ABSTRACT
Building the American railroads was a private sector success story from beginning to end and a triumphant achievement for the exemplary entrepreneurs who were leading. Nation building was the project and giving away Federal land was the mechanism. Travelling in 1830 on Britain’s Liverpool-Manchester Railway, the world’s first intercity railroad, Asa Whitney first dreamed of a transcontinental American railroad as a new trade route to China. The 2008 banking crisis left mountains of paper debts; whereas the railroad builders, for all their corruption and greed, left physical assets in the mountains. Charles Crocker’s great success was recruitment, experimenting with migrant Chinese labourers, who turned out to be hard working and well fitted for the task. Railroads shaped America and American railroads were shaped by government, working actively with private companies and investors, over a long timescale. The land grant idea became a crucial tool for resourcing America’s world class engineering institutions.
