Week 2 The Railroads Lesson 2 The Railroads

Week 2 The Railroads

Lesson 2 The Railroads • 1865 - 35, 000 miles of railroad tracks • 1900 200, 000 miles of track • Key legislation: Pacific Railway Act • Gave 2 companies: Union Pacific and Central Pacific permission to build • Railroad workers included: • Civil War veterans, Irish immigrants, miners, farmers, cooks, adventurers, ex convicts • 10, 000 workers

Railroad Workers • 4 California business owners: Leland Stanford, Charley Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis Huntington bought the Central Pacific Railroad Company. • Shortage labor in California, so they hired 10, 000 workers from China • Paid them $1 a day • The entire railroad was constructed in 4 years. • Each mile of track required 400 rails, and 10 spikes for each rail. • Starting out west, 688 miles of railroad track were laid out.

Transcontinental Railroad

Railroads Spur Growth • Linking the nation by railroads increased: • Markets for products • Stimulated the economy by: • Spending huge amounts of money on supplies: • Steel, coal, timber, etc • Hundreds of small unconnected railroads were integrated into large railroad systems. • Ease of transportation spurred tourist industries and the need for multiple time zones • Inventions: • Air brakes enabled railroads to put longer and heavier trains on lines • New technology made the railroads more efficient which means • Cost to use the train to ship freight drops • Bring settlers to the west and returned east with products from out west. . . • Beef, wheat, lumber, gold

Railroads help close the frontier • To encourage railroad expansion, the federal government gave away large pieces of land to the railroad companies. • The railroad companies sold the land to help pay for the huge cost of building the railroads. Land Grants • Land was sold to settlers, real estate companies, other businesses. • The railroad companies had to convince people that they wanted to buy this land. • Used pamphlets, posters, and newspaper advertisements to entice people to move out west.

• How did the transcontinental railroad help unite the nation?

Robber barons or Captains of Industry

Captains of Industry or Robber Barons? • Many of the more successful entrepreneurs became known as ‘Captains of Industry’. • Some called them ‘robber barons’ because of the ruthless tactics they used to destroy their competition and methods used to keep workers wages low. • Some of the best known were:

Jay Gould • Most corrupt railroad owner • Practiced insider trading, manipulated stock prices • Lots of bribery • Many railroad investors discovered they could may way more $$$ selling these free land grants than by operating the railroad, so some bribed politicians so that they could get more land grants

Credit Mobilier Scandal • Credit Mobilier was construction company set up by several stockholders of Union Pacific Railroad. What do you think they did with this? • Use their own construction company and charged their own railroads hugely inflated bills. . . Puts money directly back in the pockets of the railroad owners/stockholders • Included was Oakes Ames- member of Congress • Ames bribed his fellow congressmen to vote to give out more land grants by selling them shares of the Union Pacific Railroad well below their market value. • Election of 1872 letter is printed in the New York Sun listing the names of the members of Congress that bought shares. • This led to outrage and the railroad entrepreneurs became known as the Robber Barons.

The Great Northern Railroad • Not all railroad men were robber barons. • James J. Hill built Great Northern Railroad • Wisconsin to Minnesota, to Washington State • Used absolutely zero land grants • Identified products that were in demand in China, cotton, textiles, and flour • Hauled them to Washington state and shipped them to Asia • Most successful transcontinental railroad • One of very few that did not go bankrupt

Graded Lesson Objective Check • Pearland. instructure. com • Under assignments, turn in by Thursday 10: 19 AM • How did the transcontinental railroad help unite the nation? • Why did robber barons bribe people in Congress?

Quiz: The Railroads • Pearland. instructure. com • Quiz • Multiple Choice • Due September 2