Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf 20240622

Mexico month author Richard White presents a history of the Transcontinental Railroad. You draws mexico, next author Richard White presented history of the Transcontinental Railroad. Welcome to the meeting of the Commonwealth Club. You can find us on the internet. I am David Kennedy, professor of history emeritus and codirector of the center for the American West at Stanford University and your moderator for this program. This program is being presented with the California Historical society. It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished guests, Richard White, also a professor of history at Stanford University and codirector at the bill lane center for the American West with me and the author of the new book railroaded the transcontinentals and the making of modern america. Richard is got to be more precise, the Margaret Byrne professor of history at stanford or he has been since 1998. He previously taught at the university of utah and the university of washington where he took his phd. My wonderful colleague, Richard White, is widely regarded as the leading scholar in three distinct but related fields, the history of the American West environmental history, a subset of our discipline that he helped to pioneer, and native American History. He has been the recipient of the macarthur genius award and he is the author of several notable works, including a book entitled its your misfortune and none of my own published in 1991, at general, sweeping, comprehensive history of the American West. A book entitled the middle ground, and empires and republics in the great lakes region. One of my favorites, the organic machine, the remaking of the Columbia River published in 1996. And now we have his new book railroaded the transcontinentals and the making of modern america. The book is already reviewed in the boston globe just this last weekend where it was described as a ski evening and wonderful scathing and wonderful network. And i think the full implications of the event part scathing part as well as the wonderful are likely to be clear as we proceed with this discussion. I should probably know that the outset that the book is not the classic story about building the Transcontinental Railroad. The story has been told many times. Historic this is the begins when the roads are virtually finished and his it is really history of how there were operated in the first 30 years are so. There has been just in the last decade of the 19th century. Born to keep that in mind. An epic saga, building the road, but how the transcontinental lines were actually moderated. So you have entered the field of study here that others have been in before. You study the railroad as a precursor to the modern American Economy and the modern corporation. Your view is a little different, and i hope you will get to that. But to begin, maybe you can Say Something about how youre very large scope of work to do with the west and midamerican is how did your interests in railroads grow out of your previous scholarly work . Maybe crew of some other source altogether. Richard the book comes after a book i wrote about my mother which is about history and memory. I wanted to get back to the American West. What i wanted was a subject which would allow me to will get the entire 19th and early as 20th century west around a single theme. I also wondered why historians unless they were business historians did not write about corporations. And so corporations, the entire west, i turned to railroads. The next step was fairly easy. I thought awhile, starred at though railroads. I notice the several roads in canada, mexico which are very similar. Mexico, canada, and the United States. Initially i thought this would be pretty easy, just comparative. Ill look at how they operate and see the differences between countries. What i found out is it is one big railroad. My guys are the same guys whether in mexico, canada, the United States. The capital for all of the roads comes from the same place, the Technology Comes from the same place. The roads are operated really as an interlocking system. At that point as is usual in my books i realized that i did not know what i was talking about. And the book became very different from the one i set out to wtierite. As ill talk about later with david i started out thinking that these are going to powerful efficient corporations. , the birth of eternity in the modernity in the north American West. And i did find the birth of modern ority in the north American West. This is not what i expected to find. Mine has as much to do with failure as it does the success. David one way to read your book, you conduct a kind of running argument with the great austrian born long time harvard economist who is most well known, i suppose, for the phrase, Creative Destruction the history of capitalism and modern economy. Its all about Creative Destruction. And he, as i read, is one of your principal foils. As you advance your own argument. So you want to just tell us a little bit about your regard . David well, first of all, i admire him a great deal. What i do see is Creative Destruction taking place all over the west. It was his great insight that what capitalism does is it is always a revolutionary system and always has destroyed all to bring in the new. And he was perfectly right. Going on and the way corporations operate. Where i began to differ is that in his account things always turn out well. Entrepreneurs always, in