T. H. Watkins Quotes
It was only through the Government's help that anything this gargantuan in size could be accomplished, much as landing on the Moon. It was not rugged individualists who built the railroad, it was rugged corporations who formed and financed themselves as entities. It was the rugged federal government that came up with the federal loans, and the land grants, that enabled it to be built. Amid all the romance of building the railroad we tend to forget that it was one of the major industrial enterprises of its age.
T. H. Watkins, Historian, Description of the Building of the Trans Continental Railroads
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In America that had almost happened as the farmers were at the mercy of the railroad monopoly in any one area.
to a carriage on wheels At the time Jefferson had never seen a train.
before there were railroads in the West
Ten years later, The Transcontinental Railroad was completed. What Sherman did not count on was the massive subsidies that the government offered the companies to build the railroad fast.
The railroads that opened up the West are often used as examples of American corporate and entrepreneurial achievement. But private enterprise would not risk the capital for such a visionary and innovative scheme. It was the Federal Government which provided loans to start and paid for every mile of track with huge grants of land along the right of way. Then the Federal government provided the security and conducted numerous wars against the Indians to make the construction and operation possible. Had the Government and President Lincoln not pushed and supported the plan, there would have been no transcontinental railroad.
Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier
