OK, a previous, similar post was pulled down by Sir Mad Dog because it was not "Railroad Related". It was, in fact, very railroad related. But there's no sense arguing with a moderator. (Or the IRS)
So this is a paper on how parts of Nebraska were developed by the building of the Burlington Route through that state. The railroad worked to bring people in from eastern states and Europe. The land grants allowed the railroad to be built and provided opportunity for people to better their lives. It all seems to have worked out fairly well.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=historyfacpub
The purpose of a railroad is to create wealth. Wealth that is needed so people can improve their lives. That's just what happened in Nebraska. (and elsewhere in North America)
You are making a simple single statement which is as much assumption as fact. Yes, railroads were to make money...for the investors, the backers, the owners, the operators, even the employees. But there also was the social impact which was able to create economies where there were none; towns and cities sprouted in a wilderness; raw materials were able to go to where they could be used or formed into usable products; mails and communications were opened between cities and towns, and noplaces; people were able to move about the country before Southwest Ailines invented the phrase. To some the socio-economic results were a vision to be created by the railroad, to others the railroad was to be its own reward. There are thousands of books and hundreds of theories: political, non political, archeological, socialogical, ecnonomic and what have you.
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henry6 You are making a simple single statement which is as much assumption as fact. Yes, railroads were to make money...for the investors, the backers, the owners, the operators, even the employees. But there also was the social impact which was able to create economies where there were none; towns and cities sprouted in a wilderness; raw materials were able to go to where they could be used or formed into usable products; mails and communications were opened between cities and towns, and noplaces; people were able to move about the country before Southwest Ailines invented the phrase. To some the socio-economic results were a vision to be created by the railroad, to others the railroad was to be its own reward. There are thousands of books and hundreds of theories: political, non political, archeological, socialogical, ecnonomic and what have you.
What is your point?
Nobody pulled up stakes and moved to Nebraska because they thought they were going to be poorer. You left out an important beneficiary in your 2nd sentence. The consumer of rail service. Nobody ships anything on a railroad unless they see a financial gain in doing so. The financial gain from using the railroad makes the railroad's customer wealthier. Otherwise, the customer wouldn't be a customer. It wasn't like: "Hey, honey, I'm thinking about shipping out our hogs to Chicago on the Burlington. It will make us destitute, but I think it's a good idea."
No, that didn't happen. If the hogs got shipped out it was because the farmer would increase his family's wealth by using the railroad. The railroads did, and do, well serve the people of the United States by making money by facilitating other folks making money. That's creating national wealth and it is a very good thing.
My point is that the answer is much bigger than was stated. Sorry.
henry6 You are making a simple single statement which is as much assumption as fact.
You are making a simple single statement which is as much assumption as fact.
Henry,
When you say that, what part of Greyhound’s statement do you regard as being assumption?
As stated the implication was that the railroads were built for the sole intended purpose of creating communities and economies when in fact they became incidental results of building. No one town or region was targeted for creating towns and cities but it happend. The social, economic, geographical, and political stories, including choices of routing the railroad, all have deeper and broader effects than the statement implies. It is right, but just doesn't go far enough in describing the building, the causes, and the effects.
Actually, opening up the central Adirondacks for development was one of the expressed purposes for which William Seward Webb built the Mohawk and Malone Railroad (AKA the Adirondack and St Lawrence).
Unfortunately, the Adirondack Forest Preserve (ie, Adirondack Park) was formed in 1892 - the same year the M&M was completed.
The park was given state constitutional protection in 1894, relegating the railroad line to serving as a bridge line to Montreal and to serve the communities already existing in the Park.
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henry6 "...My point is that the answer is much bigger than was stated. Sorry..."
"...My point is that the answer is much bigger than was stated. Sorry..."
Agree with henry6;Simple answer(IMHO); To increase Commerce, (ie Wealth.)
I would submit that the desire to build railroads across the country evolved in the rush for lands of the middle of the country and then cattle and mineral wealth of the western territories.
