The primary objectives of business is to enhance the wealth of the shareholders. To achieve this objective the business must offer goods and services that people will pay for in an arms length transaction. Equally important, management must meet the reasonable expectations of its key stakeholders, i.e. customers, employees, regulators, creditors, shareholders, etc. If it fails to achieve any of these objectives, the business will fail in the long run. Witness the large business graveyard that dots the business history landscape.
Because of their nature some businesses have received special support from government. Electric utilities are a case in point. The government recognized that competitive poles and wires were not practicable, so in most jurisdictions electric utilities were granted regulated monopoly status. However, they were expected to pay their way. That is to say, the users were expected to pay for the cost of the service. All of it!
To the best of my knowledge all of the major transportation infrastructure projects in the United States, with the possible exception of some pipelines, received government support to flesh out the project, although not all of it was from the federal government. Clearly, the railroads, especially the so-called transcontinental roads, received substantial government assistance. But the users were expected to reimburse the government, i.e pay for the infrastructure through the rates charged by the carriers, which for the most part they have done.
The challenge for passenger rail, especially so-called high speed rail, is the paucity of evidence that the users will pay for it. Thus, the taxpayers will be saddled with an on-going liability.
henry6 .......................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..................
.......................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..................
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
I think sam1 raises some interesting implications for the future, here and by others' posts on the passenger forum. Basically, it is that improved passenger services in corridors under ~500 miles, whether HSR or more modest improvements, might be best handled by having the infrastructure funded and/or owned by an non-profit agency and the actual trains owned and operated by private contractors (existing railroads and other corporations) without any subsidies. This seems somewhat similar to the current British system.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
The motives for building the nation's railroads are as diverse as the key players. Abraham Lincoln's vision for the transcontinental railroad was different than those of the big four in California and everyone in between.
Knowing the minds of those long dead is a daunting task. Unless they left diaries explicitly stating their intentions for a railroad, it is difficult to know what they had in mind, especially given the complexity of human motives, self-awareness, etc. Lincoln, for example, did not keep a diary, although historians have access to many of his letters.
The over arching motives for building a railroad lay in the fact that it was a better alternative for moving goods and people. Prior to the coming of the railroad, people could not travel any faster on land than Caesar was able to travel on land in the Roman Empire. The railroad changed all that. It improved land travel immensely.
Business promotors expect to make money. Sometimes by hook and crook! Although the bad guys get the headlines, most business promotors and managers are honest.
I am reading for the second time Last Train to Paradise. It is about the building of the Florida East Coast Railway to Key West. Henry Flagler's initial motive for his railroad was to build a line from Jacksonville to St. Augustine so that potential guests for his new hotel there would have a better way to get to St. Augustine. Building the road to Miami was motivated by similar desires. However, one of the motives for building the road to Key West was a vision that it would be a port of entry for ships traversing the anticipated Panama Canal.
I agree with Sam here that motives differ for almost each application, especially when building a railroad. One might see an opportunity to make money and indeed want to make money. But unless it is decided that to do so takes investment in time, money, and people plus the actual delivery of a product or service, the chance of making money falls off.. In several of today's businesses I've been privy to, either as a participant or it being a client, I have found those whose sole purpose has been to make money falls far short of their goal whle those who have dedicate their efforts to putting out a product or service with integrity and quality have succeeded more often than not.
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
Those readers and lovers of American history who want a contrarian point of view on this topic are urged to read Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 660 pp., illus., footnoted) published in 2011.
In this book Mr. White makes a number of assertions or claims that rather refute many of the ideas expressed in conventional wisdom and/or responses to this thread thus far. At the risk of boring some people who have pre-concieved notions or short attention spans, I'd like to quote here at length a few excerpts from Mr. White's book. To wit:
"During most of the period between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century, the railroads were for all practical purposes synonymous with large corporations in North America. Yet, in terms of their politics, finances, labor relations, and environmental consequences, the transcontinental railroads were not only failures but near-disasters, and in this they encapsulated the paradox of the arrival of the modern world in western North America."
