columbia required all automobile drivers to obtain licenses. Except for Missouri, these were all eastern states - Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia. In seven other states, only professional chauffeurs had to obtain operator's licenses -.... The application forms for operator's licenses in these nineteen states as a rule asked for little more information than the applicant's name, address, age, and the type of automobile he claimed to be competent to drive. This might have to be notarized, but in the vast majority of these states a license to drive an automobile could still be obtained by mail. In the twelve states that all operators had to be licensed, a combined total of 89,495 licenses were issued between January 1 and October 4, 1909, but only twelve applicants were rejected for incompetency or other reasons during this period - two in Rhode Island and ten in Vermont.

It is simply impossible to determine how well the general population complied with these laws. Flink offers one statistic, however: a roadcheck in Boston, Massachusetts in 1904 revealed that only 126 of the 234 motorists that were stopped complied with Massachusetts state registration and licensing requirements.

Vehicle Registration

"In the realm of government jurisdiction over traffic safety, matters at first fell to revenue collection agencies on the one hand and to law enforcement agencies on the other. Vehicles were initially licensed solely for the purpose of collecting revenue, and not for many years did the notion appear of vehicle inspection for safety purposes." Although the history of vehicle registration is about as sketchy and incomplete as the history of driver's licensing, some limited information is available to back up this statement. In New York, the first state to require vehicle registration (in 1901), the law required that a motorist would have to display a state-issued number or his initials on his automobile. The system that is in widespread use today, which encompasses a state-issued certificate of title, an annual or biennial registration fee, and state-issued license plate, was unknown in numerous states, even as late as 1967. When registration was imposed, in most cases it was perennial, signifying that it only had to be done once and that it lasted for so long as the owner of the vehicle owned it or lived in the county in which it was registered. By 1905, 26 states had instituted vehicle registration, but only three of the twenty-six had annual registration requirements. By 1915, every state in the union had some sort of registration law, but it was not until 1921 that annual registration was required in all states.

In FILL'ER UP!: The Story of Fifty Years of Motoring (1952), Bellamy Partridge offers the following description of the evolution of vehicle registration in New York state:

Members of the [New York] state legislature, having officially discovered the motor vehicle, were not long in working out a method of imposing a tax on it by requiring registration. Motorists did not particularly object to [having their vehicles] registered. It gave them a feeling of importance, and many of them smiled as they read the printed instructions (which had come with the applications for registration):

"Every owner of an automobile or motor vehicle shall file in the office of the Secretary of State a statement of his name and address and a brief description of the character of such vehicle and shall pay a registration fee of $1.00. Every such automobile or motor vehicle shall have the separate initials of the owner's name placed on the back thereof in a conspicuous place. The letters of such initials shall be at least three inches in height." Registration in New York state for the year 1901 was 954 motor vehicles, ... . The following year saw an increase of 128. However, the initials proved to be an unsatisfactory form of identification, since there were numerous duplications and the printed letters were not always easy to read. The suggestion was made that the motor vehicles should be named as in registration of vessels so that duplication might be avoided. But this method failed of acceptance and the state began registering the vehicles according to number. For each car registered, the state issued a numbered metal disc. The disc could be carried in the pocket of the motorist, but he was required at his own expense to display the figures in Arabic numerals on the back of the vehicle where they would be plain and visible.

This brought out some fancy numerals of every color of the rainbow, and quite a few numbers from people who had not bothered to get a disc. Artistically inclined motorists painted their numbers on the body of the car, surrounded by landscapes, sunsets, or other ornamental designs. There were complaints about this, and the following year the state began to furnish number plates and raised the registration fee to $2.

