All Posts Tagged With: "Railroads"

The Gilded Age: A Modest Revision

Mark Twain named the decades after 1865 the “Gilded Age,” and Progressive historian Vernon Louis Parrington sketched them in some detail in 1927. For Parrington (Main Currents in American Thought, volume 3), the Gilded Age was a “Great Barbecue” of continuous government largesse and State-assisted capital accumulation under a very simple philosophy: “[P]reemption [of land] meant exploitation [...]

21Sep2011 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 4 comments | Continued

The Economic Costs of the Civil War

Even after 150 years, the Civil War evokes memories of great men and great battles. Certainly that war was a milestone in U.S. history, and on the plus side it reunited the nation and freed the slaves. Few historians, however, describe the costs of the war. Not just the 620,000 individuals who died, or the [...]

23Mar2011 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 7 comments | Continued

Civil War and the American Political Economy

The task before us is to assess in largely material terms the political-economic system arising during and after the American Civil War. Ideological issues existed, certainly, but much evidence suggests that pure idealism had a rather limited run. Antislavery was one of many themes generally serving as the stalking horse for more practical causes. Slavery [...]

23Mar2011 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 4 comments | Continued

The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies

Although critics on the left are very astute in describing the evils of present-day society, they usually fail to understand either the root of those problems (government intervention) or their solution (the operation of a freed market). In Progressive commentary on energy, pollution, and so on—otherwise often quite insightful—calls for government intervention are quite common. [...]

22Oct2010 | Kevin A. Carson | 51 comments | Continued

Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive Vision of History

Over a hundred years ago, on August 31, 1910, Teddy Roosevelt gave his famous “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. In that speech the former president projected his vision for how the federal government could regulate the American economy. He defended the government’s expansion during his presidency and suggested new ways that it could promote [...]

22Sep2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 8 comments | Continued

How Nineteenth-Century Americans Responded to Government Corruption

James Rolph Edwards is an associate professor of economics at Montana State University-Northern. From its origin as a distinct secular scientific discipline with the French Physiocratic school in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the British classical school that followed, economics had a pro-market, limited-government orientation. Indeed, intellectual historians and political philosophers often refer [...]

1Apr2004 | James Rolph Edwards | 2 comments | Continued

Truman’s Attempt to Seize the Steel Industry

In U.S. history many of the most drastic incursions on private property rights have sprung from the conjunction of a threatened work stoppage, owing to a union-management dispute, and the government’s desire to expedite a war-production program. Such a conjunction underlay the government’s nationalization of the railroads, the telegraph lines, and the Smith & Wesson [...]

1Mar2004 | Robert Higgs | 2 comments | Continued

George Westinghouse: Problem-Solver

One man, more than any other, made possible the great network of railroad lines that connected American cities and made the U.S. economy a truly national one. That man wasn’t Cornelius Vanderbilt or James J. Hill or any of the other great railroad magnates. No, those men achieved their success because of another man: George [...]

1Sep2002 | Charles Oliver | 2 comments | Continued

Wire and Rails: Comparing the Web and Railroads

Larry Schweikart teaches history at the University of Dayton. Not long ago the television show Silicon Spin glumly reviewed the latest news of the cellular phone industry. The guests concluded that even if tech stocks, especially telecoms, had hit bottom, it would be 2003 before the experts thought the majority of them could again struggle [...]

1Dec2001 | Larry Schweikart | 0 comments | Continued

James J. Hill: Transforming the American Northwest

Daniel Oliver is a research associate at the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center and a freelance writer. In 1962 Ayn Rand gave a lecture titled “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” in which she identified two types of businessmen.1 Burton Folsom, Jr., later called these “economic and political businessmen,” the first, self-made men who earned their [...]

1Jul2001 | Daniel T. Oliver | 2 comments | Continued

How to Sink a Car Ferry

I recently had the opportunity to travel on a rare form of transportation—one that receives no government subsidies. The S.S. Badger, a ferry operated by the Lake Michigan Carferry Service, makes twice daily trips between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, from mid-May to mid- October, carrying up to 180 automobiles and 620 passengers. For only [...]

1Jan2000 | Andrew P. Morriss | 7 comments | Continued

Capital Letters

Who Wrecked the Trains? To the Editor: There is much in Gregory Bresiger’s article, “Train Wreck” (The Freeman, August 1999), that is factual, but some that is misleading and false. Yes, at least some railroad leaders after World War II were “lulled” by the strong performance of railroads during the war into “thinking that the [...]

1Dec1999 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued

Train Wreck

Gregory Bresiger is a senior writer with Financial Planning Magazine. The power to tax involves the power to destroy,” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall said. So does the power to regulate. In the decades after World War II, many American railroads fought a losing battle for survival.[1] Railroad executives had been lulled by strong [...]

1Aug1999 | Gregory Bresiger | 2 comments | Continued

Elijah McCoy and Berry Gordy: Ingenuity Overcomes

Part of the tragedy of affirmative action is its implied premise that intended beneficiaries can’t succeed in business unless government grants them special privileges. But history shows that when people have the freedom to succeed, remarkable entrepreneurs and innovators emerge. Two examples separated by a century—Elijah McCoy and Berry Gordy—show how black innovators changed American [...]

1Jan1999 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

Should Government Build the Railroads?

On July 12, 1831, President Andrew Jackson, who was no prankster, did something that made many people laugh, some curse, and others rub their eyes in disbelief. He appointed 19-year-old Stevens T. Mason to be secretary and acting governor of the Michigan Territory. Granted, Mason was a very intelligent teenager and his family was nationally [...]

1Jun1998 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

Deregulation: Coming to a Utility Near You

One of the most important policy debates of 1997 concerns deregulation of the nation’s electrical power industry. The issue, a hot topic at both the federal and state levels of government, boils down to a simple question: If this protected and tightly controlled industry is thrown to the marketplace, who will benefit and will prices [...]

1Aug1997 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | Continued

A History Lesson for Free-Market Pessimists

Sometimes free-market advocates despair at the prospects for fundamental change. The pessimists ask, Where are the examples of a people who have learned enough from the follies of socialism to completely reverse course and pursue freedom?

1Mar1997 | Lawrence W. Reed | 1 comment | Continued
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