How the Railroads Changed American Government

• Date: 01 September 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12268
• Published date: 01 September 2014

Alasdair Roberts is Jerome L.

Rappaport Professor of Law and Public

Policy at Suffolk University Law School in

Boston. His most recent book is

The End

of Protest: How Free Market Capitalism

Learned to Control Dissent

(Cornell

University Press, 2013).

E-mail: aroberts@suffolk.edu

Book Reviews

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

664 Public Administration Review • September | October 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 5, pp. 664–667. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12268.

trade with the American interior. Legislatures also col-

laborated with state courts in establishing an expan-

sive conception of eminent domain, making it easier

to obtain right of way for railroads. New railroad

companies benef‌i ted from state support in other ways:

through the grant of monopoly rights, state guaran-

tees of railroad bonds, exemption from state taxes, and

the right to hold lotteries and create special banks that

would attract the savings of state residents (29).  e

ingenuity of state legislators in devising methods to

support f‌l edging railroads was matched only by their

cheerful disregard for the prevailing doctrine of politi-

cal economy, which insisted that interference with

the market was “wrong in principle and pernicious in

practice” (Essay 1837, 55). In practice, the principle

of limited government gave way to the imperatives of

interstate competition.

 e federal government was slower to provide sup-

port for the new industry, but eventually it did, and

on a massive scale. At f‌i rst the impediment was the

doctrine of states’ rights, which was propounded most

strongly by Southern states and denied any federal

role in supporting the development of railroads or

other transportation projects. Within three decades,

however, the situation had changed entirely. Many

railroads would not have survived without federal

subsidies for carrying the mail. Congress also sup-

ported the building of transcontinental railroads

with cheap loans and land grants equal in area to the

whole of France.  e U.S. Army surveyed potential

transcontinental routes and provided protection as

railroad companies invaded lands occupied by Native

Americans. Congress also provided incentives for set-

tlers to travel on the newly built roads.

Wolmar shows that the government’s role was not

limited to promoting railroad expansion. By the end

of the nineteenth century, the major railroad compa-

nies were vast and powerful businesses that could not

be regulated easily by state legislatures. As a result,

the federal government began to intervene more

frequently in railroad af‌f airs. Sometimes this worked

Christian Wolmar,  e Great Railroad Revolution:

 e History of Trains in America (New York:

PublicAf‌f airs, 2012). 448 pp. $17.99 (paper),

ISBN: 9781610393478.

Anyone reading the scholarly literature on the

“e-government revolution” might be tempted

to think that technological change has never

af‌f ected American government so profoundly as it

does today. Christian Wolmar’s  e Great Railroad

Revolution:  e History of Trains in America provides

an invaluable corrective to this sort of thinking.  e

advent of the railroad was probably a more important

technological shock, and Wolmar’s book provides

an unusual opportunity to examine how it af‌f ected

the role and structure of American government.1  e

current fashion is to emphasize the ways in which

ideology and institutional inertia constrain the govern-

mental response to such shocks. But Wolmar tells a dif-

ferent story. In the long run, he suggests in  e Great

Railroad Revolution, the governmental response to this

innovation was pragmatic, hardheaded, and f‌l exible.

 e railroad combined several technical innovations: a

gravel track bed, iron rails, freight and passenger cars

rolling on f‌l anged wheels, and steam engines to pull

them. Combined, they of‌f ered a method of transpor-

tation that was faster and cheaper than steamboats,

canals, or highways. Wolmar says that the railroad age

began in the mid-1830s, shortly after the completion

of South Carolina’s 136-mile Charleston & Hamburg

line. At its zenith, in the 1920s, the nation was

covered by a quarter million miles of railroad. In the

following decades, the railroads faced intense compe-

tition from automobiles, trucks, and aircraft, and by

2008 the rail network had shrunk to about 140,000

miles of road.

Wolmar makes clear that the railroad age would never

have begun without innovation by government as

well. Legislatures in the New England and the Mid-

Atlantic states provided charters for new railroads

as they competed against one another for control of

How the Railroads Changed American Government

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Alasdair Roberts

Suffolk University