As a part of that context to go from the east coast to the west coast in the days pre railroads and trails, one had to take a ship around Cape Horn. Or across the Isthmus of Panama ( a nasty journey overland, for any number of reasons).
This is a good link with lots of info on the Journey around Cape Horn and the Isthmus of Panama: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/panama-canal-horn.htm
In 1852 the Extreme Clipper Stag Hound sailed New York to San Francisco in 124 days. In 1853 the clipper Flying Cloud made the NY to SF voyage in 89 Days and 21 hours, during the Gold Rush.
So there was a definite need for a faster safer method to get across the country.
FTL:"...[7/1/1862]Congress passes and Lincoln signs the Pacific Railroad Bill. The document endorses Central Pacific efforts to build the California line while simultaneously chartering a Union Pacific Railroad Company to build west from the Missouri River. The bill grants each enterprise 6,400 acres of land and $48,000 in government bonds per mile built. It does not designate a meeting point for the lines..."
OK, this is my understanding of the subject writing by the academic types.
1) the Federal Government wanted to see the state of Nebraska populated. This is understandable. A big empty space is asking for trouble. Who knew who would do what out there? The whole army only had 25,000 soldiers and they were busy.
2) the way to get it populated was to create an opportunity for people to increase their wealth (make money) by moving there. They'd get a county sheriff and between themselves and the sheriff things would be taken care of. (People were, in fact, hung for stealing horses. It did happen. With good reason.)
3) to create this opportunity the big empty space needed transportation to allow the settlers to make money by selling their surplus production elsewhere.
4) that transportation would come from a railroad.
5) the way to get the necessary railroad built was to grant it otherwise unused lands which it could sell to settlers.
6) settlement and municipal devleopment were not an incidental result of railroad building. They were the objective of railroad building. Many (Most?) US railroads were developmental railroads designed to develop the lands they ran through.
7) the railroad (Burlington in this case) actively promoted the land sales in the US and in Europe.
8) this gave many people an opportunity to better themselves that they would not have otherwise had.
9) in the case cited by the academic types it all seems to have worked out quite well.
The reasons that "they" built railroads vary depending on the time and the location, and also who "they" are. Tthe original question apparently concerns "Nebraska" railroads, and the assumption is that the Federal government gave land to the Burlingon RR that it could sell to encourage it to build its route. Since I don't know off the top of my head when the Burlington's route through Nebraska was built (maybe someone else does) I'm not sure this is true.
Land grants were certainly available when the original UP line was built through Nebraska. They were essentially a financing device, to enable the railroad to attract private capital for a highly speculative undertaking. But, after 1870 or so, these kinds of land grants were no longer available. What replaced them were right-of-way grants (sometimes called "map filings"), which gave a railroad a right of way over government lands for so long as the land was used for railroad purposes (in other words, the title was "reversionary") but no excess property which it could sell.
Further, the assumption that's implicit in this question is that "they" (whoever "they" are) built most of the railroad system by land grant policy. That is certainly not true. Only a minority of the nation's rail mileage was built with land grants. Most ot the railroads (particularly east of the Missouri River) were not land grant roads.
Further Falcon's Point:
CB&Q (Burlington & Misouri River) built most of their routes with the assistance of the Acts of 1872 & 1875, without the "checkerboard", for the most part 100 ft either side of the centerline of main track (with additional filings for station grounds)...The "Q" found itself inside UP's 1862 and 1866 checkerboard 200 mile limits all the way across Nebraska which made for some interesting dealings with the Yellow Peril. CB&Q bought additional land accross the state on speculation under the guise of the Lincoln Land Company. (McCook, Alliance and other Nebraska towns started that way). The bulk of the activity was 1878-1890.
The GLO Filings (Filing Maps) were where there was vacant government land in play (not accross patented lands by Cash Entry, Military Warrant or Homestead Exemption...etc.).... Those were reversionary in title (fee simple determinate), not easemnts and title could be perfected if the railroads so chose (rarely happened)...and the railroad had to indeed build the railroad to get the grant.
