Railroaded : the transcontinentals and the making of modern America / Richard White.
White, Richard, 1947-
2011
HE2751 .W55 2011 (Mapit)
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Title
Railroaded : the transcontinentals and the making of modern America / Richard White.
Author
White, Richard, 1947-
Edition
1st ed.
ISBN
9780393061260
0393061264
Publication Details
New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2011.
Language
English
Description
xxxix, 660 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., maps, charts ; 25 cm
Call Number
HE2751 .W55 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification
385.0973/09034
Summary
This work is a history of the transcontinental railroads and how they transformed America in the decades after the Civil War. The transcontinental railroads of the late nineteenth century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the U.S. economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, and remade the landscape of the West. As wheel and rail, car and coal, they opened new worlds of work and ways of life. Their discriminatory rates sparked broad opposition and a new antimonopoly politics. With characteristic originality, range, and authority, Richard White 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.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Genesis. First principles
Patriotism and profit
The acts of the founders
Building with other people's money
Golden spike
A Railroad Life: H. K. Thomas
Annus Horribilis: 1873. Springtime in Mexico
Springtime in Canada
The Indian's perpetual winter
Political storms brewing
Information and trust
The long winter
Stories of the fall
A Railroad life: William Hyde
Friends. The lobby
Antimonopoly and party politics
The Southern Transcontinental
Reform in the Gilded Age
A Railroad Life: Elias C. Boudinot
Spatial Politics. Absolute space
Relational space
The things they carried
How railroad rates construct space
The rise of the Octopus
Regulating space
A Railroad Life: Alfred A. Cohen
Kilkenny Cats. Creative destruction
The Colton Trial
Territory
Rationalizing irrationality
Superheroes of bad management
A system that did not bury its dead
Mise en Scène: Labor in Nature
Men in Octopus Suits. The visible hand
Men and boys: manhood and management
A political animal
Going off the tracks
A Railroad Life: William Mahl
Working Men. Control of work
The knights of labor
Contract labor and the Chinese
Rock Springs
Workers' marginalism
A Railroad Life: William Pinkerton
Looking Backward. Benevolent trusts
Waiting for natural monopoly
Labor's defeat
Bears
The Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate-Commerce Railway Association
Mise en Scène: The death of Johanna Grogan
Collapse. An Alcoholics Anonymous for railroads
Bankers
Villard and Adams
The Second Fall of Henry Villard
The Panic of 1893
The struggles of the Octopus
Mise en Scène: Reading the newspapers
Strike. The courts
Union Pacific and Great Northern
Pullman
The decline of the Octopus
Mise en Scène: Following the detectives
Creative Destruction. Dumb growth
Cattle
The diverging Dakotas
Rain follows the plow
Mise en Scène: Wovoka.

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