Vehicle registration seems to have originated for two primary reasons. The first is alluded to in the opening lines of the above quote. Registration and license fees were viewed as "a major source of revenue for highway purposes. Until 1929, these sources provided the major share of revenue derived from highway users." The second reason was for the need to be able to identify vehicles, both for purposes of taxation, as well as for identifying those that were operated recklessly or unsafely. Flink derides the opposition to Detroit's vehicle registration law of 1904: "They claimed that the $1 fee [for registration] constituted double taxation of personal property and that the ordinance was unjust 'class legislation' because owners of horse-drawn vehicles were neither forced to carry identification tags nor deprived of the right to allow children under sixteen years of age to drive their vehicles." Flink then adds:

Undoubtedly, the most important reasons for motorists' objections to numbering ordinances remained covert. Motorists generally feared that the facilitation of identification of their vehicles would increase chances of arrest, fine, imprisonment, and the payment of damage claims. Also, registration helped tax assessors identify and locate automobile owners who were evading payment of personal property taxes on their cars. To cite but one example, it was estimated that in Denver one-third of the automobiles in the city had gone untaxed prior to the adoption of a registration ordinance. Since such motives could not be expressed legitimately, motorists were forced to cloak their cases in the respectable mantle of the constitution... . Probably the last such effort worth noting was a halfhearted attempt, undertaken after a year's hesitation, by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers to test the constitutionality of state motor vehicle registration laws in 1905. By then, however, most motorists had become convinced that "the continual wrangling with authorities was a much greater annoyance than carrying numbers."

The earliest registration laws were imposed by municipalities or counties, rather than by the states, and this proliferation actually led to the demand for federal registration of vehicles as early as 1905. Motorists in 1906, found the situation in Missouri deplorable. In order to drive legally in every county in that state, a motorist had to pay $295.50 in registration fees. Finally the law was changed so that after June 14, 1907, only a single state-wide registration of $5 was required. Such registration expired "when either the vehicle was sold or [when] the owner's county of residence changed." Flink points out that national registration would have been valid in all states and eliminated the confusion caused by "dinky legislatures, county boards, or town trustees and supervisors." Under the guise of "regulating interstate commerce," both the American Automobile Association and the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce "backed a bill in the 60th Congress [1907] that would have required Federal registration for all vehicles." The bill died in committee "because legislators doubted the necessity for, and the constitutionality of, such an extension of power of the federal government," and by 1910 the movement was diffused by "the general adoption of interstate reciprocity provisions and a trend toward increased uniformity in the motor vehicle laws of the various states."

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The precursor of national identification cards in the U.S. Driver's licenses and vehicle registration in historical perspective The Voluntaryist, Fourth Quarter 2003 by Watner, Carl

Introduction: Why?

Most of us living in the United States are accustomed to calling this country the most important bastion of the "free" world. If that is so, why is it that we now hear increased demands for national identification cards which would allow our government to number us like slaves and literally keep track of our every movement? Why do our automobiles and pickups have to be registered with our state governments, when our computers, photocopiers, television sets, power tools, and other personal property do not? Why does the government require that we pass a state test in order to operate "our" cars? Why do we have government- issued driver's licenses, rather than ones issued by our insurance companies, driver's schools, or private safety institutes? Why is the federal government now calling for standardization of state-issued driver's licenses? What is the history of these government imposed requirements and could all of this be part of a long- term pattern - deliberate or otherwise - that is leading directly to national ID? The purpose of this paper is 1) to shed some light on the history of driver's licenses and state vehicle registration; and 2) to explore the implications of government-issued driver's licenses and vehicle registration. These topics are important to understand because the calls for national identification cards would be far fewer if we did not already embrace state-issued documents certifying our birth, identity, and driving "ability." If we accept the principle that government ought to be involved in birth certificates and driver licensing, then why shouldn't it be involved in issuing national I.D.? By what principle of logic do you endorse the one and oppose the other?

