Maury Klein's "A Hell of a Way to Run a Railroad," gives a new perspective of
reliable transportation. During much of the 19th century railroads dominated the
American industrial landscape. The railroad enabled people to travel farther and also
more widely. The railroad was one of the greatest technological advancements of the
Two hundred thousand miles of track were laid by 1900. The railroad began
to symbolize American prosperity. By the 1890s the rail industry was near collapse.
Expansion during the 1880s caused rate wars that took the financial strengths of some of
the strangest railroads. Regulation of the railroads was controlled by the Interstate
Commerce Act of 1887. Railroads were the first industry to be watched under the federal
government. Between 1893 and 1897 one fourth of the nations mileage sank into
receivership. The railroads affected were the: Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, Erie, and the Philadelphia and Reading.
For two decades rail managers had tried unsuccessfully for some form of
regulation to take away the criticism put upon them. In the phrase of Albro Martin
the leading railroad historian, "The final hour had struck for the Victorian Railroad
Corporation" (2). The growth of the nineteenth-century rail system had relied on
conditions unique to the era. As more railroads reached cities and towns competitive
wars erupted that drove rates down despite efforts to maintain them.
The railroads task was not to simply haul freight but to help create the towns,
factories, and farms that would help generate the freight. The railroad industry had
reached a turning point in its history. The question remained who would lead the
railroad into the new era? E. H. Harriman would be the leader who brought the rail
industry into the new era. Harriman
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