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Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, by Richard White
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"A powerful book, crowded with telling details and shrewd observations." �―Michael Kazin, New York Times Book Review
This original, deeply researched history shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success. 8 pages of illustrations- Sales Rank: #133454 in Books
- Brand: Brand: W. W. Norton Company
- Published on: 2012-04-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x 1.40" w x 5.50" l, 1.21 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 720 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
“A model of narrative skill and [an] insightful reinterpretation of the Gilded Age. It is easily the best business history I have read.” (Donald Worster - Slate)
“Will entertain and outrage readers.” (Buzzy Jackson - Boston Globe)
“An exciting story and well told.” (John Steele Gordon - Wall Street Journal)
“Imaginative, iconoclastic, immensely informative and mordantly funny.” (Glenn C. Altschuler - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
About the Author
Richard White, winner of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Parkman Prize, is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University.
Most helpful customer reviews
123 of 131 people found the following review helpful.
The Transcontinental Railroads and Creative Destruction
By Robin Friedman
On May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, the lines of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads were symbolically linked together to celebrate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. An iconic photograph celebrates this event. Once viewed as a seminal moment in the making of the United States and the West, the events at Promontory Summit and their aftermath receive a great deal of critical attention in Richard White's provocative and polemical book, "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America" (2011). White, the winner of a MacArthur Award and the Parkman Prize is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University. He has written extensively on the American West.
Much in this book will be familiar to students of the post-Civil War Gilded Age of American history. White's history differs from most accounts in its virtually unilateral criticism of the building of transcontinental railroads in the West. White claims the transcontinentals were built far too early when they were not needed, were drastically overbuilt, corruptly financed, and incompetently managed. They destroyed the environment and the Indian tribes, contributed to depressions and economic dislocation, and promoted poor land use and poor settlement patterns in the West. White concludes (p. 517): "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 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."
White writes in detail about the financial and other corruption of the transcontinental railroads. Much of the book is devoted to the arcane and dismal world of railroad finance in the 19th Century. In White's account, the financiers played a shell game in building the railroads putting other people's money and the money and land of the Federal government at risk with little risk to themselves. They financed the building of the railroads through mirrors and construction corporations, such as the infamous Credit Mobilier during Grant's presidency, which they themselves controlled. The railroad owners proved markedly adroit in pulling out the capital the corporations were to receive to their own personal accounts resulting in debts for money never received that the railroads could not pay. The system floundered while individuals grew rich, in White's account. The railroads were controlled by easterners such as Henry Villard, Leland Stanford, Jay Cooke, Collis Huntington, Tom Scott and not by people in the West whom the roads were ostensibly designed to serve. In White's account, the curmudgeonly figure of Charles Francis Adams (1835 -- 1915) stands out. Adams served as the president of the Union Pacific Railroad until forced out by the road's bankruptcy. Adams vainly and ineffectively railed against the system at times and tried to reform it while as an executive he all too often fell victim to it. In the final analysis, White finds little reason to treat Adams more kindly than his other characters or, as White frequently calls them, his "guys".
Besides the emphasis of financial chicanery, White describes the close relationships between financiers and politicians in Congress and in the state governments. There was pervasive corruption in a culture White describes as being based euphemistically on the relationship of "friends." The book details the terrible human cost of the railroads in the form of accidents. It discusses the long misuse of the Chinese, both by the railroads and by their workers. A highlight of the book is a lengthy treatment of the Pullman Strike of 1894.
White intensifies his historical analysis through the use of metaphors. The term "creative destruction" in the title of this review derives from the economist Joseph Schumpeter who saw the rise of 19th century capitalists as sweeping away the old to make way for the new. White fundamentally disagrees with Schumpeter on the positive achievements that allegedly resulted from the building of the transcontinentals. Another figure in the book is the "Octopus" derived from Frank Norris' famous novel about railroad abuses in California and the closely related term "Robber Baron". White rejects these terms as giving too much credit to the financiers and managers of the railroads. He argues that far from making the corporations instruments of power and efficient management, the owners gutted the railroads to their own ends. Their success as individuals, for White, masked their failure as entrepreneurs as witnessed most dramatically by the depressions of 1873 and 1893 and the receiverships which became the frequent fate of the transcontinental systems. Another frequent metaphor of White's is the "Sorceror's Apprentice" by which he means that the railroad monguls unleashed forces that they did not understand and could not control. White does not use another figure which leaps to mind -- that of the formidable Wizard of Oz who proves upon close acquaintance to be "a very poor wizard."
