The Texas Railroad Commission

The Texas Railroad Commission PDF Author: William R. Childs
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585444526
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Before OPEC took center stage, one state agency in Texas was widely believed to set oil prices for the world. The Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) evolved from its founding in 1891 to a multi-divisional regulatory commission that oversaw not only railroads but also a number of other industries central to the modern American economy: petroleum production, natural gas utilities, and motor carriers (buses and trucks). William R. Childs's unprecedented study of the TRC from its founding until the mid-twentieth century extends our knowledge of commission-style regulation. It focuses on the interplay between business and regulators, between state and national regulatory commissions, and among the three branches of government through a process of "pragmatic federalism." Drawing on extensive primary research, Childs demonstrates that the alleged power of regulatory commissions has been more constrained than most observers have recognized. As he shows, the myth of power was devised by the agency itself as part of building a civil religion of Texas oil. Together, the myth and the civil religion enabled the TRC to convince Texas oil operators to follow production controls and thus stabilized the American oil industry by the 1940s. The result of this fascinating study is a more nuanced understanding of federalism and of regulation, the forces shaping it, and its outcomes.

The Texas Railroad Commission

The Texas Railroad Commission PDF Author: William R. Childs
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585444526
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Before OPEC took center stage, one state agency in Texas was widely believed to set oil prices for the world. The Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) evolved from its founding in 1891 to a multi-divisional regulatory commission that oversaw not only railroads but also a number of other industries central to the modern American economy: petroleum production, natural gas utilities, and motor carriers (buses and trucks). William R. Childs's unprecedented study of the TRC from its founding until the mid-twentieth century extends our knowledge of commission-style regulation. It focuses on the interplay between business and regulators, between state and national regulatory commissions, and among the three branches of government through a process of "pragmatic federalism." Drawing on extensive primary research, Childs demonstrates that the alleged power of regulatory commissions has been more constrained than most observers have recognized. As he shows, the myth of power was devised by the agency itself as part of building a civil religion of Texas oil. Together, the myth and the civil religion enabled the TRC to convince Texas oil operators to follow production controls and thus stabilized the American oil industry by the 1940s. The result of this fascinating study is a more nuanced understanding of federalism and of regulation, the forces shaping it, and its outcomes.

The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas

The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas PDF Author: Hugh Hemphill
Publisher: Maverick Books
ISBN: 9781893271395
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As Toyota scouted the nation in 2002 for a new plant location, a San Antonio site?s proximity to two rail lines clinched the decision. It was the city?s greatest economic breakthrough in recent years. Of even greater effect was arrival of the first railroad a century and a quarter earlier, launching the region?s first major growth.These are among the landmark events outlined in The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas, the first general interest book to sort out the regional operations and impact of seven rail lines: the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio/Southern Pacific; International & Great Northern/Missouri Pacific; San Antonio & Aransas Pass; San Antonio & Gulf Shore/San Antonio & Gulf; Missouri?Kansas?Texas; Artesian Belt/San Antonio Southern; and the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf. There is a closing chapter on Amtrak and the Union Pacific.Written by Hugh Hemphill, longtime director of the Texas Transportation Museum in San Antonio, this lavishly-illustrated book is vital to understanding the evolution of an important link in the nation?s transportation system.Included are five appendices that codify data, ranging from an index of towns and the railroads serving them to a listing of surviving depots to a summary of regional railroad museums and tourist railroads.

Show-Me Katy

Show-Me Katy PDF Author: Michael A. Landis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692990483
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
A comprehensive, colorful look at the Missouri-Kansas-Texas "Katy" Railroad's route linking Parsons, Kansas with Sedalia, Missouri and St. Louis, Missouri. Also included are lines to El Dorado Springs; Moberly; Columbia; and Kansas City. With a special emphasis on the 1970s and 1980s, the book features more than 350 train photographs; detailed maps; and interviews with former employees. A town-by-town rundown highlights points of interest along the corridor, most of which became the Katy Trail State Park.

The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor

The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor PDF Author: Theresa A. Case
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603441700
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Focusing on a story largely untold until now, Theresa A. Case studies the "Great Southwest Strike of 1886," which pitted entrepreneurial freedom against the freedom of employees to have a collective voice in their workplace. This series of local actions involved a historic labor agreement followed by the most massive sympathy strike the nation had ever seen. It attracted western railroaders across lines of race and skill, contributed to the rise and decline of the first mass industrial union in U.S. history (the Knights of Labor), and brought new levels of federal intervention in railway strikes. Case takes a fresh look at the labor unrest that shook Jay Gould's railroad empire in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois. In Texas towns and cities like Marshall, Dallas, Fort Worth, Palestine, Texarkana, Denison, and Sherman, union recognition was the crucial issue of the day. Case also powerfully portrays the human facets of this strike, reconstructing the story of Martin Irons, a Scottish immigrant who came to adopt the union cause as his own. Irons committed himself wholly to the failed strike of 1886, continuing to urge violence even as courts handed down injunctions protecting the railroads, national union leaders publicly chastised him, the press demonized him, and former strikers began returning to work. Irons’s individual saga is set against the backdrop of social, political, and economic changes that transformed the region in the post–Civil War era. Students, scholars, and general readers interested in railroad, labor, social, or industrial history will not want to be without The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor.