Although we expect the federal and state governments to build and maintain the roads, the development of the automobile was strictly a free market phenomenon, largely spawned by individual entrepreneurs and inventors, such as Ransom Olds, James Packard, and later Henry Ford, whose ideas about mass production revolutionized car manufacturing. These backyard American tinkerers took machined steel, crafted their own internal combustion engines, and mounted them on their old farm wagons and horse-drawn buggies. The results were some of the earliest self-propelled vehicles, which they soon refined and offered for sale. From the very start of this process, government had no involvement. The steel, the wagons, the motors: all were the private property of those who built automobiles. Hence, there was no inherent necessity or reason that these new automobiles had to become subject to government regulation. In fact, "during the early years of the motor age, any person could drive an automobile or truck without restrictions ... . One [was] as free to operate a motor vehicle as to drive a span of horses." Private roads could have evolved without government controls, much like in the early petroleum industry, where private parties constructed their own pipelines on private property. But since the roadways had always been owned, operated, and regulated by local or state governments (federal aid did not begin until 1916), few people were ready to question the state's jurisdiction over the automobile and driver.

Before 1901, state governments had little to do with motoring. Most early legislation affecting the automobile and other wheeled vehicles "was the product of the cities, towns, and villages." For example, in 1898 the city of Chicago had in force a law which required that the owners of "wagons, carriages, coaches, buggies, bicycles, and all other wheeled vehicles propelled by horse power or by the rider" pay an annual license fee. (The law was ultimately declared unconstitutional.) A year later, Chicago passed another ordinance which "required the examination and licensing of all automobile operators" in the city. At the same time, New York City had an ordinance which required that drivers of steam powered cars be licensed engineers. Mitchell, South Dakota, (population 10,000: a city supporting two newspapers and a university) imposed a total ban on the use of motorized vehicles!

From these humble beginnings, government regulation of vehicle operation and operators has evolved to the point where millions of American adults have state driver's licenses; hundreds of thousands of their vehicles carry state license tags, registration cards, and state certificates of titles. Short of issuing every adult a federal identification card, the driver's license (and its companion non-operator identification card) is the most widely government provided and used means of identification in the United States. Legally, a driver's license is to be carried on one's person whenever one is operating a motor vehicle on a government road, so millions of Americans have been conditioned to use a government-issued card to prove who they are and to show that they have been granted a state privilege of operating a vehicle. It is only a small step to visualize millions of Americans carrying a federally-issued smart card programmed to serve as their personal identification, their driver's license, bank card, credit card, and as dossier of their medical history. Hence, I believe it is quite accurate to describe state driver's licenses as the pre-cursor of national ID cards.

Driver Licensing

Although there is no comprehensive history of the establishment of automobile driver's licenses, personal anecdotes, government legislative records, and histories of the automobile offer us many details about early licenses. (By a driver's license, I refer to the requirement that motor vehicle drivers have a valid, state-issued piece of paper in order to legally drive; and by driver license examination, I mean the operator has passed a state-administered written and/or oral test about driving rules, passed a vision test, and a state-administered driving test proving his skills.) One thing is clear from the historical record: While the justification for government licensing of automobile operators was sometimes a safety issue, in a majority of the states, driver competency examinations were not used until years after the initial licensing regulations were in place.

In the early days of motoring, every American learned to drive without any help from their local, state, or federal government; most of them learned to drive safely; and most of them never had any sort of government document to identify themselves or to prove that they had ever passed any sort of government driving test. The states of Massachusetts and Missouri were the first to establish driver's licensing laws in 1903, but Missouri had no driver examination law until 1952. Massachusetts had an examination law for commercial chauffeurs in 1907, and passed its first requirement for an examination of general operators in 1920. The first state to require an examination of driver competency was Rhode Island in 1908 (it also required drivers to have state licenses as early as 1908). South Dakota was both the last state to impose driver's licenses (1954), and the last state to require driver license examinations (1959). Our contemporary belief that driver's licenses were instituted to keep incompetent drivers off the road is a false one. The vast majority of Americans who drove already knew how to drive safely. Why the state governments demanded that they have a state-issued license and pass a government test appears to be more a matter of "control" than of public safety. Why early 20th Century Americans didn't resist licensure and didn't see where it might lead is another question.