fact, if they fail there are just eliminated. And if they succeed they are de facto bringing in the new world. Well, my entrepreneurs fail in the whole world. They also failed and make a whole lot of money. That became the puzzle for me as i went on. I agreed with him but i did not see the same results coming out of it, and i really wanted to understand why, how this process really worked. Every Railroad Line that i studied ended up going bankrupt. Many go bankrupt not once, but twice. Some of the High Achievers go bankrupt three times. Widely hated and they cause all kinds of political, social environmental problems. Yet the men who run them grow immensely well. And that became a puzzle for me. That became the central puzzle of the book. How exactly does this system work . Because if you fail your are supposed to bear the burden of your failure. My guys failed by any usual measure, but they did very well for themselves, and that is the strain that runs throughout the book. What i end up doing in a phrase that will not go far, it is about growth, but this is really dumb growth. This is growth were all kinds of things happen that probably would have been better if they didnt happen. Sometimes i have this sense that it wasnt working in the north American West, i was watching a soviet twentyyear plan or something. Its not that this doesnt do things, but in hindsight it did not seem of very good idea. David that only the result of all this activity, but in the same since yearend determine but you have the term environmental catastrophe. Do you want to Say Something about that . Richard what i started to do, i started to try to isolate things that would not have happened, at least the way they did without the building a Transcontinental Railroads. Ill talk a little bit about the distinction i make about transcontinental. And the place i looked that was easiest to look at is the great plains. Well, what happens in the great plains between the 1860s when the first rails penetrated and the 1890s. Well, the first thing is the demise of the bison which simply is not about the railroads are fully responsible for the demise of the bison herd, but the final cut is a result of roadbuilding. You could not get them out without railroad tracks. So they unintentionally bring about the new distinction. The extinction of bison. It doesnt bother people very much at the time because you can replace them with cattle. Cattle thrive until the 1870s, 18 maybes. Then you have a series of 1880s, then you have a series of catastrophic winters on plains that are heavily overgrazed and you get the virtual collapse of the cattle industry almost overnight. Bankruptcys, and even hardened ranchers who said they never wanted to look at another cowboy again after they had seen the results of those winters. After that what you get is we farmers. The problem is they move on the plains. Gutierrez, bad years, good years, bad years , it is equally catastrophic. Its time they dump large amounts of wheat. The price is falling. And then when draft becomes many of them. So what you look at is the railroad brings development. First of all, smallscale bison herd. Then you have the cattle industry. Then you have it with we farming. All of the men by the 1890s, catastrophe, environmental damage, and political turmoil. David there is another native or indigenous population on the plains that is also impacted by the railroads. Of course i am referring to native americans. Something i know youre talking about next week in the presidio, but i wonder if you might give us a little preview of what youre going to say then and summarize your views about what the transcontinental lines did to the native American Population is . Richard i have to be very careful when i say this. Because what i will say, though i might have to retreat a little bit on it, is that railroads were probably the worst thing that happened to the indian peoples in the far west, the great plains through the great basin. I hesitate because so many bad things happen to them that it is hard to single out the roads. But what i am talking about is if you look at how American Populations, it takes americans, at the start of jamestown, to a half centuries to get a little more than halfway across. Across the continent. For all practical purposes, is beyond the river. It will take a generation to move the rest of the way. You have for indian people to the rest, no time to adjust. Everything happens virtually overnight. The railroads manage to end the treaty system. They corrupt the treaty system which is correct enough to begin with. Finally it is corrupted in such a way that congress aggregates the treaty system and still have an agreement. The railroads also have a problem. The transcontinental into subsidies for two reasons. The first is they have to secure california for the union. The problem with that is the civil war is over in 1865, and they have not really started building the railroad. So you dont really, you can use the civil war as an excuse. What is substituted is the railroads as a way to subjugate. And in fact, they are. Perfectly true. They bring about the rapid subjugation of indians by the ability to move troops, but my argument would be without the railroads there would have been no need to fight those forced to begin with. The settlement would have taken place much more gradually, and in the end much of the American West would look a lot more like the navajo reservation and the pine ridge reservation. That the kinds of development that takes