Richard White

Describes the roll played by the transcontinental railroads in the making of modern America during the Gilded Age, discussing the economic panics caused by their debt and how their dependence on donations from the wealthy initiated new forms of corruption. 20,000 first printing.

The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America

Railroaded

Bryan Alexander

A fascinating, entertaining, and instructive work of history. White revisits the grand expansion of American railroads west of the Mississippi, seeing them not as a heroic adventure, but as a complex set of mistakes, criminality, and costly innovation: "bloated, ill managed, heavily indebted, and corrupt." (450)

Railroaded dives deeply into the business history of railroads, which can be daunting for a newcomer to the field, like myself. White dredges through a massive array of primary sources to bring corporate owners and managers to account. He finds their construction led to horrible destruction of animals, human death and suffering, and the waste of much money. The transcontinentals required a great deal of corruption to exist, involving the suborning of Congressmen, journalists, state governments, regulatory bodies, and fellow financiers.

Some key points:

-Railroad companies depended hugely on government support. The feds propped up failing companies, supplied troops to break strikes, arranged for land packages, warred against native nations, and more. These stereotypical individualists, Randian heroes, could not have accomplished what they did without massive government partnership, argues White.

-The federal government also played a key role in trying to regulate the railroads, when energized by reformers.

-Companies massively overbuilt western lines, far in excess of anticipated or actual demand.

-RRs helped crash the US economy in 1873.

-RRs powerfully shaped the patterns of population settlement in the west. (457)

-RR labor played a key part in overall worker activism, often spurred on by heinous working conditions.

-A key feature of RR expansion was issuing lots of financial securities and loading up on debt. Indeed, these activities often yielded more income than hauling traffic.

White's style is engaging and sometimes quite funny.
During the trial Gould's lawyers called the Southern Pacific an octopus; the Southern Pacific's lawyer... called the Texas and Pacific an incubus. It was a trial in which perhaps only the invective was accurate. (206)

I wish, if only for simplicity, that I could say, for better or worse, that these tycoons dreamed modernity, built empires, and gave us the world we know. They were, however, not that smart. Many were clever enough at soliciting money and not repaying debts.(xxxii) 

The book also includes brief biographical snippets, which humanize the larger issues.

Railroaded considers a counterfactual possibility. What if the big lines hadn't been built the way they were? White offers an intriguing real-life alternative in the case of North vs South Dakota, arguing that a far smaller, slower RR rollout led to equal if not better outcomes.

Yes, there are many fine resonances with our age. White grimly notes that we once considered widespread fraud to be a symptom of American capital's early days. Heh.

I ran into several problems with this book, but won't reduce my star rating because they might be due to flaws in my own education. First, I didn't receive a clear picture of railroad technology or engineering. Perhaps that topic is simply too well known. Second, while White did a good job of including Canada and Mexico into this North American story, I felt that those nations weren't integrated well into the overall narrative. 

Overall: strongly recommended.

Railroaded The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America

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