Railroad Crossing - Californians & the Railroad, 1850-1910 (Paper)

1. Auflage 1996
ISBN: 978-0-520-20505-5
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 278 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 426 g

Nothing so changed nineteenth-century America as did the railroad. Growing up together, the iron horse and the young nation developed a fast friendship. Railroad Crossing is the story of what happened to that friendship, particularly in California, and it illuminates the chaos that was industrial America from the middle of the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twentieth.

Americans clamored for the progress and prosperity that railroads would surely bring, and no railroad was more crucial for California than the transcontinental line linking East to West. With Gold Rush prosperity fading, Californians looked to the railroad as the state's new savior. But social upheaval and economic disruption came down the tracks along with growth and opportunity.

Analyzing the changes wrought by the railroad, William Deverell reveals the contradictory roles that technology and industrial capitalism played in the lives of Americans. That contrast was especially apparent in California, where the gigantic corporate "Octopus"—the Southern Pacific Railroad—held near-monopoly status. The state's largest employer and biggest corporation, the S.P. was a key provider of jobs and transportation—and wielder of tremendous political and financial clout.

Deverell's lively study is peopled by a rich and disparate cast: railroad barons, newspaper editors, novelists, union activists, feminists, farmers, and the railroad workers themselves. Together, their lives reflect the many tensions—political, social, and economic—that accompanied the industrial transition of turn-of-the-century America.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Deverell, William

Deverell, William F.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Transport- und Verkehrswirtschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments 
INTRODUCTION: THE VARIETIES OF RAILROAD ANTAGONISM 

1 "WHAT IS THIS RAILROAD TO DO FOR US?" 
2 "CALIFORNIA NETTED WITH IRON TRACKS" 
3 A VOLCANO AT ANY MOMENT: THE PULLMAN STRIKE IN CALU'ORNIA 
4 THE LOS ANGELES "FREE HARBOR FIGHT" 
5 PENS AS SWORDS: FICTION, NONFICTION, AND RAILROAD OPPOSITION 
6 "LET US AGITATE AND AGITATE": PROGRESSIVES AND THE RAILROAD 
EPILOGUE: BUILDING AN OCTOPUS 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
Illustrations

Über Autor(innen)

William Deverell is Professor of History at the University of Southern California and Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He is the coeditor of California Progressivism Revisited (California, 1994) and coeditor of Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s (California, 2001).