place very quickly could have been postponed and coming back, it would have cost the United States little, gained the indians much. I am not arguing that in the end the indians boarded indians wouldnt become subjugated by the United States. Im talking of when and where it happens, the speed, and how it happens. David one of the audience asked the question, your description of railroads failing as owners profit resembles recent bank failures. Do you agree . Let me just expand a little bit by sharing with the audience here up passage from your book where you offer a kind of Summary Judgment of what the story is you have been telling. Here is your characterization of the railroads that the end of the day. Overbuilt, prone to bankruptcy and receivership, politically correct, environmentally harmful, and financially wasteful. These corporations nonetheless help create a world where private success often came from luck, fortune, timing, and state intervention. Profit arose more from Financial Markets and insider contracts than from successfully selling transportation. Now, before you answer want to remind you of the subtitle of your book, and i think this underlies the question that i read from the audience. Youre talking about the transcontinentals here as some kind of precursors of modern america, some kind of harbinger of modernity in your story. So is it, in fact, a fact that the observation of the current economic and financial scene was part of your motivation . Richard well, this book did 12 years. Many of the disasters this seem so parallel had not taken place as i was writing this book. The other thing is, on as it may sound, finding some of these guys. It doesnt sound like it is from some of those passages. So i wrote this in gw places. Two places. I wrote it in seattle, and then i wrote it in palo alto. Eroded when the beginnings of things like and ron, the dot com must, finally the financial crisis which comes toward the end of the book. And then began to realize there were certain parallels here. For business history. I learned a lot about it. But a very naive idea that the way people made money from corporations is the corporations made money selling subsidies. Then they divide it up among the selling something. Then they divide it up among the stockholders. But i have a whole bunch of corporations that lost money. The stockholders very often got little. Yet the people who had controlled the corporations made vast fortunes. And so i began to see, especially among the dot coms. All of the companies which seemed to sell nothing. I was trying to buy a house at the same time in silicon valley. I knew anybody who walked in every time i saw somebody under 30, i just walked out. I could not compete with them. I could not buy a house. But they were making huge amounts of money. All of those companies, the financial crisis was the same thing. A financial catastrophe. They have to be bailed out. But the banks themselves suffer very little. They actually do quite well. I began to think, this isnt something that is late 20thcentury. In a weird way the late 20th century and the earliest 21st century seem to be a lot like the 19th century. Everything seemed to be like the 19th century. The dangers for historians, oh my. I read about the past. People who live there were not like us. In many ways their differences. There were differences. Clearly the kinds of structural things, the kinds of modernity we are used to was already beginning to emerge for the First Corporation in the American West that is first being settled. All very kinds of entanglements with washington, all the kinds of financial market, all the kinds of chicanery that we became all too familiar with. These guys are doing it simpler but much the same thing. David i want to ask a question that maybe takes you quite a little bit beyond the boundaries of your own book, your own research and writing. There is a lot of history between the 19th century and now. Though our own age may have some similarities to this, a lot of things have intervened. For example, the creation of the interstate Commerce Commission in the 1890s to try to bring some order to the Railroad Industry through federal government regulation and a series of other government initiatives to bring order to various marketplaces over the course of the late 1910 through the 20th century. The new deal would be one great moment when a lot of those things come into being. So what is there story . Today correct some of the evils and problems ec in the 19th century . How we have let our guard down again . Or is this one continuous story of corruption and malfeasance from the 1860s forward. Richard you have caught into the problem of that. Just because the late 20th century, late 19th century is similar, that doesnt mean everything in between. One of the things i noticed. There is a chart in the book fermenting this economic historian that started speculate percapita income. I went into the rest thinking, say what you will, which is the usual thing to say what you will. There were rising standards of living all over the next states. All over the United States. Well, actually, there werent. Indeed, in the west, they were dropping. They drop until 1900. The progressives, if any of you follow this literature professional historians have really hard on. We probably should let up a bit. That is when percapita income for individuals in the United States start to rise. They will continue to rise all the way through, as david says the new deal, world war ii. And they