Burton W. Folsom is a history professor, yes. One should know, however, that he is a professor at the small ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, so it is understandable that he would engage in ahistorical revisionism, as opposed to the "canned history" and "hateful rhetoric of 'evil capitalist robber barons'."
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
If you have to ask "what lesson?" or confuse child labor abuse with working on a family farm, the lesson was not learned.
This seems muddled.
What about growing up doing chores on the farm? Not a good learning experience?
(Not talking about abuse here).
So what is the lesson exactly?
Wanswheel has provided us a service. Unfortunately, it is a lesson that many have forgotten or never been taught.
Modelcar ....The photos from "wanswheel", are shocking reality of what was, even in our country....Pretty difficult to look at, and think about.
....The photos from "wanswheel", are shocking reality of what was, even in our country....Pretty difficult to look at, and think about.
Thanks for Child Labor Laws, and Collective Bargaining Unions following about the same time or later.
Looking at those pictures, gave me a bad feeling in the stomach of what was, somewhat "normal", in times past.
Thank God we've moved out of that {in this country}....Perhaps there may be some still happening in some small corner of our production or Cottage Industries.
Quentin
Excerpt from Railway Carmen's Journal (1916)
The most dramatic incident in the annals of labor unionism in America was when the chiefs of the four railroad Brotherhood's and the 640 other executives of the railway employes of the whole United States met with the President of the United States for the settlement of the demand for the eight-hour day. The climax to that incident came when the President of the United States announced the principle for which trade unionism has fought-that the eight-hour day is not a subject of arbitration; that the eight-hour day is fundamentally right and a necessary part of the economic and Industrial law of the United States. The President pronounced "the law higher than the Constitution" when he thus declared the extra-legal judgment of the whole people of the United States.
The solidarity of the labor movement was illustrated in this great fight of the railway workers for the eight-hour day as it never has been before. Back of the absolutely united demands of the railway operatives were the solid ranks of the millions of other organized workers of the United States, represented by the head of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers.
That great exhibition of the power of organized labor standing solidly together was equalled by the exhibition of weakness of the men who nominally control the railways as "owners." First the managers who were called before the President, and then the presidents of the railroads who appeared before the public's chief executive, proved their utter dependence upon the few financiers who have no interest in the railroad business except to make profits out of it and to manipulate stocks and bonds.
Another result of tremendous significance was to prove what a sham and what a hypocritical thing "arbitration" is, as the railway owners use that phrase. At the same time that they were demanding arbitration of the eight-hour principle, their chief spokesmen were saying that the eight-hour principle could not work and would ruin any road that installed it-this in face of the fact that many roads have installed it without ruin, and in face of the fact that many of the roads that have not installed it have been wrecked by financial misdeeds. But where these railway managers and presidents gave their hand away was the proof they gave that they had nothing to fear from arbitration-that if they got their usual "arbitration" they felt absolutely assured that they would not have to put in an eight-hour day.
The attitude of these men who nominally control the vital transportation business of the United States is that they are the "strikers," striking not for principle, striking not for the betterment of the railway business or for those engaged in the railway industry, but striking for the personal interests opposed to public welfare and to the industrial justice due the men who run the trains.
The use of coercive power to get unorganized and underpaid railway workers to protest against the rightful demands of the organized railway workers was another spectacle that proved to the conscience of the nation the essential right and necessity of workers being organized into effective unions. The hypocrisy of the railway owners was there again illustrated, in their assumption that they were standing out against the Brotherhoods in the interest of the other railway workers, when they admitted in another breath that to grant the demands of the Brotherhoods would inevitably mean that they would encourage other railway workers to demand and receive wages, hours and conditions of work that the Brotherhoods had wrung from them.
In the difficulty that the President of the United States is now having with the errand boys of Wall street financiers, the people realize as never before what organized labor is up against when it seeks justice and fair dealing in its right to work and to live. The power that controls the great public service of transportation sets itself against the power not only of the workers, but of all the public, as represented in the government at Washington. That power is not in the hands of men who know the railroad business and know what transportation ought to be; but it is in the hands of a few "captains of finance" who know no more about the railroad business than they know about the rights of labor. It is in the hands of such men as Mr. J. P. Morgan, who, when asked by Chairman Walsh of the Commission on Industrial Relations whether he thought $10 a week for a dock worker was enough, replied, "Well, if that is all he can get and he takes it, I suppose it is enough."
