With railroads, people can travel across the country in a much faster rate and easier fashion (class lecture). Right before the Civil War, railroads already covered three-fourths of the American map with thirty thousand miles of railroad tracks (301). After the Civil War in the Gilded Age, railroads were becoming much more efficient and cheaper for the regular middle class people (class lecture). Transportation was innovated with the use of natural resources such as coal, oil, and iron (520). In a way, transportation made the nation bigger in terms of expansion, but it also made the nation smaller in a way that people can travel far distances in a much faster…
Clearly a transformation like this would mean that the economy surely benefited tremendously. The building of the railroad dropped the general cost of shipping domestically as well as nationally. In the 1860’s to ship by wagon it cost 5 times more than it would by rail. With the price difference, and the fact with shipping by wagon it would remarkably take much longer, shipping by rail became the most efficient solution.…
Although the railroads construction created many positives for the development of the United States it also created a lot of negative effects. Due to the railroads construction, many owners of the company wanted to use immigrants as cheap labor and because of this many died while working extensive hours for little to no pay (doc.4). For many years this went on without any fight but as labor unions and…
Railroads created a more interconnected society. The entire nation was joined with 1776 miles of track. Railroads created a huge domestic market for raw materials and manufactured goods. It allowed people to get produce and meats from different parts of the…
The Transcontinental Railroad The Transcontinental Railroad was a legendary Civil Engineering feat that created an entirely new way of settlement and trade in the West that had hardly been imagined. The Railroad changed the life of the travelers and settlers in America. A trip from the East Coast to the West Coast that used to take six months then took a mere seven days. Without the intelligence of great men like Theodore Judah and Grenville Dodge, who were Chief Engineers of the Railroad, the thousands of American and Chinese workers, and generous land grants from The Government, a feat as grand as the Transcontinental Railroad could never have been accomplished.…
The railway trains, engines, employees, managers were engaged in business of provision of services for passengers and freight. By these terms of service provision the railroad significantly contributed to the American economic growth. The amount of freight increased from 13 billions in 1870 to 450 billions in 1929. Additionally, the railroad reduced transportation costs. When the railroads began their operation the advantages over canals and other ways of transportation were obvious – the speed was much higher and the service was more flexible.…
The needs of the railroad generated hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Rails had to be manufactured out of steel, which enriched the steel industry. Railroad companies not only employed workmen to build the rails, but they also had to hire employees to maintain the rails. Engines and train cars were constructed out of steel in factories. Engine boilers burned coat, thus lead to an increase the quantity of coal that was mined.…
"Where railroads went, towns, ranches, and farms grew rapidly along their routes"(Brinkley 231). Towns along rail tracks became powerhouses, Chicago's dominance can be traced back to the railroad. Railroads had a huge role in building our nation; they brought about political, economical, and cultural changes that had never been seen before. Below is an image that documents railroad growth from 1850 to 1860. This building gave many people need jobs and paved a way of life for many other people.…
This means that opportunities for settlement across the United States greatly increased. Product that once was only available on the East coast was now presented to the West and vice versa. Not everyone was as thrilled as the rest of America about the new achievement of the railroad. Whites and Indians…
The First Transcontinental Railroad was built crossing the western side of America and finished around 1869. The idea of creating the line was present in the States long before the construction was approved. This was the era of the Civil War and the southerners who were opposed to the idea before were now gone from congress, so that meant the republicans could use that opportunity to vote for the construction of the transcontinental railroad. They chose two companies, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad and they supported the project through bonds. The land where the railroad was supposed to go through was mostly barren desert.…
Now that crops could be shipped across the country, small local farmers were in competition with large specialized “cash crop” farms who produced their crops in massive quantities. And because the railroad was the only shipping option, their rates were extremely high which added to the debt of many farmers. The combination of the growing technological advances and increasingly difficult field of agriculture, turned the American society into a very industrialized one.…
By providing a means for reliable transportation, the railroads made the regular shipping of manufacturing supplies and manufactured goods in mass quantities possible. As a result, the railroads laid the groundwork for the global Industrial Revolution through providing a foundational need in the development of industry. This source provides information to historians looking to explore how the earliest of American railroad tracks, starting in Charleston, impacted trading and production of goods throughout the entire country. In terms of a global Industrial Revolution, Grant mentions that this is an ideal source for discussing the “later cultural, economic, political, and physical environments,” impacted by this advancement in transportation…
Sydnie Holder 3.9.16 Mr. Modica Early American History Impacts of the Transcontinental Railroad Since the dawn of time man has strived to be on the move, exploring the unknown and seeking news ways of getting from one point to another. The innovation of transportation gave people the gift of exploration and traveling to places they have never been able to go before. During the early 1800s the main modes of travel were wagons, horses or on-foot, causing travel to be difficult and sluggish. This drove people to discover a more efficient way of travel, which resulted in the creation of trains. Due to this invention people were able to travel farther and at faster paces.…
Railroads were created to travel across country which opened the door to many opportunities, although not all good. Along…
The railroad was instrumental in the movement of raw materials, especially in the Midwest and Northeast parts of the country (Baker, Boser, & Householder, 1992). This eventually translated into jobs and better living standards for Americans. The formation of the labor movement was another aspect of industrialization that influenced the U.S society and the economy. While it is no doubt that industrialization led to more working opportunities for Americans, there was an outcry from workers as their working conditions had not been addressed by the federal government. This resulted in the development of the labor unions in an effort to address the working conditions of the worker in American factories.…