"White settlers, already facing drought (note: c. 1889) and an agricultural depression, did not need the land. They were not advancing; they were retreating. In South Dakota the population between the James River--roughly on the 98th meridian--and the Missouri fell precipitously after 1890, declining 16 percent in twelve of the worst-hit counties. In North Dakota the Northern Pacific by the end of the century considered its remaining lands suitable merely for grazing and disposed of them in immense sales of a million acres or more."
"Transcontinentals were a Gilded Age extravagance that rent holes in the political, social, and environmental fabric of the nation, creating railroads as mismanaged and corrupt as they were long, but this argument does not meet the central contention of their defenders: life for Americans was better because of them. The transcontinentals supposedly yielded more social benefits than Americans paid in social costs."
"Overbuilt, prone to bankruptcy and receivership, wretchedly managed, politically corrupt, environmentally harmful, and financially wasteful, these corporations nonetheless helped create a world where private success often came from luck, fortunate timing, and state intervention. Profit arose more from financial markets and insider contracts than from successfully selling transportation."
"These things yielded both personal wealth and social disasters. The mining, cattle, and wheat busts, the breakup of western Indian reservations and Indian Territory, the surges of population into the arid West and the long depopulation that followed in many areas, the economic collapses triggered by railroad collapses, the environmental deterioration and waste of resources, the corruption of politics--all this and more seems unlikely or impossible without the railroads."
"...the railroads were as much a promise as an achievement. They were less an asset that one generation passed on to the next than a debt that the past imposed on the present and future. I mean this quite literally. Without constant new investment and labor, the railroads would have been useless. And beyond that, given lower capital costs and improved technology as the nineteenth century wore on, new railroads could have been built at far lower costs and with far less capital than had been required for older railroads. Those regions east of the 100th meridian and along the Pacific Coast that needed railroads could still have had them without massive subsidies and resulting fraud. Waiting instead of building would for the rest of the West have not necessarily been a bad thing."
"Much of the disastrous environmental and social history of the Great Plains might have been avoided. The issue is not whether railroads should have been built. The issue is whether they should have been built when and where they were built. And to those questions the answer seems no. Quite literally, if the country had not built the transcontinental railroads, it might not have needed them until much later, when it could have built them more cheaply, more efficiently, and with fewer social and political costs."
Mr. White contends, too, that men like the Big Four didn't so much gamble and stake their own money, as that of the public and their much-abused investors. He goes on to point out that some of these railroads paid huge subsidies to the Pacific Mail (steamship lines) to raise rates. "That in practice railroads drove up steamship rates for transcontinental traffic seems a problem for seeing them as pluses on the social benefits calculator, but those bent on making them a benefit argue that hypothetical steamship rates would have been higher than actual railroad rates if the railroads had not been built." In White's view, only the Overland Route needed to be built with government involvement.
It seems clear, then, that the idea that a few genius men built these railroads is wrong. They were built by corporations, with all that implies about the companies and the government(s) being in bed with each other. They were not built because of logic or need so much as blundering or greed. Yes, the railroads are here now, but at what cost?
Lastly, I notice no one ever seems to count the cost to the Indian people, which was staggering in so many ways. We railfans often talk about western railroads without any reference or care about Indian rights, property, or interests, rather like the way the subject of Jim Crow is usually avoided in our circles of interest.
'Why did they build the railroads?' Not for any altruistic reason, but because a few corporations thought they could make a fast buck using other people's money. We railfans and others are lucky we can sit here and judge all this history from our comfortable position in time and geography.
As one man has said, History may not repeat itself, but from time to time it rhymes. "Let those who have ears hear."