It has been proved in this still pending spectacle that neither industrial efficiency nor regard for the public welfare rests with those who own the railroads and assume to control them. It has been proved on the contrary that this efficiency and this regard for public welfare rests with the railway workers, with the men who know how railways could and should be operated, and who do the actual work of transporting the freight and passengers over the 225,000 miles of the American railway systems.
President Wilson is having his second encounter with the stubbornness of those irresponsible grabbers of wealth and natural resources who assume to dictate the lives of their workers. The Rockefellers refused curtly to permit the President's intervention in the Colorado strike-and all the horrors of that strike, culminating in the Ludlow massacre, followed.
In this later controversy involving a more definitely public service the President has lined himself up with the solid labor movement of the country demanding the enforcement of a fundamentally right principle. He has sensed and expressed the economic conscience of the nation. And whether those who control temporarily the great arteries of trade for selfish interests instead of for public interests acknowledge the justice of the President's position and the justice of the railway Brotherhoods' position, that justice will certainly prevail.
The fight of the railway Brotherhoods has made the eight-hour day in American industry a certainty In the near future.
The enactment of the Federal Child Labor law by this Congress will free nearly three-fourths million children from industrial slavery. It is a long step toward freeing nearly one and one-half million other children who labor, but the product of whose labor does not enter into interstate commerce.
In 1827 a union organization of workers in the city of New York declared that no child under 16 years of age should be permitted to work in gainful industry. That was the first recorded effort to abolish or to avoid child slavery in the United States. The evil was then only a little one comparatively. But in the nearly one hundred years from that first effort to the day President Wilson and Congress emancipated the children, the evil grew until it cast as black a shadow over the republic as the black shadow of negro slavery. The foul immorality of mankind's "feeling upon its young" aside, the estimated three-quarter million children in factories, mines, quarries and sweatshops reduced the standard of living and of wages in nearly every worker's home. The material danger to the republic and to industrial security was that every child worker or potential worker was a competitor for the job of its father and the jobs of other fathers.
Jerome Jones, labor editor and president of the Southern Labor Congress, says: "There is a strong connection between child labor and low wages. There is no doubt in my mind but that if the mills had to pay as much for child labor as for adult labor there would be no more child labor problem. The child is thus brought into competition with adult labor, and what is the result? Both child and adult get starvation wages."
Raising the standard of child life means raising the standard of all industrial life. Justice to the children will necessarily mean more justice to the grown wage earners of the nation.
If it has been true through any cause- the cause of greed, or of panic, or of business Incompetence and "shiftlessness" that the children would starve If they did not labor, then the wages of the father must be enough at least to equal the combined wages of the family. The poverty in the vicious circle of poverty and child labor must vanish. The beneficent circle of education must widen.
The fight of nearly one hundred years now brings a great victory, won by the American labor movement, by the National Child Labor Committee, and by President Wilson. The tribute which workers throughout the nation willingly pay to the President is voiced by the commendations and the rejoicings of their spokesmen.
Labor and the nation as a whole have made a splendid advance.
20 April 1914 - The "Ludlow Massacre." In an attempt to persuade strikers at Colorado's Ludlow Mine Field to return to work, company "guards," engaged by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other mine operators and sworn into the State Militia just for the occasion, attacked a union tent camp with machine guns, then set it afire. Five men, two women and 12 children died as a result.
3 June 1918 - A Federal child labor law, enacted two years earlier, was declared unconstitutional. A new law was enacted 24 February 1919, but this one too was declared unconstitutional on 15 May 1922.
25 June 1938 - The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act is passed, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week. The Act went into effect in October 1940, and was upheld in the Supreme Court on 3 February 1941.
Title: One of the little girls in Richmond Hosiery Mills. Location: Rossville, Georgia
Title: Noon hour, May 19, 1909. Boys working in Great Falls Mfg. Co., Somersworth, N.H. Location: Somersworth, New Hampshire.
Title: One of the tiny workers in Richmond Hosiery Mills,. Location: Rossville, Georgia
Title: 15-year old boy who says he works some for the railroad. Location: Mountain Grove, Missouri / Lewis W. Hine.
