"Railroaded" - the book

"Railroaded - The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America" by Richard White.  Available on Amazon for $11.44.  The Kindle edition is slightly less.

There is so much wrong in this book.  Richard White might “Know what happened”, but he doesn’t understand what happened.  (Big difference.)  He seems unable, or unwilling, to put the facts he dug up into any context.  White definitely has an ax to grind.   Unfortunately, he seems to let the ax grinding displace an honest historical account. 

His main conclusion, first presented near the end of the book, and supported by not much of anything in the book, is that the transcontinental railroads were constructed too early in time, “Ahead of Need” as he puts it.  This “Ahead of Need” construction caused all kinds of problems according to White.  Mainly, he’s concerned that it denied the Native Tribes time they could have used to develop an acceptance of the inevitable (his word) settlement of North America by Europeans.  This denial of time lead to more violent conflict between the Indians and the Europeans than would have otherwise been the case.

OK, then why were the first transcontinental railroads built when they were built?   White doesn’t address this issue at all.  He just claims that they were built too soon and that the resultant economic and social costs outweighed any benefits.  He really doesn’t support this claim.

White focuses on three important transcontinental rail routes:  1) The 1^st North American transcontinental which linked Omaha and Sacramento, 2) another US transcontinental built to connect the head of navigation on the Great Lakes, Duluth, MN, with Puget Sound, and 3) a Canadian transcon built to link the west coast of that country with the rest of that nation.

White ignores a couple of really important facts.   First, these early transcontinental railroads were what we would call today “Public – Private Partnerships.”   The two national governments basically contracted the building of these rail lines.   The governments wanted the rail lines built and they wanted them built quickly.  As the Union Pacific puts it:  “In 1862 President Lincoln said ‘Go’.   And he never said ‘Stop’.”  Why?  White doesn’t even go near this issue.  

Second, White ignores the fact that the 1^st US transcontinental would have been built years before it actually was built if it had not been for sectional rivalry in the US.   The northern states wanted a northerly route to California.  They southern states wanted a southern route.  It wasn’t until the southern states pulled their representatives and senators out of the national government that congress was able to move on The Pacific Railway Act.  

So in some of the darkest days of the US Civil War congress and President Lincoln took time to create a railroad link between the Pacific and the already settled eastern United States.  Why?  White doesn’t say.   There were reasons.   White pronounces the transcons a prematurely built failure on all counts without examining the reasons for their creation.  He doesn’t put facts in context, and context is what makes a fact important.  Why did two national North American governments want the transcontinental railroads built at the time they were built?  White doesn’t even start to deal with this issue.

 If White is going to contend that the railroads were built too soon he should explain the reasons for building them.  He just makes an unsupported claim and then he alters the history of South Dakota in an effort to show that building the transcons was a really bad idea.

In his chapter “The Diverging Dakotas” White contrasts North Dakota, which had one federally sponsored rail line, with South Dakota.  South Dakota had virtually no land grant supported rail building.  White falsely contends that the rail network in South Dakota was built “With Development” (settlement) while the North Dakota was built “Ahead of Development”.   This is not what happened.

Contrary to what White claims, the South Dakota rail net was built ahead of settlement.  Absent a significant gold strike, it was virtually impossible to have settlement without a transportation system.  Families weren’t going to pull up stakes and move to South Dakota to engage in subsistence farming.  This is what they’d be doing if they couldn’t ship their surplus agricultural production out to urban markets. 

The Chicago and North Western Railroad got things going when it began construction into unsettled South Dakota.  The corporation knew what it was doing.   An officer of the railroad had toured eastern South Dakota and determined that it was suitable for farming.   All that was needed was transportation, and transportation was the C&NW’s business.  If they built into the unsettled lands settlement would follow.  This settlement would produce a “win-win” situation in which the settlers got to better their lives by having their own farms and the railroad profited from hauling the agricultural production.  The C&NW made a business investment that paid off for all concerned.  It did so by building a rail line “Ahead of Need”/”Ahead of Settlement”.  A fact that White turns on its head.

