10 magg 1869 anni - First transcontinental railroad complete

Descrizione:

executives of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads had driven a golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, linking it to Philadelphia

The railway line completed on May 10, 1869, that connected the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines, enabling goods to move by railway from the eastern United States all the way to California



results: celebration, jobs, money

-San Fran begins trading tea, marking Cali's first overland delivery to the East.
-In coming decades, trade and tourism fueled growth west of Mississippi. San Fran handled many more imports.
-railroad populated U.S. and made it the highway of nations
-Reppublicans thought national economic integration was the best guarantee of lasting peace, so this represented an economic triumph for them to preserve the Union/ Instead, it caused harm to ppl and the environment. Regions west of teh Miss could only be incorporated if teh U.S. subdued Native ppls and created favorable conditions for international investors (at great domestic cost). ((conquering the west brought industrial power but rivalry with European empires and patterns of exploitation)).


economics:
railroads were very beneficial and had many advantages. Unlike Europe, U.S. had them built by private companies, but they gave laons, subsidies, and grants of public land (and states/local govs offered financial aid) to make them grow faster (and not just be concentrated in urban areas)
-railroads boom, even reaching into Mexico to bring up minerals, hemp, and other raw materials to feed the demands of American manufacturing

quote: Railroad companies transformed American capitalism. They adopted a legal form of organization, the corporation, that enabled them to raise private capital in prodigious amounts. In earlier decades, state legislatures had chartered corporations for specific public purposes, binding these creations to government goals and oversight. But over the course of the nineteenth century, legislatures gradually began to allow any business to become a corporation by simply applying for a state charter. Among the first corporations to become large interstate enterprises, private railroads were much freer than earlier companies to do as they pleased. After the Civil War, they received lavish public aid with few strings attached. Their position was like that of American banks in late 2008 after the big federal bailout: even critics acknowledged that public aid to these giant companies was good for the economy, but they observed that it also lent government support to fabulous accumulations of private wealth.

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