On my way home the other day I was
stopped by the sound of bells and the flashing lights of a railroad crossing.
Waiting in my car patiently behind the arm that came down, watching the train
go by I started wondering more about the railroad. The rest of my drive home I
thought about how important the rail road is to our lives. Besides it being a
way to travel it is also a way to get things across the country. I started to
think about all the things I have seen personally on a train or in a show or
movie, the frozen carts, the animals as well as resources. As all this is going
through my mind I stared to remember stories my parents told me about back in the
day how they would take the metro to work, and how it was so convenient and
relaxing. That is when the spark was finally ignited to find out more about the
railroad.
After watching several YouTube
videos regarding the Transcontinental railroad I began to understand more about
how difficult the project was, but I also was able to see the reason behind the
technological advancement. When the
railroad was built towns could now get resources they needed and with every railroad
tie laid and every peace of iron laid the nation was being bound together. It was not all great although it
was a great technological advancement there were a lot of issues to face. One
was how to connect the railway from San Francisco to New York and how to get
the man power to get the job done. Chinese immigrants were hired and put to
work and although to a lot of people they were not going to be able to do the
job they surprised many, later to be denied the right to become a citizen
facing discrimination like the rest of the immigrants. The problems did not stop
with the chines. The laying of iron threw Native American lands made a lot of
people mad. Yet what really set the Native American off was the killing of the
American buffalo, the main source of life for them. The conflicts led to a lot
of deaths and in the end more discrimination and hard ship for the Native
Americans. Also after the railroad was completed there was an issue with the
way business was run. The railways had a monopoly and in no way is that good
for the farmers now using the railroad to get their harvest from state to
state. Government got involved and issue
solved with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. This Act prohibited the
railroad from giving secrete rebates to farmers and forced them to treat
everyone equal.
One video called the railroad the Internet of the era and that stuck with me. As the companies built the railroad
they put up telegraph wires so they could communicate threw out the build. Remember
before the railway there was nothing joining each coast to each other so just imagine
the difficulty of communication. Yet that problem is gone with the railway. So it
makes sense for it to be considered the internet of the era because that is what
it was. The internet now and days is mostly used to connect people as did the
railway in the 1880s, as it still does now. The railroad was not only used to
move people and merchandise in was also a way to spread news and information. The
same way we use the internet now.
The constructions of the railroad lead to
populations of small towns to grow, bringing new business as well as new people
to a part of the country otherwise unreachable. I say unreachable because
before the railroad there was only two ways of getting from one cost to the
other, a six month trip by horse and buggy, if sickness did not take your
life the Native Americans would have a go at it, or a long ship ride around
South America. This is how travel was done as well as how resources were traded
before the advancement of the railway. One town was mentioned in a documentary I
watched on YouTube was called Cheyenne that was created in September of 1867,
the town did not exist till after the railway was constructed. The town was
named after the Native American tribe that lived there which I found ironic. The
town was able to thrive thanks to the railway, so much so that they formed a council
to control things as well as a school. I looked up the population now and in 2014and 2015 the amount of people that live there are about 60,000. So looking that
up shows how influential the railway was and still is, that a small town created
by the union pacific railroad is still alive and thriving.