Title: Noon hour, Cape May Glass Co. N.J., One of the small boys. Location: Cape May, New Jersey.
Title: Young girl working Brookside Cotton Mills. Not the smallest. Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Title: Three Boys Shoveling Zinc Ore from Car Into Wagon, Near Big Bonanza Mine, Aurora, Mo. Youngest boy is Robert Nichols, next larger is Hobart Crawford. They both go to school and work on Saturdays. The other boy works every day. Location: Aurora, Missouri.
Title: Maple Mills, Dillon, S.C. Johnnie. Said, "Aint got no last name," when asked for it. 8 years old. Beginning to "help sister spin." Location: Dillon, South Carolina.
Title: Dangerous Noon-hour Recreation. Doffer boys and others from Pacific Mill. Location: Lawrence, Massachusetts.
greyhounds "Evil Capitalist Robber Barons"? "Child Labor Laws"? Well, to start out with, nobody is promoting the repeal of things such as child labor laws. The government may have put the finish to child labor with a piece of paper called a law. But the law was made possible by the creation of enough wealth in a nation/society so that there was no longer a need for children to labor. Their parents could earn enough to support the family. The parents could earn enough because their labor productivity was increased by the use of capital. Without this productivity increase preventing child labor by passing a law would have caused starvation. There is no good reason for a railroad other than the creation of wealth. Unless you're President Obama who thinks it's just "Peachy Keen" to build a high speed dedicated passenger train network that will inevitably destroy wealth in our nation. And it will destroy wealth for all of us. I understand that. If you don't understand that, I can only hope you begin your journey to understanding by reading "The Myth of the Robber Barons" and begin to think about it.
"Evil Capitalist Robber Barons"? "Child Labor Laws"?
Well, to start out with, nobody is promoting the repeal of things such as child labor laws. The government may have put the finish to child labor with a piece of paper called a law. But the law was made possible by the creation of enough wealth in a nation/society so that there was no longer a need for children to labor. Their parents could earn enough to support the family. The parents could earn enough because their labor productivity was increased by the use of capital. Without this productivity increase preventing child labor by passing a law would have caused starvation.
There is no good reason for a railroad other than the creation of wealth. Unless you're President Obama who thinks it's just "Peachy Keen" to build a high speed dedicated passenger train network that will inevitably destroy wealth in our nation. And it will destroy wealth for all of us. I understand that. If you don't understand that, I can only hope you begin your journey to understanding by reading "The Myth of the Robber Barons" and begin to think about it.
Greyhounds,
Your point about capitalism creating the wealth to end child labor is an excellent counterpoint to the canned argument that child labor was one of the examples of the inherent evils of capitalism.
Speaking of HSR funding, here is a link describing the full national system of HRS that is contemplated for in the U.S. http://www.ushsr.com/ushsrmap.html
It says that the cost would be ½ trillion dollars. That seems like a lot of money, but could we really even build a national system for that figure? We just finished spending about one-trillion dollars, and yet amazingly, there is no obvious evidence of what we bought with it. According to the HSR proponents, that money could have bought a national HSR system twice the size of the most ambitious national system on the table today. That sure would have made us the envy of our friends in Europe.
Dragoman greyhounds: ... Railroads are an economic entity that exist to create wealth. ... As long as a business is looked upon as only "an economic entity that exist to create wealth", and the measure of its success is, therefore, only the amount of wealth it has created, then there is an opening for the "evil capitalist robber barons" (quoted from LNER4472's post) to do whatever it takes to create that wealth, regardless of the impact on the employees, customers, community, or world at large. Occupational safety rules, child-labor laws, anti-pollution regs, antitrust laws, are all examples of restrictions on a business entity's ability to create wealth. Railroads, as common-carriers operating in a highly-regulated environment, have more than most. But these restrictions on wealth-creation were deemed to be in the public interest. One can argue individual cases, but in general I believe most would agree that some reference to public interest (above & beyond the public's interest in wealth creation) is a good thing. Some major historical infrastructure projects (such as Grand Central Terminal) were done by private enterprise alone. Some (such as the Transcontinental Railroad, Interstate Highway System, most modern airports and ports) were accomplished by, or with the active encouragement of, government, acting in the public interest. And yes, Grand Central was buit by, and still owned by, private interests. But I posit that its continued existence at all is due to public interest considerations above and beyond "wealth creation" -- otherwise it would have suffered the much more profitable fate of the Pennsylvania Station/Madison Square Garden property. I believe what the President was trying to allude to was, as BaltACD so eloquently describes above, our society's apparently truncated perspective on the risk-vs.-reward analysis.
greyhounds: ... Railroads are an economic entity that exist to create wealth. ...