Personal reminiscences of many old-timers verify this assertion. For example, one author in VINTAGE JOURNAL wrote that "I remember when the first driver's licenses came out. They cost 50 cents and you didn't have to take a test." Here are a few other comments found on the internet:

In Jefferson County, Kansas "on July 8, 1947, someone from the county seat (Oskaloosa) came to Meriden to issue driver's licenses. Anyone who was 16 years or older and paid the fee was immediately issued a driver's license. No test. The date was easy to remember because I was 16 on that day and did get my driver's license." [Licenses were first required in Kansas in 1931, and driving examinations in 1949.]

During the 1930s in Georgia ... "you didn't have to take a test for driving. You sent for the permit by mail." [There were no driver's licenses in Georgia until 1937, and no driving examination until 1939.] In Missouri the gas stations sold driver's licenses - "no test. For 25 cents, they gave you a stub you had this until the 'real' license came in the mail." [As noted, Missouri was one of the first states to require licenses (1903), but examinations were not required until 1952.]

In Washington state driver's licensing was started in 1921. "Applicant must furnish signatures of two people certifying that the person is a competent driver and has no physical problems that would impair safe driving." [Driving examinations were not begun until 1937.]

James J. Flink presents a different point of view in his book, AMERICA ADOPTS THE AUTOMOBILE (1970). In his discussion of "Licensing of Operators" (pp. 174- 178) he points out that "Automobile interests were well ahead of municipal and state governments by 1902 in recognizing that the compulsory examination of all automobile operators would be desirable.... Officials of both the American Automobile Association and the Automobile Club of America publicly advocated ... that the states should certify the basic competence of all automobile operators by requiring them to pass an examination before being allowed on the road." It is clear, however, that widespread public sentiment did not exist to support these opinions. It was years before all the state governments passed such laws. In summarizing, Flink concludes that

Despite the motorist's own desire to have their competence examined [an assumption which I would challenge] and certified, state governments still remained reluctant to take adequate action at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. As of 1909, only twelve states and the District of Columbia required all automobile drivers to obtain licenses. Except for Missouri, these were all eastern states - Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia. In seven other states, only professional chauffeurs had to obtain operator's licenses -.... The application forms for operator's licenses in these nineteen states as a rule asked for little more information than the applicant's name, address, age, and the type of automobile he claimed to be competent to drive. This might have to be notarized, but in the vast majority of these states a license to drive an automobile could still be obtained by mail. In the twelve states that all operators had to be licensed, a combined total of 89,495 licenses were issued between January 1 and October 4, 1909, but only twelve applicants were rejected for incompetency or other reasons during this period - two in Rhode Island and ten in Vermont.

It is simply impossible to determine how well the general population complied with these laws. Flink offers one statistic, however: a roadcheck in Boston, Massachusetts in 1904 revealed that only 126 of the 234 motorists that were stopped complied with Massachusetts state registration and licensing requirements.

Vehicle Registration

"In the realm of government jurisdiction over traffic safety, matters at first fell to revenue collection agencies on the one hand and to law enforcement agencies on the other. Vehicles were initially licensed solely for the purpose of collecting revenue, and not for many years did the notion appear of vehicle inspection for safety purposes." Although the history of vehicle registration is about as sketchy and incomplete as the history of driver's licensing, some limited information is available to back up this statement. In New York, the first state to require vehicle registration (in 1901), the law required that a motorist would have to display a state-issued number or his initials on his automobile. The system that is in widespread use today, which encompasses a state-issued certificate of title, an annual or biennial registration fee, and state-issued license plate, was unknown in numerous states, even as late as 1967. When registration was imposed, in most cases it was perennial, signifying that it only had to be done once and that it lasted for so long as the owner of the vehicle owned it or lived in the county in which it was registered. By 1905, 26 states had instituted vehicle registration, but only three of the twenty-six had annual registration requirements. By 1915, every state in the union had some sort of registration law, but it was not until 1921 that annual registration was required in all states.

