Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800-1890 PDF Download

Author: Carter Goodrich
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

View

Book Description

Author: Frank Haigh Dixon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads and state
Languages : en
Pages : 408

View

Book Description

Author: Otto H. Kahn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads and state
Languages : en
Pages : 24

View

Book Description

Author: Library of Congress. Division of Bibliography
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads and state
Languages : en
Pages : 96

View

Book Description

Author: William James Cunningham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 424

View

Book Description

Author: Otto H. Kahn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads and state
Languages : en
Pages : 40

View

Book Description

Author: Christian Wolmar
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610391802
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 450

View

Book Description
America was made by the railroads. The opening of the Baltimore & Ohio line -- the first American railroad -- in the 1830s sparked a national revolution in the way that people lived thanks to the speed and convenience of train travel. Promoted by visionaries and built through heroic effort, the American railroad network was bigger in every sense than Europe's, and facilitated everything from long-distance travel to commuting and transporting goods to waging war. It united far-flung parts of the country, boosted economic development, and was the catalyst for America's rise to world-power status. Every American town, great or small, aspired to be connected to a railroad and by the turn of the century, almost every American lived within easy access of a station. By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a latticework of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads and the nation started to forget them. In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and the fall of the greatest of all American endeavors, and argues that the time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.

Author: Samuel Orace Dunn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 374

View

Book Description

Author: George Henry Lewis
Publisher: New-York, Dodd, Mead
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 362

View

Book Description

Author: Zachary Callen
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700623000
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

View

Book Description
America's founders envisioned a federal government of limited and enumerated powers. What they could not envision, of course, was the vast and complex infrastructure that the growing nation would demand—a demand that became ever clearer as the power and importance of railroads emerged. The requirements of a nationwide rail network, it also became clear, far exceeded the resources of state and local government and private industry. The consequences, as seen in this book, amounted to state building from the ground up. In Railroads and American Political Development Zachary Callen tells the story of the federal government's role in developing a national rail system—and the rail system's role in expanding the power of the federal government. The book reveals how state building, so often attributed to an aggressive national government, can also result from local governments making demands on the national state—a dynamic that can still be seen at work every time the US Congress takes up a transportation bill. Though many states invested in their local railroads, and many quite successfully, others were less willing or less capable—so rail development necessarily became a federal concern. Railroads and American Political Development shows how this led to the Land Grant Act of 1850, a crucial piece of legislation in the building of both the nation's infrastructure and the American state. Chronicling how this previously local issue migrated to the federal state, and how federal action then altered American rail planning, the book offers a new perspective on the exact nature of federalism. In the case of rail development, we see how state governments factor into the American state building process, and how, in turn, the separation of powers at the federal level shaped that process. The result is a fresh view of the development of the American rail system, as well as a clearer picture of the pressures and political logic that have altered and expanded the reach of American federalism.