Iron Empires Robber Barons Railroads and the Making of Modern America PDF Free Download

The railroading of America is an old story, one that has been told many times. Why tell it again?
There are several outstanding books on the subject, including Albert Fishlow, “American Railroads
and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy” (Harvard UP, 1965), Steven W. Usselman,
“Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology and Politics in America, 1840-1920”
(Cambridge UP, 2002), and Richard White’s magisterial “Railroads: The Transcontinentals
and the Making of Modern America” (W.W. Norton, 2011). Yet one looks in vain for any
mention of these authors, let alone any citation of their work. Likewise, when it comes
to someone as important to the history of American labor (and politics) as Eugene Debs,
without whom (e.g.) Bernie Sanders wouldn’t even exist, there is nothing to be found in
the pages of Mr. Hiltzik’s book except a rehash of 19th century newspaper articles, plus
a cursory review of a few speeches and court decisions. Only one secondary source is in
the bibliography, that being Ray Ginger’s “The Bending Cross,” published in 1949. Since
then, Bernard Brommel, “Eugene V. Debs: Spokesman for Labor and Socialism” (Chicago,
1978), Nick Salvatore, “Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist” (Urbana, IL, 1984) and most
recently, Jill LePore, “Eugene V. Debs and the Endurance of Socialism” (The New Yorker,
Feb. 11, 2019) have brought Debs back to life, and into the conversation between past
and present, with an eye toward the future of the American polity. On that subject, Mr.
Hiltzik wavers between admitting that there was a “dark side” to the emergence of the
Robber Barons during the Gilded Age (p. xiii) and excusing their conduct on the grounds
that they “remade America in their own image” (p. 372), as if that were anything to be
proud of, here or elsewhere. That they were collectively “unreasonable” (p. 370) is simply
a tautology; but equating irrationality with historical greatness is a fallacy–witness Hitler,
among others. In the same way, the “great bankers” who took advantage of gullible and
foolhardy farmers by foreclosing on barren land for pennies per acre [after “drummers”
lured them to invest on promises of fertile soil west of the hundredth meridian] can’t be
pardoned because they waited until those “hardy pioneers” were both “exhausted” and dead
broke (p. 370, quoting Justice Brandeis). They waited, alright: they weren’t stupid, just cruel.
One does not prevent the guillotine from falling before serving the head on a plate of gold.
A book that is filled with rationalizations of that kind, that makes no attempt to examine the
available literature, and that combines hero-worship with resignation in the face of the myth
of progress, does not deserve to be taken seriously. As if that weren’t enough, Hiltzik has no
qualms about saying things like “then there were the Indians” (p. 80), in his own voice, not as
indirect discourse. He titles Part III of his book “The Ghost Dance” (p. 281), sans irony yet with
no particular relevance to Wovoka. Indeed, by the time we encounter Sitting Bull proclaiming
“I hate white people” (p. 261), one begins to see why, even if the Hunkpapa didn’t say it on the
occasion in question (p. 394n), or perhaps not at all. I could go on–but why? There’s nothing
here that you won’t find in the Classics Illustrated version of Manifest Destiny. Only that had
much better art work, and (when I was young) cost a lot less to read. As Alfred Chandler said
to Adam Smith, “whatever happened to that hidden hand?” Smith replied “look behind thee.”
That’s where you’ll find those railroad tycoons–traveling first class, on Satan’s empty throne.
Railroads, my . . . thumb.