...
Railroads are an economic entity that exist to create wealth.
As long as a business is looked upon as only "an economic entity that exist to create wealth", and the measure of its success is, therefore, only the amount of wealth it has created, then there is an opening for the "evil capitalist robber barons" (quoted from LNER4472's post) to do whatever it takes to create that wealth, regardless of the impact on the employees, customers, community, or world at large.
Occupational safety rules, child-labor laws, anti-pollution regs, antitrust laws, are all examples of restrictions on a business entity's ability to create wealth. Railroads, as common-carriers operating in a highly-regulated environment, have more than most. But these restrictions on wealth-creation were deemed to be in the public interest. One can argue individual cases, but in general I believe most would agree that some reference to public interest (above & beyond the public's interest in wealth creation) is a good thing.
Some major historical infrastructure projects (such as Grand Central Terminal) were done by private enterprise alone. Some (such as the Transcontinental Railroad, Interstate Highway System, most modern airports and ports) were accomplished by, or with the active encouragement of, government, acting in the public interest.
And yes, Grand Central was buit by, and still owned by, private interests. But I posit that its continued existence at all is due to public interest considerations above and beyond "wealth creation" -- otherwise it would have suffered the much more profitable fate of the Pennsylvania Station/Madison Square Garden property.
I believe what the President was trying to allude to was, as BaltACD so eloquently describes above, our society's apparently truncated perspective on the risk-vs.-reward analysis.
Well, to start out with, nobody is promoting the repeal of things such as child labor laws. The government may have put the finish to child labor with a piece of paper called a law. But the law was made possible by the creation of enough wealth in a nation/society so that there was no longer a need for children to labor. Their parents could earn enough to support the family. The parents could earn enough because their labor productivity was increased by the use of capital. Without this productivity increase preventing child labor by passing a law would have caused starvation. It's the skillful use of a combination of labor, capital, raw materials and knowledge that creates the wealth of a nation. In other words, commerce creates the wealth we need to live better.
In any event, those of you who are inclined to believe the hateful rhetoric of "Evil Capitalist Robber Barons" would do very well to read "The Myth of the Robber Barons" by Burton W. Folsom Jr. It's available on Amazon for $9.95. Folsom is another one of the pesky history professors.
The book has seven chapters. Six of the chapters deal with individual so-called "Robber Barons". Three of those six chapters deal with railroad related "Robber Barons." Vanderbilt, Hill, and Scranton. (Scranton made the iron rails.) The chapter on Vanderbilt focuses on his steamship days. One chapter is on a particular American Hero of mine, John D. Rockefeller, who made it possible for the average American to have decent light at night. (He also established the first standards for medical education in the US. He did that by giving money to medical schools that would agree to meet standards patterned after Johns Hopkins)
The seventh chapter is a critic of popular historical treatment of the so-called "Robber Barons" Folsom takes issue with the canned version of economic history. He cites Thomas Bailey in the book "The American Pageant" who wrote: "Though ill-educated, ungrammatical, coarse and ruthless, he (Vanderbilt) was clear-visioned. Offering superior railway service at lower rates, he amassed a fortune of $100 million."
Folsom then asks, "If Vanderbilt was being 'ruthless', just who was he being 'ruthless' to by offering superior railway service at lower rates.?" Vanderbilt may have been ill-educated, ungrammatical and coarse, but he knew how to run a transportation business and the general public gained wealth because of it. They got superior service at a lower cost using Vanderbilt's New York Central System.
Look, railroading is commerce. And like it or not commerce is what creates the wealth of any nation. Railroad employees and railroad investors can do things such as enjoy a good retirement, send their children to college, get good health care, etc. because the railroad creates the wealth needed to do those things. (The railroad is inclusive of employees and investors. They each earn their share of the created wealth. They certainly squabble over who gets how much of the created wealth. And they always will.) Things such as retirement, college and health care cost money (wealth) and that wealth has to be constantly created so we can enjoy those things.