I can see White's position and arguments. If you compare railroads of his defined period to the computer and internet companies and our wireless phone purveyors of today, there is great parallel. Our banking/mortgage/stockbroker industries have had similar patterns, too. Back in the late 1800's everybody wanted a railroad, so everybody got a railroad; it was over built and over promised and over rated. While I won't go so far as to say that today's skeletal remains of the system is ideal in any way, it is a better adaptive model than a depot in everytown and two trains on every track. What railroads that weren't built for greedy profit of the promoters were built for soothing egos of the population of the little towns and villages that were on their way to nowhere one way or the other. Interesting. Defnitely something to consider and not dismiss because it doesn't fit our romantic concept of American history.
I too have read White's book. I agree with much of what he wrote.
It is import, I believe, to recognize that White is an historian. He is looking in the rear view mirror and describing judgmentally what happened. He was not part of the action; he was not charged with moving in uncharted waters; he did not have a dog in the hunt; he cannot see into the minds of the key players. Monday morning quarterbacking is easier than running the plays on Sunday afternoon. Having said that, the book is a good read, with many valuable insights and lessons, and I recommend it.
From my point of view a key takeaway from the read is how politics and government can stuff things up. Building the railroad before there was a viable market for it was pushed by the government, perhaps for legitimate reasons, i.e. Manifest Destiny, bind the nation together, create jobs for Civil War veterans, etc. Clearly, many of the promoters and builders stole the projects blind, which is inexcusable, but they were able to do so because the government threw gobs of money and assets at them without any meaningful controls to oversee the projects. At the time the federal government had little concept of internal controls, accountability, audits, etc. At least we have gotten over that hurdle.
Whether we humans learn from history is problematic. Many of the problems associated with the transcontinental railroad(s) cropped up again in the U.S. Space Program and the building of the Interstate Highway System.
Stephen Ambrose was more forgiving of the follies of the builders. He saw the project in a different light, as we all tend to do, and described it as a great achievement. That it was, albeit flawed in many respects. But then what major human project is not flawed in some respects?
Well, if someone is going to read White's book, as I'm now doing, I'd like to suggest the Kindle edition from Amazon. The ebook cost me about $10.50. It's my first ebook.
Amazon provides a Kindle app at no charge for your PC. I find the Kindle app to be great. The book was available to me in less than two minutes. Kindle automatically sets a bookmark. Note taking is a snap. If I don't know the meaning of a word White uses I just highlight the word and the New Oxford American Dictonary pops up a definition. Sometimes my aging eyes struggle with fine print. Not a problem with Kindle, I can just make the print larger.
As far as the book, I'll reserve final judgement until I finish it. So far, he hasn't had a good word to say about anybody. In the US or Canada. He just got a very strong negative check mark in my notes by claiming the inherent inefficiencies of carload railroading were due to the "Ineptitude" of the railroad men he constantly trashes.
No. The railroads just had to keep aggregating and reaggregating the cars into trains. White doesn't understand this and he falsely portrays the solution of the time, continual reaggregation, as "Ineptitude". When some "insiders" (as White calls them) came up with fast freight lines specially managing the cars to keep 'em moving, White calls it "Profiting from their own 'Ineptitude'" Heck, they just thought they were solving a problem - and making a buck doing it.
Carload railroading is inherently slow, inefficient, and unreliable. Management can work on the margins to marginally improve things. But they can not remove what is inherent. That's why most rail freight today is either intermodal or in unit trains. White doesn't understand the industry he is critical of.
But in our own time, the USA built the interstate highway system, and also during the depresssion passed a law that highway taxes could only be used for highway improvment and expansion.
This meant that alone among USA industries, including the competing railroads, about 97% of the real estate of one major industry, highway transportation, was exempt from real estate taxes and thus never paid its fare share of taxes such as other industries/
And at the same time we had rail regulation, one-sided application of anti-trust to eliminate the real efficiencies that railroads could bring to the USA economy (piggyback and contracted unit trains), and I could go on.
After WWII, and experience with A-car retioning etc, one would have thougth that energy independence would be part of the national agenda, but instead we got dependence on mideast oil.
Don't forget a very strong political motive behind the building of the transcontinental railroad, at least in the legislation of 1862. There were fears of the West Coast states and territories forming one or more breakaway republics. True, Unionism was very strong in California and other West Coast states at the time of the Civil War, but in the future, who knew? Anything was possible. What better way to try and prevent West Coast secessionitis than by binding it to the East coast with band of iron?