stagnate when we began to get the kind of things that im seeing here. So there is a long interlude. One of the things i say, most of the reviews so far stressed a the critical element. But one of the things i try to bring out is the gilded age, the late 19th century was also a major reform. And in the 20th century many of those reforms worked. Its not that these things done are unmanageable. Is not that people cant take some control over them. And so i really do, you know i am not a happy face historian and never will be. It isnt going to happen, but i really do try to point out from the limits of reform in the late 19th century, it does achieve many things that show up in the 20thcentury. Google ignore the fact that the roots are in the 19th century. People ignore the fact that the roots are in the 19th century. And so many of them come out of opposition to the railroad. David so, richard, someone in the audience asked the following question, what was the biggest challenge you encountered in researching this book . In other words, when did you know you had to stop doing research . I assume you could have continued for years. In the course of your response you might want to tell us a Little Something about your own research and writing habits. Do you write at night or in the morning of the middle of the day . Research assistants . Richard usually i dont use research assistance. I owe virtually all my riding habits to my children when their small. Writing habits to my children when they were small. The only time i could never write was to get up very early in the morning before they were up. I set a pattern of writing very early in the morning and helping get the kids riding for school. Late at night, i am not much good. I can read, but i really cant write. Much of the book will be written in the predawn hours as i become very fond. A habit which is largely due to my children, but it is one that has served me well. I although my owe them a great debt of gratitude. I guess i never expressed to them that way. And so that became a habit. The late 19th century. I operate differently from many historians. I know a lot of it. I did not read the secondary literature first. I go into the archives. When i really want to do is get to know people. I consider this to david and many other historians. They know what i mean. Otherwise it seems kind of strange. The people i write about are more real to me than most of the people i see on the streets every day. This is something that scares my wife. She has gotten used to it after all these years. It really is true. And what you begin to do when you know you know this is when you get to a situation and you can predict what theyre going to do and they do it. At that point you think, ok, i really have reached some kind of understanding. Much of the research is technical. The core piece of research is i read other peoples mail. I mean, that is what i do. In the 19th century the thing i like about these guys is i really came to respect the business letters. To the point, not long, has to i cant, guys honest, but i be 50 has to be pithy. I cant, guys honest, but i would call them frank. They say things that i couldnt believe there were saying until i come to the bottom of the letter it says destroy this letter, burn this letter. Its those a lot of the 19th century. It says a lot about the archives that are clearly and burned and then destroyed. Big guy they didnt have a tree or anything in the 19th century. They leave it for me to read. So i say scathing, most of what i do is what they say about each other. They really do come to dislike each other a great deal. Then i have to organize it by corporations. You can literally go on forever. When the yield of anything new really began to diminish, at that point it was time to stop. The of years is a long, long time. David this is, i must say a prodigiously researched book. The Archival Research that underlies the narrative is truly phenomenal. And very admirable. Richard, you refer to the principles that appear in your story as your guys. You have a grudging fondness for them. You enter into this very, very controversial area of corruption and how corrupted they were. I am reminded of things that mark twain said, perhaps, in the famous double you did with charles, the gilded age, which gave the name to the era. America has no native criminal class, except for the United States congress. I think another one was im once met a congressman who was in so b. But why do i repeat myself . And there is more than little of that flavor in your book. Maybe you want to sales something about what you mean by corruption, a word that appears is not on every page, certainly with highfrequency. His notion of corruption, i think, was the corruption of the body of politics, politicians are for sale, the definition of an honest congressman was on a when he was bought he would stay bought. It was the corruption of the political realm in particular. You have some of that on your mind, but as i read, you have an even broader definition of corruption. Something about the nature of corruption. Richard quite complicated. I will start simply. What i mean by corruption basically is something very, very simple. But i branched out from there. I meant any exchange a public good for private favors. And that became the kind of thing. Railroads would do favors for congressman. And congressman would grant them charters, grant them subsidies grant them laws that help them against rivals, all of these things. So essentially it