Transcript The Transcontinental Railroad

The Growth of Railroads
Ms. Maddox & Mr. Piernick
The Transcontinental
Railroad
Before the Civil War; there were NO railroads
west of the Mississippi River.
The building of the transcontinental railroad
brought great changes to America. They would
attempt to lay 1,775 miles of track from Omaha
to Sacramento.
Slide #1
The Transcontinental
Railroad
A path would have to be cut through
mountains higher than any railroad-builder
had ever faced; span deserts where there was
no water anywhere; and cross treeless prairies
where anxious and defiant Indians would
resist their passage.
Slide #3
The Transcontinental
Railroad
U.S. Government hired Union Pacific and Central Pacific
Railway Company to extend railways across the United
States. The Union Pacific was to start from Omaha Nebraska,
cross the great plains and cut through the Rockies. The
Central Pacific was to push eastward from Sacramento,
over the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Slide #4
The Transcontinental
Railroad
In 1862, The Pacific Railway Act gave
companies 10 square miles of land for each
mile of track laid. The more track a railroad
laid, the more land it would receive.
Slide #13
The Transcontinental
Railroad
The Union Pacific and Central Pacific were soon
locked in a race to see who could lay the most
track -- and therefore get the most land and
money.
Slide #5
The Transcontinental Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad employed Chinese
immigrants and the Union Pacific hired Irish
immigrants.
All the immigrants worked for low pay and in
horrible weather conditions.
About 2000 employees died and 20,000 were
injured due to either accidents or diseases.
Slide #14
The workers endured scorching deserts, blinding
snowstorms, and blasted through mountains.
Chinese railroad workers perform their duties in the
snow.
Promontory Point, Utah
Omaha, Nebraska
.
Central
Pacific
Railroad
x
Union Pacific
Railroad
.
J
j
Sacramento,
California
·Two companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific,
began building the first transcontinental railroad.
Promontory, Utah May 10, 1869
Scheduling was a major concern
Before the railroads, each town kept its own
time, based on the position of the sun. The
time differences from town to town created
confusion. Railroad companies, however,
needed more exact time tables. They devised a
system with four time zones – Eastern, Central,
Mountain and Pacific time. Everyone living in a
particular zone would follow the same time.
However, the U.S. Congress didn’t officially
adopt railroad time as the standard for the
nation until 1918.
Slide #18
USA Time Zones
Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern Time.
The Impact of the
Railroads
• Easy for people to travel long distances.
•Economic growth.
•Steel-workers turned millions of tons of iron
into steel for tracks and engines.
•Lumberjacks supplied wood for railroad ties.
•Miners dug coal to fuel the engines.
•Increase in trade among cities, towns, and
settlements.
•Creation of new towns.
The Grange and the Railroad
Farmers were especially disturbed by what they
viewed as railroad corruption.
Members of the Grange (farmers’organization)
began demanding governmental control over the
railroad industry.
Railroad abuses:
*selling government land grants to business rather
than to families
*setting high shipping prices to keep farmers in
debt.
The Grange and the Railroads
Railroads fought back against the Grangers, challenging the
constitutionality of the regulatory laws.
In 1877, the case of Munn vs Illinois, the states won the right
to regulate the railroads for the benefits of the farmers and
consumers. In 1886, the Supreme Court ruled that a state could
not set rates or interstate commerce.
In response to public outrage, Congress passed the Interstate
Commerce Act of 1887 – the right of Federal government to
supervise railroad activities and established 5 member
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for that purpose.
The ICC did have difficulty regulating railroad rates because
of long legal process and resistance from the railroad.
Panic and Consolidation
Although the ICC presented few problems for the
railroads, corporate abuses, mismanagement, overbuilding,
and competition pushed many railroads to the brink of
bankruptcy. Railroads were forced out of business, which
led to the Panic of 1893.
The Panic of 1893, was the worst depression up to that
time. 600 banks and 15,000 business failed and 4 million
people lost their jobs.
By 1894, railroads had been taken over by financial
companies such as J.P. Morgan & Company who
reorganized the railroads.
This caused the Large Firms to start buying up the
railways, which paved the way for Big Businesses
The End