Firelock, With all due respect, White's book, the sine qua non of scholarship in this area, doesn't seem to even consider this as a motive. My research indicates that your theory was more of a factor in western Canada than in the US.
To NKP guy: No offense taken, at all. I haven't read Whites book, really don't intend to, but he strikes me (from what I've heard second-hand) as a slightly left-of-center gadfly. I'm a military historian by avocation, so if White doesn't make any mention of any strategic concerns of the period it really wouldn't surprise me, To a critic of capitalism it's all about money all the time.
Trust me, from my studies of the period Federal officials WERE concerned about breakaway republics, and if that situation unfolded they would have had a tough time dealing with it, much more so than dealing with the breakaway South. Imagine trying to raise, train, equip, and move an army from east of the Mississippi to the West Coast. You'd have two choices, a 2,000 mile overland march, and imagine the logistic nightmare that would be, or sending that army by sea around the Horn, an even bigger nightmare.
So, any way you look at it a transcontintental railroad HAD to be built, one way or another. It doesn't seem to be generally known, but the subject of a transcontinental railroad first came up in the 1850's but got bogged down in the politics of the time. Northerners wanted a northern route, Southerners wanted a southern route, so nothing came of the proposal until secession took the southern states out of the picture.
As an aside, one thing about gadflys is they all seem to be great critics but poor doers. So hey, Mr. White, if you're listening, try accomplishing something other than Monday-morning quarterbacking before you take shots at the achievers. Sure those men were flawed, but no more so than others, and look at what they accomplished. We're all the better off for it. The great Steven Ambrose, a great humanitarian as well as historian and no apologist for corporate greed made allowances for the flaws of the men who made the transcontinental possible considering the magnitude and benefits of the achievement. If that's good enough for him it's good enough for me.
Firelock76: I was interested in your statement about federal concerns of breakaway republics on the west coast. I ran your statement by a friend who is a well-known historian, although of an earlier period (through 1820). However, he has never come across references to this. Could you pass on a citation or two regarding this?
To schlimm: Oh boy, I'm trying to remember just where I read this. It could have been one of Steven Ambroses books, it might have been one of Bruce Cattons on the Civil War. It's in the back of my mind somewhere but I just can't tell you where, not being evasive mind you.
The thing is, when I moved to Virginia 25 years ago I really wasn't all that interested in the Civil War, but it's hard to live here in "Civil War Central" and NOT get interested! Anyway, when I started studying the War I began with the politics. Why did that four year blood soaked horror have to happen? I won't bore everyone with the details but I DID wind up with a lot of Civil War knowledge stuffed in my cranium! If I can find the source of my statement I'll surely pass it on!
P.S. I've been to a number of Civil War shows here and the amounts of bullets and shrapnel the relic hunters find around here would astound you. The way the stuff flew around here it's a miracle ANYONE lived through it!
Thanks. The Civil War is one of my interests as well.
Wow, I didn't know Futuremodal worte a book too! "
I say, thats a joke, son..."