is taking and this is what americans most feared. This is still, in the years after the civil war, this still railroads would do favors for congressman. A jeffersonian element. The republicans going to fall because the main fact, private interests will take over. And the corporation, as they saw it, was going to be the engine that drove all of this. Now, that does happen. What i argue in the book is something more subtle really happens. If the corporation wasnt interested in running the United States. The corporation wasnt interested in taking over politics. All these guys wanted to do was make some money. And so they really had limited ambitions. And to make money there really had to make sure, and this is a think one of the central insights for me of the book. They turned politics in tow way into a way that businesses compete. It goes on to the present day. When one business wants to stop another business, and you can see between the banks, for example, an easy one, and retail merchants. Both of them are fighting in congress for business advantage. That is what the railroads are. And to do that everybody has come and its a word that became in many of my books, i refer read for a couple of years and then i go, thats what they mean. Everybody here was friends. Frank huntington, stanford hopkins, procter. It sounds like a quicker reading quaker meeting to read the correspondents. But when you know that they dont like each other in the begin to gated. Means something else. The key principles of social form. Hatred is personal. French it is business. Friendship is business. So you have this series. An honest congressman is somebody who when he is bought stays bought, but loyalty is about trust. It might be in a bad cause, but many of them are Union Veterans around the railroad. The worst thing you can say about somebody is that they are a trader. Traitor. The worst thing is treason. For them they carry over that kind of ethic which had once been saving the union into business relationship. That is of the whole thing operates. They have friends who are newspapermen friends who are politicians, friends who are judges, friends who are businessmen, france are bankers. Friends who are bankers. But if you want to understand the late 19th century it is tragic. They dont bribe each other. Bribery is the failure of friendship. To bribe somebody is an ad hoc purchase that you cant count on. But a friendship is a reciprocal interest. That is how this kind of intersection of business and politics comes about. These guys will survey your two serve a year or two in congress. This sounds familiar. Become lobbyists, corporate employers to my lawyers for the corporations and move back and forth. They get paid off. Theyre taking care of. But they have to bribe somebody. That raises the whole issue of the corruption of the government itself. It makes everything far too visible, far too messy. It is not that they wont do it, they do do it. But they like to avoid it. David i would like to remind our Radio Audience that your listening to the Commonwealth Club of california radio program. Our guest today is Richard White. Professor of history at Stanford University and codirector at the bill look lane center. We are here discussing his new book railroaded and the myths about the Transcontinental Railroads and the building of the American West. Richard, we have got more than one question here that i suppose you have anticipated about the founder of our university. So, one questioner says, the leon stamford was the founder of the university that presumably plays your salary as well as that of the moderator. Thats me. Dont you have anything positive to say about the socalled robber barons . In the same vein another questioner asks given your , position with stanford, this may be a difficult question. But how corrupt was Leland Stanford . Richard ok. First of all, you know, my wife said one of those things sometimes she does things that he will put on my gravestone. She says he bites the hand that fed him. That is fair enough. But Leland Stanford, let me give you a piece of advice that probably most of you know already. Do not destroy your personal papers. If you destroy your personal papers, your side of everything that happens is pretty much going to be lost while all those other letters that you might have marked destroy when read or resting very safely in the are resting very safely in the archives. So there is abundant correspondence which shows he is quite corrupt. But there is nothing giving stanfords side. But it is unclear. They are abundant and they are damning. This testimony. So he is very much part of it. One of the things that happens is the people who ran the Central Pacific were known as the associates. They were in it together. Things became so messy, and they all have so much to hide that nobody could ever back out of the corporation. The only way you got out of the southern pacific was you died. People tried. It was sort of like the mafia. They came back. You have to come back in. And after awhile i said, thats because there never got to steal from each other, but that left out david cole, a famous 19th century trial. It is actually wonderful. Because the day they captured black bart, the last stagecoach robber in california, the date of the trial started. So if you go back to the San Francisco papers he will have the accounts of the stage robber used to leave bad poetry with his victims. Then you have the opening of the colton trial which became the most famous trial in late 