Negative Effects Of The Transcontinental Railroad

The Transcontinental Railroad, first built in 1829, had a seemingly simple purpose. It provided jobs for over 200,000 people and allowed easy access to expansion westward. Looking at the construction of the railroad through the lense of ‘Manifest Destiny’, the Transcontinental Railroad was a great enterprise into maximizing profits. The negatives of the railroad however, outweigh the supposedly beneficial factors. The Transcontinental Railroad is detrimental to the American society and causes more harm than good.
The Transcontinental Railroad seemed to have given jobs to many workers, but it in fact created a more racist society. By the peak of the construction of the railroad, the Central Pacific Railroad had employed over 12,000 Chinese …show more content…
The railroad meant the consequence of exterminating wild buffalo, a large portion of the Plains Native Americans’ diet. The population of the Native Americans began to decline because their main source of food, wild buffalos, were gone. Not only was food a factor in their depleting population, but their lack of access to educational resources led to many ambushes on railroad workers which reduced their already sparse population. They were moved into uninhabited territory and finally given education however, this education was a very biased education in which students were only taught American beliefs; basically ‘americanised’. This completely destroyed their native lifestyle and culture. It taught the younger generation that their culture was unimportant and the American society was superior to others. It also encouraged the extermination of the buffalo as well as the tribe’s way of life. It destroyed their way of life because of the forced relocation from their lands in order to make room for the railroad. Not only were the they forced off their lands but military forces were brought in to repress Native American tribes. Moreover, most of their natural resources were ruined to make space for train tracks and stations. The Transcontinental Railroad not only promoted a more racist society, but also destroyed an entire …show more content…
Executives of the Union Pacific actually created a construction company called Credit Mobilier of America. They then contracted their own company to build a portion of the railroad. Because the Union Pacific stockholders owned Credit Mobilier stock as well, the businessmen basically hired themselves to do the work. Overall, the line only cost 53 million dollars, but because of the executives the job cost taxpayers- not the government- 72 million dollars to build. Congressman Oakes Ames was entrusted to distribute stock options and free railroad passes in exchange for silence after Congress began questioning the funding. Over 30 congressmen confessed to accepting stock options. Understandably, Americans were outraged by abuse of their tax dollars. The fraud exposed large amounts of embezzlement to taxpayer’s money by the help of the federal government and businesses. And the worst was Credit Mobilier was only one scandal case out of many in the assembly of the Transcontinental Railroad. The Transcontinental Railroad was ultimately effective in destroying the minds of the American society by creating such elaborate scandals and deception. The widespread fraud and scandal that surrounded the transcontinental railroad resulted in, considerably, the greatest scandal of the 19th