"they" and "who" (who-dat?) also failed a lot of the time. Everybody forgets and we only hear about the survivors. GLO/BLM is full of maps of broken dreams and failed ventures that collapsed for all kinds of reasons. GLO/BLM also is full of cases where the Surveyor General or the Department of the Interior revoked a grant or pulled the plug on a railroad. The Silver Panic of 1883, for instance, screwed up all kinds of railroad plans. Had that not happened, CB&Q would have controlled the Colorado Rockies as a through route, not DRGW. (under the aegis of the Colorado Railway, CB&Q was the first to survey into Glenwood Canyon, Aspen, Gore Canyon and most of the Moffatt Route (sometimes 10 years earlier, Moffat's Chief Engineer Horace Sumner was on those earlier CB&Q survey crews.)
Unfortunately, far too many history texts have an underlying agenda or poor basis in fact. The foibles and failures get little notice in the big fable of the railroads in the old west.......(thankfully Mel Brooks had a field day with the misconceptions in Blazing Saddles)
And "AMEN" to Falcon's last paragraph....and you cannot limit grants to the Public Lands States, remember that B&O got a grant (of sorts) on it's second extension in the 1830's to get through some tidal bottomland outside of Baltimore. (Illinois Central was hardly the first railroad to land grant its way down the line)
My great-great-great somebody or others came from Norway to homestead in northwestern Nebraska in the late 1800's. They most certinly did it to improve their lot in life, and to make the future better for their children. They rode there on the Fremont & Elkhorn Valley Railroad. It was certainly built to make a profit for it's owners and investors. I don't think any railroad built a line with the intention of doing anything beyond having the line pay for itself, and turn a reasonable profit for the business.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Got a question....did the Federal Government give the land grants to the western railroads because the Government nor anyone else didn't have the money to purchase the lands (from the Government) or was it the idea of those in Government of a stimulus package by giving railroads abilies to build while giving people incentives to settle?
henry6 Got a question....did the Federal Government give the land grants to the western railroads because the Government nor anyone else didn't have the money to purchase the lands (from the Government) or was it the idea of those in Government of a stimulus package by giving railroads abilies to build while giving people incentives to settle?
People don’t want to move into a land that has no rail transportation. And railroads don’t want to build into a territory that has no business. If they did, the business would come eventually, but the payback was too far out. That made the risk of investment too high. To break that deadlock, the government granted land to the railroads. It amounted to the government partnering with a railroad to share the risk of investment. So the government became an investor alongside of the railroad company. Then, both the railroad company and the government received a return on their investment.
In actuality, the settlers who moved into the territory were the government. So they were the investors that partnered with the railroad to bring rail transportation into the territory. And as Greyhounds mentioned, the settlers received a return on their investment in the form of better transportation. Better transportation made more money for them. Hauling their goods made money for the railroad. The whole thing together created wealth.
So then no one person or side came up with the idea. Begged question is: is this capitalism or socialism?
[quote user="henry6"]
[/quote] Huh? I see it as a case of businesses and the federal and state governments working together to further economic development in sparsley populated, undeveloped parts of the country. Furthermore, I'd say it worked.
henry6 So then no one person or side came up with the idea. Begged question is: is this capitalism or socialism?
Practical solution, yes...but socialism or capitalism?
Would the answer change history?
henry6 Practical solution, yes...but socialism or capitalism?
I am not sure what the answer is. It was public sector financing, but the money did not really come out of people’s pockets because the land had very little value with nobody wanting to use it, due to the lack of transportation. It was simply an asset that the government acquired from the previous owners, rather than from the new citizens of the government. If it was socialism, it was much different that the socialism of today. The land grants or similar, did build wealth for the people just like capitalism does. Today, socialism builds bigger government and that builds more socialism in a vicious circle. And it destroys wealth in the process.
But as to what to call the land grant financing, it probably depends on which party to it you ask. The government would have called it a subsidy. The settlers would have called it a gift. The Indians would have called it theft. The railroads would have called it a co-investment.
Consider that the Tennessee Valley Authority is socialism, despite what the apologists say.