19th century california. Colton was an associate who was stealing from the other associates. When he died his associates figured out that he embezzled. They went to his widow and stole it back. In doing this they found out that because the books were so caulked it was cooked it was very easy for employers to steal from them. By and large the associates themselves came to dislike each other, but they stuck together all the time. And stanford is one of them. The real person runs the southern pacific is huntington. Huntington is corrupt, but he is also funny, tough, mean. The news, of all of the people i read doing historical stuff, i would hesitate to go up against him. It doesnt mean that youre going to lose the fight, but you probably arent going to win it and you will almost certainly wish you were never there to begin with. A very formidable character, much more so than stanford. David the questionnaire asked about the robber barons. The term robber baron, as i understand, was put into the common circulation by a book published in the 1930s which was very anti business, anti corporate sentiment in of the great depression. I just want to go through a list of some of the people who, i suppose, qualify as robber barons. Or their lackeys and acolytes that you write about. I want to ask you a question about the robber baron interpretation of history. But about a halfdozen or more people here. Im quoting your characterization. You say of Thomas Durant that he was able phone. A buffoon. John Murray Forbes was narrow minded. Silas seymour was corrupt and largely incompetent. James harvey was a racist brew misanthrope. Sam was a buffoon. Aims was belligerent and obtuse. And the gaggle of southern pacific executives were divided, arrogant, and inept men. That sounds a little bit like matthew joseph. Yet you say in your introduction you think the robber baron interpretation of history is likely to be the most likely misinterpretation of what you try to argue. So given that tone and the way you deal with individual robber barons, how is it that you are distinguishable at the analytic or analytic core from that the justice account of the whole robber baron theory . Richard after 10 or 12 years of reading correspondence, much of that is paraphrasing what they said about each other. I will give you a taste, one quote. The golden age of american vitriol. So when i quote something i have to think, well, this is actually pretty mild. But a a kaelin, San Francisco businessman involved often on with the southern pacific. Let me see if i can get this right. He was a living, breathing waddling monument to viciousness, vulgarity, and dishonesty. I am up against masters here. Compared to the kinds of things they said what i say is quite mild. Thomas durand, that is probably the nicest thing that anybody ever said about him. So yeah. I do say them, but i am reflecting pretty much the source is the half. But theyre not robber barons. The two books that probably dominate most about our vision about what these railroad corporations are like were popular literature. Josephs book and frank norris. My main difference is my guys werent nearly as competent. I think what you tend to have, if you look at the outside of these corporations, they seem to be so dominant. They seem to have an idea of what they want to achieve and they go ahead and achieve it. They might be evil and rotten and corrupt, but they certainly are capable. There really seems to be no resisting. You go inside these corporations. You know, it is for fat guys four fat guys in an octopus suit. They are fighting over the engine. It really is when chandler hugos invisible hands, he wants the records. Im looking at what the president s, Vice President s the managers, the workers. All of this, of very different view. And when you go into the bowels of the organization, poor Charles Francis adams who is one of the main characters of the book. He could not contain himself about the ineffectiveness, and efficiency of the union pacific. What it turned into is other selfloathing that he was actually the head of this corporation that he could never, sacrificing many years of his life. So i think the differences they are not as competent. That is back to my central problem. All of this goes back in many ways to a conversation i had with my father when i mustve meant 10 or 11 years old. My father was a businessman. He was a vicepresident at the time. You know, probably the equivalent of an organization like this. I was eating my breakfast. I didnt know what he was talking about. He said i want you to tell me something. I want you to tell me how when you go to work and nobody, nobody can do their job, nobody knows what theyre doing, nobody can give you an accurate piece of information, you cannot find an honest man, how is it that the world works . That the sun is going to set the sun is going to rise, and will do it all again tomorrow. I thought he was talking about me. Because i was 10. Its also one of those questions that once asked grows some place in the back of your mind and becomes the mystery of how corporations work. Theyre dysfunctional, totally dysfunctional, the ones i am looking at, but they function. They go on. The collapse in a heap and will be brought back and put back together by the courts and federal government and off they would go again. Collapse in the heap again. This is how this world begins to work. That became the puzzle i really was trying to figure out. Very different than the kinds of managerial operations, the