The railroads' customers also gain wealth from the railroad. Why do you think a North Dakota farmer would ship his/her grain out of town on the BNSF or the CP? It's because it increases his/her wealth. There would be no other reason to do it. They're not going to pay to ship the grain because it makes them poorer.
Johnny, a distinction is made between Promontory Point and Promontory Summit, though not very clearly, in this excerpt from The Great Railroad Wedding - Driving the Last Spike, in The Pacific Tourist Illustrated Trans-Continental Guide (1877) . Perhaps Promontory Point had become the established dateline for eastern newspapers. -- Mike
Waiting for some time in impatience, at last came this message from Promontory Point at 2.27 P.M.:"Almost ready. Hats off; prayer is being offered."
A silence for the prayer ensued; at 2.40 P.M., the bell tapped again, and the officer at Promontory said, "We have got done praying; the spike is about to be presented."
Chicago replied: ''We understand; all are ready in the East."
From Promontory Point. "All ready now; the spike will soon be driven. The signal will be three dots for the commencement of the blows."
For a moment the instrument was silent, and then the hammer of the magnet tapped the bell, one, two, three, the signal. Another pause of a few seconds, and the lightning came flashing eastward, 2,400 miles to Washington; and the blows of the hammer on the spike were repeated instantly in telegraphic accents upon the bell of the Capitol. At 2.47 P. M., Promontory Point gave the signal, "Done;" and the great American Continent was successfully spanned. Immediately thereafter, flashed over the line, the following official announcement to the Associated Press:
Promontory Summit, Utah, May 10.-THE LAST RAIL IS LAID! THE LAST SPIKE IS DRIVEN! THE PACIFIC RAILROAD IS COMPLETED! The point of Junction is 1,086 miles west of the Missouri River, and 690 miles east of Sacramento City.
Leland Stanford, Central Pacific Railroad.
T. C. Durant, Sidney Dillon, John Duff, Union Pacific Railroad.
Such were the telegraphic incidents that attended the completion of the greatest work of the age, during these few expectant moments, the scene itself at Promontory Point was very impressive.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ykw_klojDV4C&pg=PA164
I'm more interested in sound financing. It appears this bridge which now carries both I-75 and I-71 traffic has not been a toll bridge. One of the links below states that much of the traffic the bridge handles (the traffic that has been largely responsible for its being "overused") is local suburban traffic that the bridge spawned once it had been built. Had a traffic toll been charged over its 48 year life to reflect the bridge's value, and recover the bridge's cost, maintenance, and eventual replacement, wouldn't over-concern about it today be a non-issue? (I am assuming in this example that the tolls generated would not be directed to other uses).
http://www.brentspence.com/
http://cincinnati.com/blogs/nkypolitics/2011/09/26/increased-spending-not-the-answer-for-brent-spence-davis-says/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spence_Bridge
http://www.wlwt.com/r/28306902/detail.html
I don’t think the present society has lost the can-do spirit at all. What is different today is an investment risk that is perceived to be greater than at almost any time in our history.
And that risk / reward equation today has a lot to do with what is going on in the first post of this thread (aside from the slight misspeak about transcontinental versus intercontinental).
We have laws to protect us from robber barons. What is needed is to stop telling the risk takers that their success is somehow unfair to the rest of us.
greyhounds ... Railroads are an economic entity that exist to create wealth. ...
zardoz Murphy Siding: Why are we settling for intercontinental railroads? Let's go for broke- intergalactic railroads is where the action is. ...no place to tamp the ballast, and the air lines would keep freezing, and the mileage pay for the train crews would be exorbitant (I wonder how much the basic day would be for a job that was bullettened to run 3.5 lightyears), the spacesuits would probably not fit through the engine doors......
Murphy Siding: Why are we settling for intercontinental railroads? Let's go for broke- intergalactic railroads is where the action is.
...no place to tamp the ballast, and the air lines would keep freezing, and the mileage pay for the train crews would be exorbitant (I wonder how much the basic day would be for a job that was bullettened to run 3.5 lightyears), the spacesuits would probably not fit through the engine doors......
- Paul North.
