“Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America”, by Michael Hiltzik

 

448 pages, Mariner Books, ISBN-13: 978-0358567127

In Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America, author Michael Hiltzik has written a dense, narrative-driven account of the consolidation of American railroads into the archetypal mega-corporations that have defined the 20^th and 21^st Centuries, for good and ill. I found it interesting that Hiltzik chose to take the (rather discredited) “Great Man” approach in his book, following the paths of such titans of industry as Jay Gould, Ed Harriman, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt, each of whom financed, maintained, consolidated and ultimately regulated America’s railroad conglomerates of the late 19^th Century. While the abuses of these railroad builders has been documented before – the blatant bribery, the overwhelming greed and at times the painful incompetence – railroads were still pivotal in opening the American West to settlement and development, and to the growth of the United States as a nation and its commanding place in the world.

But what I found interesting in this book is the follow through, as the 19^th Century ended and the 20^th Century began; many histories behave as if the railroads ended with the death of Victoria when, in fact, they were just hitting their stride. Hiltzik covers the history of the railroads well, warts and all, especially as to their seemingly hopelessly entwined financial dealings with the barons at their core. However, perhaps because Hiltzik intended to keep this a factual history of the corporations that crisscrossed the continent with their belts of steel, he does not go into actual character studies of these (it must be said) colorful, bigger than life robber barons, even though his chapters seemed organized by the different individuals and/or pivotal events. As such, it did not engage me as much as I expected, even though the promise at the beginning of the book was to use these men as guideposts, as it were, in the history of this subject; why this original plan was ultimately abandoned I cannot fathom; I can only regret.

Iron Empires shows that, of all the pivotal technologies of the last two centuries – the automobile, telephones, television, computers, and even the internet – it was the railroads that, arguably, had the most profound impact on shaping America. Starting from the 1840s, railroads took the country from the horse-and-buggy to the industrial age and made possible all the others. Railroads not only revolutionized travel, they settled the western frontier; absorbed waves of immigrants; created the modern finance, steel and banking industries; made possible mighty cities; created the labor and women’s movements; integrated agriculture and coal mining; and so much more. But railroads weren’t impersonal forces of nature that did as they pleased and couldn’t be stopped by human agency; rather, they were built, funded, directed and abused by human beings, with all their virtues and faults, for purposes good, evil and pedestrian. The modern-day equivalence are the tech giants who, like the robber-barons of old, must needs be reined in for the good of all.