NKP guy Those readers and lovers of American history who want a contrarian point of view on this topic are urged to read Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 660 pp., illus., footnoted) published in 2011. In this book Mr. White makes a number of assertions or claims that rather refute many of the ideas expressed in conventional wisdom and/or responses to this thread thus far. At the risk of boring some people who have pre-concieved notions or short attention spans, I'd like to quote here at length a few excerpts from Mr. White's book. To wit: "During most of the period between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century, the railroads were for all practical purposes synonymous with large corporations in North America. Yet, in terms of their politics, finances, labor relations, and environmental consequences, the transcontinental railroads were not only failures but near-disasters, and in this they encapsulated the paradox of the arrival of the modern world in western North America." "White settlers, already facing drought (note: c. 1889) and an agricultural depression, did not need the land. They were not advancing; they were retreating. In South Dakota the population between the James River--roughly on the 98th meridian--and the Missouri fell precipitously after 1890, declining 16 percent in twelve of the worst-hit counties. In North Dakota the Northern Pacific by the end of the century considered its remaining lands suitable merely for grazing and disposed of them in immense sales of a million acres or more." "Transcontinentals were a Gilded Age extravagance that rent holes in the political, social, and environmental fabric of the nation, creating railroads as mismanaged and corrupt as they were long, but this argument does not meet the central contention of their defenders: life for Americans was better because of them. The transcontinentals supposedly yielded more social benefits than Americans paid in social costs." "Overbuilt, prone to bankruptcy and receivership, wretchedly managed, politically corrupt, environmentally harmful, and financially wasteful, these corporations nonetheless helped create a world where private success often came from luck, fortunate timing, and state intervention. Profit arose more from financial markets and insider contracts than from successfully selling transportation." "These things yielded both personal wealth and social disasters. The mining, cattle, and wheat busts, the breakup of western Indian reservations and Indian Territory, the surges of population into the arid West and the long depopulation that followed in many areas, the economic collapses triggered by railroad collapses, the environmental deterioration and waste of resources, the corruption of politics--all this and more seems unlikely or impossible without the railroads." "...the railroads were as much a promise as an achievement. They were less an asset that one generation passed on to the next than a debt that the past imposed on the present and future. I mean this quite literally. Without constant new investment and labor, the railroads would have been useless. And beyond that, given lower capital costs and improved technology as the nineteenth century wore on, new railroads could have been built at far lower costs and with far less capital than had been required for older railroads. Those regions east of the 100th meridian and along the Pacific Coast that needed railroads could still have had them without massive subsidies and resulting fraud. Waiting instead of building would for the rest of the West have not necessarily been a bad thing." "Much of the disastrous environmental and social history of the Great Plains might have been avoided. The issue is not whether railroads should have been built. The issue is whether they should have been built when and where they were built. And to those questions the answer seems no. Quite literally, if the country had not built the transcontinental railroads, it might not have needed them until much later, when it could have built them more cheaply, more efficiently, and with fewer social and political costs." Mr. White contends, too, that men like the Big Four didn't so much gamble and stake their own money, as that of the public and their much-abused investors. He goes on to point out that some of these railroads paid huge subsidies to the Pacific Mail (steamship lines) to raise rates. "That in practice railroads drove up steamship rates for transcontinental traffic seems a problem for seeing them as pluses on the social benefits calculator, but those bent on making them a benefit argue that hypothetical steamship rates would have been higher than actual railroad rates if the railroads had not been built." In White's view, only the Overland Route needed to be built with government involvement. It seems clear, then, that the idea that a few genius men built these railroads is wrong. They were built by corporations, with all that implies about the companies and the government(s) being in bed with each other. They were not built because of logic or need so much as blundering or greed. Yes, the railroads are here now, but at what cost? Lastly, I notice no one ever seems to count the cost to the Indian people, which was staggering in so many ways. We railfans often talk about western railroads without any reference or care about Indian rights, property, or interests, rather like the way the subject of Jim Crow is usually avoided in our circles of interest. 'Why did they build the railroads?' Not for any altruistic reason, but because a few corporations thought they could make a fast buck using other people's money. We railfans and others are lucky we can sit here and judge all this history from our comfortable position in time and geography. As one man has said, History may not repeat itself, but from time to time it rhymes. "Let those who have ears hear."
23 17 46 11
While not an actual citation, I can provide a source to substantiate the statement,
See the article in Trains Magazine; Feb, 2009, beginning on page 29, by Peter Hudson...the same concept is quoted as being of great concern to newly elected President Abraham Lincoln.
I have also read a book that concerned itself with the relationship of Fredrick Douglas, and Lincoln during the years just prior to the outbreak of actual hostilities between the Confederate and Union states,, this book also mentions the concept, although it suggested that Lincoln was just as concerned, if not more concerned with the economic binding of the west to the north in terms of supply and demand of raw product as he was in insuring a pro Union slave free west.