Historically the USA has been a 'We can do it' society. Ever since we got men on the Moon, we have become a society that has put on a blindfold when it comes to the future - the future for public works projects, the future for technological challenges, the future for a enhanced standard of living.
The future is risk - as a society we have become so risk averse we are trying to revert to the bad old days rather than accept the risks of challenging for a better future. We have stopped dreaming and working toward a better future.
Today's financial markets, as engendered by the Dot.Com Bubble as well as the Housing Bubble expect to have a almost immediate profit on any investment - investing in something where the pay back, and potentially profit, is in the future is viewed to be a bad risk and to be avoided.
Had the 19th Century men who built the ancestors of today's carriers had the mindset the our society has today - those railroads would never have been built - there is too much risk of failure. In reality probably 90% of the railroad corporations that have ever been incorporated foundered on the financial rocks - but other men with vision picked up the pieces and worked with them, sometimes failing and some times succeeding and many of those failures were picked up by other men with different visions to turn those failures into success - and on and on and on....
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Murphy Siding Why are we settling for intercontinental railroads? Let's go for broke- intergalactic railroads is where the action is.
Why are we settling for intercontinental railroads? Let's go for broke- intergalactic railroads is where the action is.
LNER4472 *If the same gaffes had been made by George W. Bush, Bob Dole, or Dan Quayle, we'd probably be hearing about it non-stop in the news media and the late-night talk show monologues for weeks. (Joe Biden would attract some mockery as well, but few would have ever noticed the remarks.)
*If the same gaffes had been made by George W. Bush, Bob Dole, or Dan Quayle, we'd probably be hearing about it non-stop in the news media and the late-night talk show monologues for weeks. (Joe Biden would attract some mockery as well, but few would have ever noticed the remarks.)
zugmann:
"Building new stuff is sexy. Maintaining old stuff is just plain boring. Politicians don't get photos in the paper for patching a highway. They get them for building a new bridge."
Amen! This is a fact that has bugged me for years.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
greyhounds BaltACD: Let's just face the facts that there is no will or resolve to do anything right anymore. The Interstate system is falling apart from deferred maintenance, the airlines can't make money just hauling passengers and paying tip money for landing rights at terminals and not paying for the ATC system. So why should there be a viable high speed interstate passenger network. Maybe we can afford the Pony Express - except for the exhaust emission droppings. Oh, I'm going to disagree. Good things are getting done. There's a new export grain elevator in Washington, the first new one in decades; the UP is going to add a track to the Fremont Cutoff; CSX built a huge intermodal hub in Ohio that is changing the way they handle IM traffic; NS did the "Heartland Corridor"; BNSF fought through a second track in Abo Canyon; CN is increasing capacity on the old "J", and EMD is opening a new manufacturing facility under Caterpillar ownership. . Things that make economic sense are getting done.
BaltACD: Let's just face the facts that there is no will or resolve to do anything right anymore. The Interstate system is falling apart from deferred maintenance, the airlines can't make money just hauling passengers and paying tip money for landing rights at terminals and not paying for the ATC system. So why should there be a viable high speed interstate passenger network. Maybe we can afford the Pony Express - except for the exhaust emission droppings.
Let's just face the facts that there is no will or resolve to do anything right anymore.
The Interstate system is falling apart from deferred maintenance, the airlines can't make money just hauling passengers and paying tip money for landing rights at terminals and not paying for the ATC system. So why should there be a viable high speed interstate passenger network.
Maybe we can afford the Pony Express - except for the exhaust emission droppings.
Oh, I'm going to disagree.
Good things are getting done. There's a new export grain elevator in Washington, the first new one in decades; the UP is going to add a track to the Fremont Cutoff; CSX built a huge intermodal hub in Ohio that is changing the way they handle IM traffic; NS did the "Heartland Corridor"; BNSF fought through a second track in Abo Canyon; CN is increasing capacity on the old "J", and EMD is opening a new manufacturing facility under Caterpillar ownership. .
Things that make economic sense are getting done.
Thing is, all those are private (not to mention, non-passenger) projects. Is there a single passenger project, then, that makes economic sense, if the airlines are getting subsidized out the$1***$2and the highways are falling into disrepair?