In FILL'ER UP!: The Story of Fifty Years of Motoring (1952), Bellamy Partridge offers the following description of the evolution of vehicle registration in New York state:

Members of the [New York] state legislature, having officially discovered the motor vehicle, were not long in working out a method of imposing a tax on it by requiring registration. Motorists did not particularly object to [having their vehicles] registered. It gave them a feeling of importance, and many of them smiled as they read the printed instructions (which had come with the applications for registration):

"Every owner of an automobile or motor vehicle shall file in the office of the Secretary of State a statement of his name and address and a brief description of the character of such vehicle and shall pay a registration fee of $1.00. Every such automobile or motor vehicle shall have the separate initials of the owner's name placed on the back thereof in a conspicuous place. The letters of such initials shall be at least three inches in height." Registration in New York state for the year 1901 was 954 motor vehicles, ... . The following year saw an increase of 128. However, the initials proved to be an unsatisfactory form of identification, since there were numerous duplications and the printed letters were not always easy to read. The suggestion was made that the motor vehicles should be named as in registration of vessels so that duplication might be avoided. But this method failed of acceptance and the state began registering the vehicles according to number. For each car registered, the state issued a numbered metal disc. The disc could be carried in the pocket of the motorist, but he was required at his own expense to display the figures in Arabic numerals on the back of the vehicle where they would be plain and visible.

This brought out some fancy numerals of every color of the rainbow, and quite a few numbers from people who had not bothered to get a disc. Artistically inclined motorists painted their numbers on the body of the car, surrounded by landscapes, sunsets, or other ornamental designs. There were complaints about this, and the following year the state began to furnish number plates and raised the registration fee to $2.

Vehicle registration seems to have originated for two primary reasons. The first is alluded to in the opening lines of the above quote. Registration and license fees were viewed as "a major source of revenue for highway purposes. Until 1929, these sources provided the major share of revenue derived from highway users." The second reason was for the need to be able to identify vehicles, both for purposes of taxation, as well as for identifying those that were operated recklessly or unsafely. Flink derides the opposition to Detroit's vehicle registration law of 1904: "They claimed that the $1 fee [for registration] constituted double taxation of personal property and that the ordinance was unjust 'class legislation' because owners of horse-drawn vehicles were neither forced to carry identification tags nor deprived of the right to allow children under sixteen years of age to drive their vehicles." Flink then adds:

Undoubtedly, the most important reasons for motorists' objections to numbering ordinances remained covert. Motorists generally feared that the facilitation of identification of their vehicles would increase chances of arrest, fine, imprisonment, and the payment of damage claims. Also, registration helped tax assessors identify and locate automobile owners who were evading payment of personal property taxes on their cars. To cite but one example, it was estimated that in Denver one-third of the automobiles in the city had gone untaxed prior to the adoption of a registration ordinance. Since such motives could not be expressed legitimately, motorists were forced to cloak their cases in the respectable mantle of the constitution... . Probably the last such effort worth noting was a halfhearted attempt, undertaken after a year's hesitation, by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers to test the constitutionality of state motor vehicle registration laws in 1905. By then, however, most motorists had become convinced that "the continual wrangling with authorities was a much greater annoyance than carrying numbers."

The earliest registration laws were imposed by municipalities or counties, rather than by the states, and this proliferation actually led to the demand for federal registration of vehicles as early as 1905. Motorists in 1906, found the situation in Missouri deplorable. In order to drive legally in every county in that state, a motorist had to pay $295.50 in registration fees. Finally the law was changed so that after June 14, 1907, only a single state-wide registration of $5 was required. Such registration expired "when either the vehicle was sold or [when] the owner's county of residence changed." Flink points out that national registration would have been valid in all states and eliminated the confusion caused by "dinky legislatures, county boards, or town trustees and supervisors." Under the guise of "regulating interstate commerce," both the American Automobile Association and the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce "backed a bill in the 60th Congress [1907] that would have required Federal registration for all vehicles." The bill died in committee "because legislators doubted the necessity for, and the constitutionality of, such an extension of power of the federal government," and by 1910 the movement was diffused by "the general adoption of interstate reciprocity provisions and a trend toward increased uniformity in the motor vehicle laws of the various states."

Click here: Voluntaryist, The precursor of national identification cards in the U.S.: Driver's licenses and vehicle registrat

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