I will try and find the book again; it's in one of these piles somewhere....
Firelock,
I know what you mean...the San Jacinto Monument, site of Sam Houston's victory over Santa Anna during the Texas Revolution, has signs posted forbidding metal detectors on the property, and informing visitors that it is illegal to remove any artifact from the site, if you can walk the grounds and not find a ball or two it's a rare day.
The nearby refineries have very complete collections of ball, powder flasks, cannon debris, small arms, knives and buckles, of all things...belt buckles, shoe buckles, saddle bag, rifle sling buckles, you pick it, they found it when building...
The sheer volume of balls in all the collections and the monument proper is beyond stunning, such a short battle putting that much lead in the air is almost beyond belief.
schlimm Firelock76: I was interested in your statement about federal concerns of breakaway republics on the west coast. I ran your statement by a friend who is a well-known historian, although of an earlier period (through 1820). However, he has never come across references to this. Could you pass on a citation or two regarding this?
It would be a great favor if you could ask your historian friend just why Federal Government policy was so focused on getting railroads built to California and other west coast points such as Puget Sound. No businessman would have built the first transcontinetal railroads when they were built without government land grants and loans. It was government policy to extend the rail network to connect the west coast with the area east of the Missouri River. There was a reason for that policy. Does anyone know that reason?
The government had the Army out there finding several routes for a transcon well before the Civil War. The only reason construction didn't start before that war was that northern and southern factions couldn't agree on which of the routes to build. After the southern members of congress departed, the US Government took time out during the freaking Civil War to cause a railroad to be built between the Pacific Coast and the rest of the United States. Why? If it wasn't to prevent regional economies and cultures from developing seperate from the established and populated United States, what was the reason?
My question is about White's assertion that all railroads were built under the umbrella of big business, major railroads during the last half of the 19th Century. My conclusion has been that major railroads were merged into existance from the handsful of smaller roads built by local interests (often in hope they would get the attention of the mjor roads or become part of a "system"). A lot of the expansion was done by merger and acquisition rather than building for oneself.
greyhounds schlimm: Firelock76: I was interested in your statement about federal concerns of breakaway republics on the west coast. I ran your statement by a friend who is a well-known historian, although of an earlier period (through 1820). However, he has never come across references to this. Could you pass on a citation or two regarding this? It would be a great favor if you could ask your historian friend just why Federal Government policy was so focused on getting railroads built to California and other west coast points such as Puget Sound. No businessman would have built the first transcontinetal railroads when they were built without government land grants and loans. It was government policy to extend the rail network to connect the west coast with the area east of the Missouri River. There was a reason for that policy. Does anyone know that reason? The government had the Army out there finding several routes for a transcon well before the Civil War. The only reason construction didn't start before that war was that northern and southern factions couldn't agree on which of the routes to build. After the southern members of congress departed, the US Government took time out during the freaking Civil War to cause a railroad to be built between the Pacific Coast and the rest of the United States. Why? If it wasn't to prevent regional economies and cultures from developing seperate from the established and populated United States, what was the reason?
schlimm: Firelock76: I was interested in your statement about federal concerns of breakaway republics on the west coast. I ran your statement by a friend who is a well-known historian, although of an earlier period (through 1820). However, he has never come across references to this. Could you pass on a citation or two regarding this?
That's what I've always gotten from reading about the railroad and Lincoln. It was to be able to "move" the territory from the Mexican American war close to the eastern states. The danger was the western territory would be hard to hold otherwise. There is a Lincoln quote I can't seem to find, roughly, "an iron belt to tie the nation".
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I've always had a similar impression, namely to build the transcontinental to prevent the Confederacy from gaining some kind of foothold with the coastal states, not to prevent them from forming breakaway republics on their own. It might have been just an excuse, however, as Confederate expansionists tended to look south (Cuba, Mexico) and to the west of TX.
There also was the ongoing question of the Mormon state (within USA) of Deseret from 1849 through about 1872, which mostly was contained in the Utah Territory after 1850.
