AP United States History - Chapter 23-27 AP Model Exam Part C
Analyze and explain the role played by railroads in the rapid economic growth of late-nineteenth-century America.
The government-business entanglements also undermined the industrial development. The unparalleled outburst of railroad construction was a crucial case; by 1900, the miles of railroad had spurted up to 192,556, much of which was west of MI River. Transcontinental railroad building was as costly and risky as to require government subsidies.
The extension of rails into thinly populated regions was unprofitable. Private promoters were unwilling to suffer heavy initial losses; Congress thus began to advance liberal money loads to favored cross-continent companies in 1862. Land grant to railroads was made in broad belts along the proposed route; within these belts the railroads were allowed to choose alternate mile-square sections in checkerboard fashion.
Noisy criticism was leveled at the “giveaway” of so valuable a birthright to greedy corporations, but the government did receive beneficial returns (rates for service). Granting land was also a “cheap” way to subsidize a much-desired transportation, because it avoided new taxes for direct cash grants; critics overlooked the railroad’s ability to give land a modest value after the railroads had ribboned it with steel.
Those that were bypassed often withered away and became “ghost towns”. Little wonder that communities fought one another for the privilege of playing host to the railroads Frontier villages touched by the magic wand of the iron rail became flourishing cities.
Deadlock in the 18650s over the proposed transcontinental railroad was broken when the South seceded, leaving the field to the North. One weighty argument for the action was the urgency of bolstering the Union, by binding the Pacific Coast more securely to the .....
Offering superior railway service at lower rates, he amassed a fortune of $100 million. Two significant new improvements proved a boon to the railroads. One was the steel raid, which Vanderbilt helped popularize when he replaced the old iron tracks of the New York Central with the tougher metal; steel was safer and more economical because it could bear a heavier load.
A standard gauge of track width came into wide use, thus eliminating the expense and inconvenience of numerous changes form one line to another. Other refinements played a vital role in railroading; the Westinghouse air brake was a marvelous contribution to efficiency and safety; the Pullman Palace Cars, advertised as “gorgeous traveling hotels,” were introduced on a considerable scale in the 1860s.
Alarmists condemned them as “wheeled torture chambers” and potential funeral pyres, for the wooden cars were equipped with swaying kerosene lamps; appalling accidents continued to be almost daily tragedies, despite safety devices like the telegraph.
For the first time, a sprawling nation became united in a physical sense, bounds with ribs of iron and steel; by stitching North America together from ocean to ocean, the trans-continental lines created an enormous domestic market for American raw materials and manufactured goods—probably the largest integrated national market area in the world.
The huge empire of commerce beckoned to foreign and domestic investors alike. The railroad network spurred the amazing industrialization of the post-Civil War years; the locomotives opened up fresh markets for manufactured goods and sped raw materials to factories.
The screeching iron horse stimulated mining and agriculture, especially in the West; it took farmers to their land, carried their products to the market, and brought items. Railways were a boon for cities and played a leading role in the great city-ward movement of the last decades of the century.
Railroad companies also stimulated the mighty stream of immigration; seeking settlers advertised seductively in Europe and sometimes offered to transport the newcomers. The land also felt the impact of the railroad. Settlers following the railroads in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, and Nebraska and planted well drained, rectangular cornfields. The white pine forests of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota disappeared into lumber that was rushed by rail to prairie farmers to bu.....
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