CSSHEGEWISCH Consider that the Tennessee Valley Authority is socialism, despite what the apologists say.
Doesn't change history, but explains it, Murph. But Paul's "apologists" is quite destripitve of the American way: We cannot be Socialistic in any way, but our Capitalism finds many ways to get government al all levels to support, subsidize, and stabilize its wants and needs. Make me think we are actually have an Apologisim form of government and business based on convenience for the matter at hand rather than any hard and fast "ism" in the books.
Excuse me for interrupting, but silly me, I thought they built the railroad thru Nebraska to get from Iowa to Colorado.
Population heavy in Lincoln & Omaha (east) - middle/small-sized towns along train tracks all across state. Wealth of state in cattle and farming. (and a couple of sports)
That's all...
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Chicken or Egg?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD Chicken or Egg?
....and thus the plan was hatched....you nailed the conundrum!
Maybe the question is why they built railroads, as opposed to some other money-making venture? Folks debate the role of federal subsidies - land grants.Another aspect to explore was that In some cases, the bigger incentive appears to have been construction for the profit to made on that alone rather than construction to achieve a profitable railroad line.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
No, it's not a begged question. It's obvious if you think it through.
The government was divesting itself of assets. It was transferring economic control to private individuals and stockholder owned railroads. It was removing itself from the picture. The answer to your question couldn't be any more obvious than it is.
Please remember the basic premise for having a business is to make money.
In the case of the original UP - Pacific Railroad money was made building the railroad. And the scandal was that people made money building the railroad and financing it.
Did the original UP make money?
Socialism is what you call it when you run out of other things to call it.
Rgds IGN
The creation of Crédit Mobilier of America was a deliberate attempt to falsely present to the Government of the United States and the general public the appearance that an independent (of the Union Pacific Railroad and its principal officers) corporate enterprise had been impartially chosen by the Union Pacific Railroad’s officers and directors to be the principal construction contractor and construction management firm for the Union Pacific Railroad project. It was created by the officers of the Union Pacific to shield the companies' shareholders and management from the then common charge that they were using the construction phase of the Union Pacific project (as opposed to the operating phase of carrying passengers and freight), to line their pockets in excess profits, profits which these corporate officers did not in fact believe would come to exist from the actual operation of the railroad. So they created a sham company to charge the U.S. Government extortionate fees and expenses for the construction of the line. $72 million in construction contracts were given to Crédit Mobilier for building a railroad only worth $53 million. Union Pacific paid whatever the charges were, since they were essentially paying themselves. The Union Pacific and other investors were left nearly bankrupt as a consequence.
narig01 Please remember the basic premise for having a business is to make money. In the case of the original UP - Pacific Railroad money was made building the railroad. And the scandal was that people made money building the railroad and financing it. Did the original UP make money? Socialism is what you call it when you run out of other things to call it. Rgds IGN
Two very intersting veiwpoints here, IGN. One is that the basic premise for a business is to make money. Some will say it is an orginization to make a product or provide a service and charge a fee for so doing. If there is a profit, all the better. Some will go so far as to say a business whose sole purpose is to make money will not last without the dedication to a product or service first.
As for calling something Socialism when you run out of other things to call it...that's interesting too. Using the term almost in a derogratory way without fully understanding what it is or represents. LIke using four letter and curse words when all else fails...doesn't have ot make sense but just makes the one saying it feel better.
On the topic of railroading...yes, building a railroad was a profit center in itself. Often railroads would form a construction company ot buil a railroad and then have the results sold or leased to the railroad itself. Yes, as in the case of Credit Mobilier and the Union Pacific and some others, there was some illegal activities present, but it was not always the case.
My point of these posting has been to point out that our governments have always been active partcipants in the promoting and aiding of private enterprise and that private enterprise has always relied on the protection and help of governments. There is no pure Capitalism and no pure Socialism and we in the United States have always proven it from turnpikes and post roads, through canals and and onto railroads, and even in the air. The line is so fuzzy between the two one thinks there should be another term, word, for what we have..
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