Go here for my rail shots! http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?userid=9296
Building the CPR Kootenay division in N scale, blog here: http://kootenaymodelrailway.wordpress.com/
BaltACD Let's just face the facts that there is no will or resolve to do anything right anymore. The Interstate system is falling apart from deferred maintenance, the airlines can't make money just hauling passengers and paying tip money for landing rights at terminals and not paying for the ATC system. So why should there be a viable high speed interstate passenger network. Maybe we can afford the Pony Express - except for the exhaust emission droppings.
Building new stuff is sexy. Maintaining old stuff is just plain boring. Politicians don't get photos in the paper for patching a highway. They get them for building a new bridge.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Quoting Wanswheel: "Some Utahns may doubt the president misspoke."
Mike, your mentioning Utahns' error reminds me of another error, which I see from time to time--some have said that the UP and CP joined rails at Promontory Point, whereas they were officially joined at Promontory Summit (sometimes called, simply, "Promontory").
There is a Promontory Point, but it is a few miles south of Promontory Summit, right on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, and the Lucin Cutoff was constructed through this point.
Sometimes, even people living in northern Utah err in naming the site of the Golden Spike.
Johnny
Several "wrongs" don't make a "right".
(Amtrak) Pioneer Restoration Organization....Ogden City, situated on the west face of Wasatch Mountains, has a unique story: Initially a mountain man trading center, Ogden grew rapidly after becoming "The Depot" at the junction of the intercontinental railroad.
http://www.pioneertrain.com/index_files/Page435.htm
Choose Ogden River Inn for your Ogden area lodging you won't be disappointed! ...Ogden is full of history that dates back to the intercontinental railroad when the town really started to boom.
http://www.ogdenriverinn.com/
The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum sits at 300 North Main Street...A particularly interesting section of the museum is the Railroad Room, which has a large original painting of the driving of the Golden Spike, which marked the completion of the intercontinental railroad in 1869.
http://www.utah.com/mormon/salt_lake.htm
The Art Institute of Salt Lake City is conveniently located right off I-15 in Draper, Utah, roughly 16 miles south of Downtown Salt Lake City. Known as "Crossroads of the West" for its central geography of the western United States and the fact that the first intercontinental railroad went through the Salt Lake Valley, Salt Lake City is the most populous city in the State of Utah and is the State's political, economic and cultural center.
http://www.artinstitutes.edu/salt-lake-city/about/salt-lake-city-utah.aspx
http://content.lib.utah.edu/u?/USHS_Class,9456
http://mwdl.org/index.php/browse/index/1?sortId=6&recordsPage=2317
Mike
It really doesn't bother me that President Obama misspoke and called the transcontinental railroad the intercontinental railroad.
What bothers me is that he and his like minded folks keep saying that we're allowing China to build the best trains in the world. That is not true and the fact that he and others actually believe that is greatly disturbing.
Railroads are an economic entity that exist to create wealth. With only a couple of exceptions, high speed passenger rail has been proven to be a wealth destroyer. It's particularly bad in China. That country's rail administrators have poured money into a rat hole to create a dedicated high speed passenger train network. This has made the life of the average Chinese person worse, not better. Our president wants to do the same thing here. And he has no understanding of just why he could be wrong. That's very troubling to me.
Here's some information on high speed passenger rail in China. I've posted this before, but it apparently needs frequent repetition
http://www.transportation.northwestern.edu/docs/2010/2010.05.25.Li_Flyer.pdf
PDN: Between the lighting show, the audio hum and the last minute switch to an earlier timeslot, the whole thing was a bit "off". (a certain TRAINS staffer behind you and to your left had a quizical look and a cocked head as that unfolded)
The only things I have to add to the discussion:*If the same gaffes had been made by George W. Bush, Bob Dole, or Dan Quayle, we'd probably be hearing about it non-stop in the news media and the late-night talk show monologues for weeks. (Joe Biden would attract some mockery as well, but few would have ever noticed the remarks.)
*Obama's direct implication, by association, was that "this country"--i.e. government, more specifically "big government" of the "New Deal/Great Society" ilk--built "Grand Central Station." Not only was Grand Central Terminal built by private corporations (more specifically, a company and its subsidiaries run by what Obama's "type" would no doubt call "evil capitalist robber barons"), but Grand Central Terminal IS STILL OWNED by private companies and LEASED TO Metro-North, according to the books I have to refer to here.
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