Railroaded : the transcontinentals and the making of modern America
Summary
A new, incisive history of the transcontinental railroads and how they transformed America in the decades after the Civil War. Full description
- Genesis
- Annus horribilis : 1873
- Friends
- Spatial politics
- Kilkenny cats
- Men in octopus suits
- Workingmen
- Looking backward
- Collapse
- Strike
- Creative destruction.
- Introduction
- 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 Indians' 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 scene: 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
- Workingmen. 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 defeats ; Bears ; The Interstate Commerce Commission ; The Interstate-Commerce Railway Association
- Mise en scene: 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 scene: reading the newspapers
- Strike. The courts ; Union Pacific and Great Northern ; Pullman ; The decline of the octopus
- Mise en scene: following the detectives
- Creative destruction. Dumb growth ; Cattle ; The diverging Dakotas ; Rain follows the plow
- Mise en scene: Wovoka
- Epilogue
- Conclusion.