The Southern Pacific, 1901-1985

The Southern Pacific, 1901-1985 PDF Author: Donovan L. Hofsommer
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781603441278
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Don Hofsommer chronicles the twentieth-century history of a transportation giant. Here is a story of divestiture and merger, Sunset Route, and Prosperity Special. " . . . a treasure house of information about the Southern Pacific Company . . . . This book is a joy to read."--Richard C. Overton, from the Foreword

Traqueros

Traqueros PDF Author: Jeffrey Marcos Garcilazo
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 157441464X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Perhaps no other industrial technology changed the course of Mexican history in the United States--and Mexico--than did the coming of the railroads. Tens of thousands of Mexicans worked for the railroads in the United States, especially in the Southwest and Midwest. Construction crews soon became railroad workers proper, along with maintenance crews later. Extensive Mexican American settlements appeared throughout the lower and upper Midwest as the result of the railroad. The substantial Mexican American populations in these regions today are largely attributable to 19th- and 20th-century railroad work. Only agricultural work surpassed railroad work in terms of employment of Mexicans. The full history of Mexican American railroad labor and settlement in the United States had not been told, however, until Jeffrey Marcos Garcílazo's groundbreaking research in Traqueros. Garcílazo mined numerous archives and other sources to provide the first and only comprehensive history of Mexican railroad workers across the United States, with particular attention to the Midwest. He first explores the origins and process of Mexican labor recruitment and immigration and then describes the areas of work performed. He reconstructs the workers' daily lives and explores not only what the workers did on the job but also what they did at home and how they accommodated and/or resisted Americanization. Boxcar communities, strike organizations, and "traquero culture" finally receive historical acknowledgment. Integral to his study is the importance of family settlement in shaping working class communities and consciousness throughout the Midwest.

Rails Around Houston

Rails Around Houston PDF Author: Douglas L. Weiskopf
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738558844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Several railroads were chartered by the Republic of Texas, but the first line built was the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado, which began construction near the Port of Houston Turning Basin in 1851. The BBB&C would become the oldest segment of the countryas first transcontinental railroad under sole ownership: the Southern Pacificas Sunset Route, connecting New Orleans and Los Angeles and completed in 1883. By the time oil was discovered near Beaumont in 1901, Houston was such a transportation hub that it became the heart of the petrochemical industry. Houston saw narrow-gauge lines, two interurban lines, light rail, and even a monorail. For many years, the chamber of commerce proudly proclaimed that Houston was the place awhere seventeen railroads meet the sea.a More than 30 beautiful trains with names like Sunset Limited, Sunbeam, Sam Houston Zephyr, Twin Star Rocket, Bluebonnet, Texas Rocket, and Texas Chief would serve three depots.

The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier

The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier PDF Author: V. V. Masterson
Publisher: University of Missouri
ISBN: 9780826206688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
History of the first railroad built across Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

The Geography of Transport Systems

The Geography of Transport Systems PDF Author: Jean-Paul Rodrigue
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136777326
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Mobility is fundamental to economic and social activities such as commuting, manufacturing, or supplying energy. Each movement has an origin, a potential set of intermediate locations, a destination, and a nature which is linked with geographical attributes. Transport systems composed of infrastructures, modes and terminals are so embedded in the socio-economic life of individuals, institutions and corporations that they are often invisible to the consumer. This is paradoxical as the perceived invisibility of transportation is derived from its efficiency. Understanding how mobility is linked with geography is main the purpose of this book. The third edition of The Geography of Transport Systems has been revised and updated to provide an overview of the spatial aspects of transportation. This text provides greater discussion of security, energy, green logistics, as well as new and updated case studies, a revised content structure, and new figures. Each chapter covers a specific conceptual dimension including networks, modes, terminals, freight transportation, urban transportation and environmental impacts. A final chapter contains core methodologies linked with transport geography such as accessibility, spatial interactions, graph theory and Geographic Information Systems for transportation (GIS-T). This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field, with a broad overview of its concepts, methods, and areas of application. The accompanying website for this text contains a useful additional material, including digital maps, PowerPoint slides, databases, and links to further reading and websites. The website can be accessed at: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans This text is an essential resource for undergraduates studying transport geography, as well as those interest in economic and urban geography, transport planning and engineering.

Railroads of Meridian

Railroads of Meridian PDF Author: J. Parker Lamb
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253005922
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This generously illustrated narrative follows the evolution of dozens of separate railroads in the Meridian, Mississippi, area from the destruction of the town's rail facilities in the 1850s through the current era of large-scale consolidation. Presently, there are only seven mega-size rail systems in the United States, three of which serve Meridian, making it an important junction on one of the nation's four major transcontinental routes. The recent creation of a nationally prominent high-speed freight line between Meridian and Shreveport, the "Meridian Speedway," has allowed the Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern, and Norfolk Southern railroads to offer the shortest rail route across the continent for Asia-US-Europe transportation.