Also there was a movement after 1865 to form the state (within the USA) of Lincoln, from the eastern 1/2 of Washington, plus some of Idaho.
None of those were breakaway (from the USA) republics.
....and everybody forgets the Jefferson Davis / Pacific Survey conections. (Capt. Gunnison and your Topags, I do remember/ won't forget)
Don't forget considerations of ordinary commerce. There was the increasing necessity of commercial travel between California and the money centers of the East, which travel took WEEKS via steamship, the fever swamps of Panama and another steamship.
One of the originators of the transcon idea, Theodore Judah, got his inspiration from an interminable trip to the Far East that could have been shortened by those weeks with a transcon. Eventually he and others were able to convince the pols that what was good for business was also good for the country.
Faster has always been better for a country in a hurry. We had barely finished paving all the important two-lane highways when it was time to build the Interstates. Three hundred miles an hour wasn't fast enough in the air, so we had to have jets ... then supersonics.
Does anybody want to bet against teleportation by the 22nd century?
I came to the same conclusion,, and it seemed almost a assumed occurrence in the mid-east states...if a local town/county or state built a railroad, it would be merged or bought by a major road...in some instances, it appears quite a few were built and incorporated for just that purpose, with the help/guidance and financing of the major road, and once completed, if profitable it was absorbed into that road.
henry6 My question is about White's assertion that all railroads were built under the umbrella of big business, major railroads during the last half of the 19th Century. My conclusion has been that major railroads were merged into existance from the handsful of smaller roads built by local interests (often in hope they would get the attention of the mjor roads or become part of a "system"). A lot of the expansion was done by merger and acquisition rather than building for oneself.
edblysard I came to the same conclusion,, and it seemed almost a assumed occurrence in the mid-east states...if a local town/county or state built a railroad, it would be merged or bought by a major road...in some instances, it appears quite a few were built and incorporated for just that purpose, with the help/guidance and financing of the major road, and once completed, if profitable it was absorbed into that road. henry6: My question is about White's assertion that all railroads were built under the umbrella of big business, major railroads during the last half of the 19th Century. My conclusion has been that major railroads were merged into existance from the handsful of smaller roads built by local interests (often in hope they would get the attention of the mjor roads or become part of a "system"). A lot of the expansion was done by merger and acquisition rather than building for oneself.
henry6: My question is about White's assertion that all railroads were built under the umbrella of big business, major railroads during the last half of the 19th Century. My conclusion has been that major railroads were merged into existance from the handsful of smaller roads built by local interests (often in hope they would get the attention of the mjor roads or become part of a "system"). A lot of the expansion was done by merger and acquisition rather than building for oneself.
edblysard While not an actual citation, I can provide a source to substantiate the statement, See the article in Trains Magazine; Feb, 2009, beginning on page 29, by Peter Hudson...the same concept is quoted as being of great concern to newly elected President Abraham Lincoln. I have also read a book that concerned itself with the relationship of Fredrick Douglas, and Lincoln during the years just prior to the outbreak of actual hostilities between the Confederate and Union states,, this book also mentions the concept, although it suggested that Lincoln was just as concerned, if not more concerned with the economic binding of the west to the north in terms of supply and demand of raw product as he was in insuring a pro Union slave free west. schlimm: Firelock76: I was interested in your statement about federal concerns of breakaway republics on the west coast. I ran your statement by a friend who is a well-known historian, although of an earlier period (through 1820). However, he has never come across references to this. Could you pass on a citation or two regarding this?
A few more data points...
While it predates Lincoln's presidency, the Pony express was set up in 1860 to provide improved communication between California and the east. Pony Express service ended in October 1861 when the transcontinental telegraph line was installed.
Nevada as admitted to the Union in 1864 in large part because of the mining activity surrounding the Comstock Lode.
- Erik
Excerpt from Building the Pacific Railway by Edwin L. Sabin (1919)
The exigencies of a war threatening the Pacific country would crowd the Panama route; and the hazards of war would render the long trip down the Atlantic, across the Isthmus, and up the Pacific an undertaking trebly fraught with menace.
