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Title: The Railroad Builders
A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The
Chronicles of America Series

Author: John Moody

Editor: Allen Johnson

Posting Date: February 22, 2009 [EBook #3036]
Release Date: January, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAILROAD BUILDERS ***

Produced by The James J. Kelly Library of St. Gregory's
University, Alev Akman, Dianne Bean, and Stephanie Manke

THE RAILROAD BUILDERS

A CHRONICLE OF THE WELDING OF THE STATES

Volume 38 In The Chronicles Of America Series

By John Moody

New Haven: Yale University Press

Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.

London: Humphrey Milford

Oxford University Press

1919

CONTENTS

I. A CENTURY OF RAILROAD BUILDING
II. THE COMMODORE AND THE NEW YORK CENTRAL
III. THE GREAT PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM
IV. THE ERIE RAILROAD
V. CROSSING THE APPALACHIAN RANGE
VI. LINKING THE OCEANS
VII. PENETRATING THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
VIII. BUILDING ALONG THE SANTA FE TRAIL
IX. THE GROWTH OF THE HILL LINES
X. THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF THE SOUTH
XI. THE LIFE WORK OF EDWARD H. HARRIMAN
XII. THE AMERICAN RAILROAD PROBLEM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE RAILROAD BUILDERS

CHAPTER I. A CENTURY OF RAILROAD BUILDING

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of
mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and
the railroad. One transformed millions of acres of uncultivated land
into fertile farms, while the other furnished the transportation which
carried the crops to distant markets. Before these inventions appeared,
it is true, Americans had crossed the Alleghanies, reached the
Mississippi Valley, and had even penetrated to the Pacific coast; thus
in a thousand years or so the United States might conceivably have
become a far-reaching, straggling, loosely jointed Roman Empire,
depending entirely upon its oceans, internal watercourses, and imperial
highways for such economic and political integrity as it migh