In his Introduction, White identifies several strands of the argument of his book. He argues that the transcontinentals were intertwined from the beginning with the largesse of the Federal government and that the story of private capitalism and initiative is largely a myth. Second, White argues that the transcontinentals changed the concept of "space" in the West to reduce it to the cost of shipping. The book offers a good overview of the difficulties of cost pricing for services offered by the railroads. The difficulties of setting prices led to much abuse, favoritism, and economic dislocation. Third, White argues that the railroad corporations were not "harbingers of order, rationality, and effective, large-scale organization" but were instead incoherently and irrationally managed. Fourth, White offers qualified praise to the antimonopoly movements that arose in the Western states to combat the abuse of the railroads. As his final point, White tries to deflate the myth of the "Rober Barons" for reasons alluded to earlier.
There is much to be learned from White's book. I found the book marred by its patronizing, overly casual writing style and by its aura of certainty. Although he acknowledges the risks of importing current values into a different time, the book seems to me to lack a full historical sense. White pushes on his readers issues such as Enron, the IT bubble, and the economic collapse which began in 2008 as parallels for understanding 19th Century transcontinental railroads. These analogies may be perilous.
The book has provoked a substantial debate among my fellow reader reviewers here on Amazon. I found this a good, thoroughly researched study of the transcontinental railroads in which the author makes no secret of his opinions and possible biases. Students of American history, the West, and the Gilded Age will benefit from the book. A degree of skepticism and a willingness to witthold hasty judgment are valuable qualities to bring to the reading of this book.
Robin Friedman
92 of 107 people found the following review helpful.
Enough with myths, lets have some truth
By Festus
Many of the histories of railroads in America fall into two categories: Detailed accounts for railroad nerds who love to map and plot the old roads and visit the old sites, or stories of glory and bravery that create heroic myths about a foggy, inaccessible past. This book is the long-awaited, much-needed comprehensive history of long distance railroads. It both recreates the immediacy and contingency of the construction of these roads--unlikely events! extraordinary consequences!--and slices through the hazy fog of myth with a thrilling interpretation. For White, the long distance railroads were economic and environmental disasters that could never have been created without massive federal subsidies and an extraordinary amount of financial chicanery. The men who built the transcontinentals are strongly reminiscent of the men who brought us Enron and the recent financial collapse. That is not to say, as some reviewers have claimed here, that White is an "anti-capitalist" who hates private enterprise.
To the contrary! White shows that railroads weren't free market enterprises at all: They were publicly-supported, intentional subsidies. Their ultimate success, and their incredible power to remake American life, is not due to brilliant and energetic entrepreneurs but rather to a national decision to tolerate inefficient management and thieving railroad barons in order to further the public interest.
This is useful history. This is powerful interpretation. And it is exhaustive, document-based research. I hope those reviewers who complained about the book will consider David M. Kennedy's advice: We must refuse to believe something merely because we wish it to be true. History is very hard on belief, but it can be a powerful tool for the living.
If you want to get a sense of the book before buying, White has twice been interviewed on the radio this month (check out his interview with Diane Rehm in June or his July 11 Morning Edition interview on NPR).
74 of 92 people found the following review helpful.
For the bad reviews...
By Chris
Many who have reviewed this book seem to have missed the point entirely. Richard White states in the introduction that Railroaded "emphasizes finance capitalism-the use of financial markets-as the central engine of corporate growth and expansion in late nineteenth-century North America."
He recognizes that "Although the transcontinental railroads emerged in markets shaped by large public subsidies and particular legal privileges, neither subsidies nor privileges were new in and of themselves. American states had subsidized and granted special privileges to canals, banks, and railroads in the 1820's and 1830's. These proliferating and often financially disastrous subsidies had brought about a constitutional reaction in the 1840s that dramatically curtailed the ability of the states to subsidize development and lend their credit" leading to the unique viewpoint of his book, "[which]left the ground open for the federal government."
The direct correlation he makes between railroad owners of the 18th century and the financial engineers of the 21st is this: "Transcontinental railroad corporations transformed the government itself by making the government an arena in which the corporations themselves competed, and by making Congress, bureaucracy, and the courts a mechanism for corporate competition."
I for one appreciated White's viewpoint that as a historian you cannot take the privilege of hindsight but must explore every option that the contemporary figures faced, which necessarily takes some bias. The science of history is ever more learning that to tell a history purely objectively is impossible, and in this instance, the idea that these railroad owners were greedy, odious people that shared little with the common good was certainly well represented in the late 19th century.
So if your looking for a sweeping history of the railroads and all its "grandeur" for "civilization," then I would recommend you look elsewhere. But if your looking for a unique perspective on the history of the railroads or a historic model of today's corporations, then cozy up to a good read.
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