When a competing railroad corporation, later known as “The Milwaukee Road”, learned what the C&NW was doing they too began to build rail lines into unsettled South Dakota.   The result was rapid settlement up to the boundaries of an Indian reservation, which blocked development in to the western part of South Dakota.

The important fact here is that White misrepresents the settling of the Dakotas to bolster his otherwise unsupported claim.   It seems he just doesn’t understand the role of the railroads in developing North America.  They were “development engines”.  They were commonly built ahead of settlement.   And they were built ahead of that settlement using private investment.  The federal government only provided financial support for a very few lines that comprised a small percentage of the rail mileage constructed in the US.  We’re back to why the government considered these few particular lines to be so important.  White doesn’t say.   

White literally parades his lack of understanding with the following statement:

“…similar technologies and similar economies should produce similar corporations. Great Britain, France, and Prussia, however, did not replicate the American form of railroad organization, although each was a capitalist nation and each employed similar technologies.”

The facts are:  1) North America and Europe did not have “Similar Economies”.  Europe was settled and had existing population/commercial centers.  The US was largely unsettled with few, if any, such centers beyond the Atlantic seaboard.  2) The rail technologies used on each continent had a rapid and profound divergence from the beginning of railroading.  An example of this divergence would be that rail cars in North America had (and have) eight wheels.  European rail cars had four wheels.  It may seem minor, but unless one understands the reason for this difference it is impossible to understand why the North American railroads developed differently than the European railroads.

In his book “The North American Railroad”, James E Vance Jr. understands and explains the difference between railroads in Britain and the US.   The British rail lines were built to connect established centers of commerce and population.  They ran through lands that had been settled for centuries.  This resulted in a vastly different railroad than was built in the US.

In the US the railroads were commonly built into unsettled lands with no established population or commercial centers.   This meant that the US lines were initially built to lower standards.  Theses lower standards resulted in different equipment and operating procedures.  When business developed, as it usually did, the American lines were upgraded as warranted.

White doesn’t seem to understand this.  He doesn’t seem to get the fact that transportation was necessary for development, or at least necessary for development at anything more than a snail’s pace.  It had taken Europe centuries to develop before the railways came about.  The American frontier was gone within 100 years.  I think that’s White’s main problem with the American railroads.  The railroads accelerated development, and he doesn’t like that one bit.     

White focuses much of his research and writing on digging up dirt on the men who headed the corporations that built the railroads.  There was some dirt.  These guys were not saints.  But White doesn’t have a good word to say about anything they did.  Not a word – they were all rotten to the core according to White.  Evil men with hearts made in Hell. 

He could have been more balanced with this.  Some corruption did exist.  But it was not exclusive to the railroads.  Anytime the government starts throwing money at a problem, there are going to be those who seek to game the system.  It happens today.   Again, this is where White ignores the context.

I’ve got to wrap this up.  It would take a book to try to correct White’s book.

So what was the result of all this railroading that White so disparages.  Well, the US was settled and millions of people got life enhancing economic opportunities that would not have otherwise been available to them.  The Pacific coast economy was linked to the rest of the nation by secure internal routes.   The US got the most efficient rail freight system in the world – which helped the economy grow and created even more opportunities for even more people.  The downside, which is paramount for White, is that the Indians had to rapidly adjust to change they weren’t ready for.

In his 1912 book “Railroads – Rates and Regulation” the economist William Z. Ripley briefly compared US railroads with European railroads.  He noted that while the US corporations were regularly operating 2,000 ton freight trains the best Germany could do was 500 ton coal trains.  Ripley notes `that it had taken the Germans 10 years of effort to get their trains up from 400 to 500 tons.  By the second half of the 19^th Century US railroad charges were steadily falling as improved technology created improved efficiency.  The US system remains the safest and most cost efficient rail freight system in the world to this day.    The transcontinental rail routes that White disparages continue to be important arteries of commerce.  Not one transcontinental route built in the 19^th century has fallen into disuse or been taken up.

I’d say, on balance, things worked out pretty well.  White’s book, however, is apparently not intended to be anywhere near “On Balance”.