Now war had come from an awkward quarter - a quarter that closed the exit of transports from New Orleans, and imperiled the high seas to the Isthmus. The Trent affair, by which England was almost alienated, and the disaffection in California which seemed to incline her toward the Confederacy or a Pacific Republic, sharpened the call for quick and secure interior communication between East and Farthest West.
A Pacific Railroad therefore was a military measure as well as a measure for domestic improvement; and while it never developed into a Rebellion measure, and its actual military province was that of subduing the Indians, its prospective course through loyal territory appeared to be an asset.
Excerpt from History of the Northern Pacific Railway by Eugene V. Smalley (1883)
The beginning of the civil war in 1861 postponed any determination by Congress of the question of the route to be favored by the Government. In 1862, however, when the war was in its most doubtful stage, political considerations hastened action on the transcontinental railway project. California, during the gold fever, had attracted a considerable immigration from the Southern States. The settlers from that section naturally sympathized with the rebellion. The power of the Government, absorbed in the fierce contest raging from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, was but feebly felt on the Pacific coast. A separation of California and Oregon from the United States, and the erection of a Pacific republic or empire, was freely talked of. There were also bold projects of a rebel expedition across the plains to conquer California for the South with the aid of its Southern-born citizens. An expedition from Texas did, in fact, go as far as New Mexico, but was driven back with heavy loss. Meanwhile the loyal people of California urged upon Congress the importance of speedily uniting their State with the East by a railroad, as a political as well as commercial measure. So Congress stopped in the midst of the great task of providing men and money to carry on the struggle for national existence, to create and subsidize corporations to build a railway across the continent. When the first Pacific Railroad Bill was passed, the cannon of the defiant enemy could almost be heard at the Capitol in Washington. This was in June, 1862, shortly after the defeats of McClellan on the Peninsula, and just before the disastrous battle known as the second Bull Run.
Excerpt from History of California by Hubert H. Bancroft (1890)
The Pacific republic idea which had always haunted the southern brain had assumed some definiteness, or was at least more openly broached, when the southern states seceded. The California senators had proclaimed it in Washington in 1860 to intimidate the north, and it continued to be talked of in a threatening manner during the winter of 1860-1. The inside workings of the conspiracy were not divulged. There was a secret movement, with a history, carried on by an order called Knights of the Golden Circle. And there were other organizations. Even at the time enough was known at Washington to cause the president to dispatch, with every effort at secrecy, General Edwin A. Sumner to the Pacific coast to relieve General Albert S. Johnston of the command of the military department. But with all the caution observed in this transaction, Johnston received information by pony express in time to resign before Sumner arrived. Not an hour was lost when the general landed before taking command, but Johnston was evidently not surprised. He yielded gracefully, no doubt gladly, and was soon on his way overland, via Texas, with other officers and volunteers for the southern confederacy. He was a Kentuckian, and was imbued with that devotion to state, instead of general government, which was the political religion of the south. He gave his sword to the "lost cause," and laid down his life at Shiloh as a proof of his loyalty to an idea.
Pleasse don't forget that even before considerations of slave vs. free society, there was also concern about Euorpean powers grabbing part of the West Cost and settling it. Canada was still a British colony, not a separate country. Tsarist Russia claimed Alaska. Etc.
This latest information on the geopolitical reasoning behind the transcontinental railroad certainly does clarify and ring true. Moreover, it suggests that the motive behind the transcontinental railroad was uniquely different from the motives behind the ensuing age of railway fever where every town wanted a railroad.
Personally, I find no such ring of truth to what has been described of White’s book. He seems to conclude that all railroad construction was a scam to defraud the public on the part of corporations in bed with the government; to execute railroad projects, which were destructive and unnecessary. This portrayal of corporations seems way too familiar as a modern-day cliché for me to believe that White is not looking back at history through this modern lens of corporate disdain.
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