The Price Of Speed:

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Term Paper Title	The Price Of Speed:
# of Words	4844
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	19.38

The Price of Speed:
Railroads of the American West

English 205s

2

Outline

Introduction

I. How the railroads promoted themselves

A. To the Government

B. To businesses

C. To farmers and communities

II.     The founders actions

A. Founders greed

B. Founders profited

C. Extravagance

D. Mismanagement

III. Results to Railroads

A. Land Grant Scandals

B. Bankruptcies

E. Public disdain

F. Government intervention

Conclusion

3
The Price of Speed: Railroads of the American West
A railroad, fellow citizens, is a machine, and one of the most beautiful and perfect labor- saving machines.  It well suits the energy of the American people.  They love to go ahead fast, and to go with power.  They love to annihilate the magnificent distances.
     Keith Wheeler, in The Railroaders, quotes a promoter’s speech lobbying for support in Congress (28).  The founders of the railroads threw away the traditional economic ways of meeting the supply for the demand and quite possibly were the originators of “build it and they will come.”  The time was 1850 and in their favor were the facts that the expansion west was slow, the government owned vast amounts of land and the desire for trade with Europe was great.  Some called the founders visionaries but in reality, they were businessmen concerned only with the bottom line -- profit.
Throughout the founders promotions to gain public and government support the founders were planning their future and fortunes.  Most people welcomed the idea of a new and faster transportation.  However, the government that was looking for a way to improve transportation questioned the feasibility, and some of the public had misgivings about these machines.  John F. Stover, in The Life and Decline of the American Railroad, quotes a school board members’ opinion for this new machine: ‘If God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of 15 miles an hour by steam, He would have foretold it through His holy prophets.  It is a device of Satan to lead immortal souls down to Hell’ (16).  However, the founders were shrewd and lured the people in with prospects of a future with a bustling economy, rich lands, and a civilized nation.  The promises of easy fortunes and robust farms were hard to resist.  Until the West could be civilized, no one would prosper except the founders.
Many historians of the 20th Century romanticize the railroads and depict them as having civilized the West.  The i...

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