Railroads and American Economic Growth

Railroads and American Economic Growth PDF Author: Robert William Fogel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Railroads and American Economic Growth

Railroads and American Economic Growth PDF Author: Robert William Fogel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Railroaded

Railroaded PDF Author: Richard White
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393342379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize "A powerful book, crowded with telling details and shrewd observations." —Michael Kazin, New York Times Book Review The transcontinental railroads were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating economic panics. Their dependence on public largesse drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, remade the landscape of the West, and opened new ways of life and work. Their discriminatory rates sparked a new antimonopoly politics. The transcontinentals were 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.

American Railroads

American Railroads PDF Author: Robert E. Gallamore
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674725646
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
Overregulated and displaced by barges, trucks, and jet aviation, railroads fell into decline. Their misfortune was measured in lost market share, abandoned track, bankruptcies, and unemployment. Today, rail transportation is reviving. American Railroads tells a riveting story about how this iconic industry managed to turn itself around.

American Railroad Economics

American Railroad Economics PDF Author: Aaron Morton Sakolski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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The Economics of Railroad Safety

The Economics of Railroad Safety PDF Author: Ian Savage
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 146155571X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The American public has a fascination with railroad wrecks that goes back a long way. One hundred years ago, staged railroad accidents were popular events. At the Iowa State fair in 1896, 89,000 people paid $20 each, at current prices, to see two trains, throttles wide open, collide with each other. "Head-on Joe" Connolly made a business out of "cornfield meets" holding seventy-three events in thirty-six years. Picture books of train wrecks do good business presumably because a train wreck can guarantee a spectacular destruction of property without the messy loss of life associated with aircraft accidents. A "train wreck" has also entered the popular vocabulary in a most unusual way. When political manoeuvering leads to failure to pass the federal budget, and a shutdown is likely of government services, this is widely called a "train wreck. " In business and team sports, bumbling and lack of coordination leading to a spectacular and public failure to perform is also called "causing a train wreck. " A person or organization who is disorganized may be labelled a "train wreck. " It is therefore not surprising that the public perception of the safety of railroads centers on images of twisted metal and burning tank cars, and a general feeling that these events occur quite often. After a series of railroad accidents, such as occurred in the winter of 1996 or the summer of 1997, there are inevitable calls that government "should do something.

Railroading Economics

Railroading Economics PDF Author: Michael Perelman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583671358
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Most economic theory assumes a pure capitalism of perfect competition. This book is a penetrating critique of the rhetoric and practice of conventional economic theory. It explores how even in the United States—the most capitalist of countries—the market has always been subject to numerous constraints. Perelman examines the way in which these constraints have been defended by such figures as Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, and Herbert Hoover, and were indeed essential to the expansion of U.S. capitalism. In the process, he rediscovers the critical element in conservative thought—the “forgotten traditions of railroad economics”—that has been lost in the neoliberal present. This important and original historical reconstruction points the way to a discipline of economics freed from the mythology of the market.

A Most Magnificent Machine

A Most Magnificent Machine PDF Author: Craig Miner
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700617558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Just as the railroad transformed America's economic landscape, it profoundly transfigured its citizens as well. But while there have been many histories of railroads, few have examined the subject as a social and cultural phenomenon. Informed especially by rich research in the nation's newspaper archives, Craig Miner now traces the growth of railroads from their origins in the 1820s to the onset of the Civil War. In this first social history of the early railroads, Miner reveals how ordinary Americans experienced this innovation at the grass roots, from boosters' dreams of get-rich schemes to naysayers' fears of soulless corporations. Drawing on an amazing 400,000 articles from 185 newspapers-plus more than 3,000 books and pamphlets from the era-he documents the initial burst of enthusiasm accompanying early railroading as it took shape in various settings across the country. Miner examines the cultural, economic, and political aspects of this broad and complicated topic while remaining rooted in the local interests of communities. He takes readers back to the days of the Mauch Chunk Railway, a tourist sensation of the mid-1820s, navigates the mixed reactions to trains as Baltimore's city fathers envisioned tracks to the Ohio River, shows how Pennsylvanians wrestled with the efficacy of railroads versus canals, and describes the intense rivalry of cities competing for trade as old transportation patterns were replaced by the new rail technology. Miner samples individual railroads to compare progress across the industry, showing how it became a quintessentially American business-and how the Panic of 1837 significantly slowed the railways as a major engine of growth for many years. He also explores the impact of railroads on different regions, even disproving the backwardness of the South by citing the Central of Georgia as one of the best-managed and most profitable lines in the country. Through this panoramic work, readers will discover just how the benefits of what became the country's first big business triumphed over cultural concerns, though not without considerable controversy along the way. By identifying citizens' hopes and fears sparked by the railroads, A Most Magnificent Machine takes readers down the tracks of progress as it opens a new window on antebellum America.

Early American Railroads

Early American Railroads PDF Author: Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804724234
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 908

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Book Description
The first English translation of the most comprehensive and detailed work on the development, construction, finance, and operation of early American railroads and canals.

The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890

The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890 PDF Author: George Rogers Taylor
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252071140
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Rapid population growth in the Great Plains and the American West after the Civil War was the result not only of railroad expansion but of a collaboration among competing railroads to adopt a uniform width for track. This title shows how the consolidation of smaller railroads and the growth of capitalism worked to unify the railroad industry.

Railroads and the Transformation of China

Railroads and the Transformation of China PDF Author: Elisabeth Köll
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674916425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present. China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion. The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.