triumphant entrepreneur, or anybody like the octopus or robber baron. It is not the way it works. And my account of its largely comes from this. The number of men in the 19th century who were on the verge of a nervous breakdown is unbelievable. And there is a wonderful moment in the panic in 1873. Huntington, about as tough and individual as i have ever encountered. Huntington sits in his office and says, i sit here going nowhere, not knowing what to do. And he writes at another time that he has slept maybe three hours in the last week. And this is the kind of thing that happen. They literally feel overwhelmed by a system that they are both creating which clearly is not under their control. That is the problem with robber barons. They are in control. I cant find the people who are in control running the corporations i am looking at. And i am talking about the transcontinental, other railroads. I am a historian, i have an evidentiary base. I will keep to that evidentiary base, not necessarily universalized from other corporations. So. David part of what youre doing, i think very cecily, is demythologizing this inherited notion of these supreme potentates known as robber barons. They might have had a baronial lifestyle but not power, even over their own corporation. So a lot of demythologizing going on here. On close reading among the people that you are demythologizing or people who thought even at the time or people like frank norris and the octopus. So many californians students have read over the generations people elsewhere too. And even, it would appear, one of californias most famous governors, Hiram Johnson he made his political career by taking on the octopus, a southern pacific railroad, much of the political system we have in the state today, not least of all an initiative and referendum and recall, the direct product of his attack on the southern pacific railroad. But by your accounts by his day the octopus was, as you would say, an empty suit. There was no true power. So how can temporarys like Nora Sam Johnson have gotten it so wrong. Contemporaries like noras and johnson have gotten it norris and johnson have gotten it so wrong . Richard a brief window between 1882 and 1894. There is a political machine. San francisco still is but really was a colorful city. So what he does is set up with a guy here is the blind boss. Buckley is a democrat and stanford is a republican. What they do is essentially run the state. He buys the elections. It is very clear at the time. And then George Hearst buys the election and that is very clear at the time. There is a period werent they are building up where they are building up with the octopus. 1892 is essentially divided machine. He trains them far too well. They convene the grand jury. He decides he is suffering poor health. And he goes to london. Even though the grand jury indictments are illegal, thrown out in court, he sees the writing on the wall. He is done. Huntington comes to stanford and says, here is the evidence that you bought the senate seat. Heres what i want you to do. We will send you back to the senate to resign as president of the southern pacific railroad. You can keep the central. Stanford takes the deal. Huntington takes over, giving the southern pacific out of guessing the southern pacific getting the southern pacific out of politics, but he is not getting it out of politics. Southern pacific will be running three different candidates three different factions of the southern pacific. With a seat in 1892 is the miraculous. They allow somebody named stephen weiss, no relation to me, to become a democratic and independent bit anton antimonopolist senator. And it is really like far more. He breaks. The memory of eight years. That is what goes on. Norris uses that. And that think it would be very interesting to go back and look. My sense is, i cant prove it. Because i stopped before that. Hiram is a really smart politician. The octopus is far too valuable. They might not know its as powerful, but he turns it into something that he can whip back and forth. He comes in and takes over the southern pacific. Not a political operator that he is, no match for johnson. But what johnson will do is steal the road and make it a progressive republican and put in an awful lot of reform. But the octopus in the classic form is dead by the early 1890s. David you have pretty thoroughly demythologizinged the railroad, transcontinental. The all powerful entities. But what if we brought the terms of that point and asked just generally speaking what if anything at all, the broader myths of the American West. Cowboys, homesteaders, saw busters, the oregon trail california trails trekkers and so on. Anything above mythic history that is still defensible on historical standards . The whole thing is to be put into the fable dustbin. Richard any set of stories that can have the power that the stories have come my feeling as a historian, stories have, my feeling as a historian is it makes no difference if they are true or not. They become their own truth. What happens here is people themselves really begin to live according to these methods. So would you will have wonderful account which others have used. It captures the way. Kit carson comes to rescue a woman who has been captured by the sheer by the cheyenne. In fact, they are too late and they run away. And in going through this stuff that has been captured, he begins going through. He finds the dime novel about kit carson rescuing a woman from the apache. He sits down and starts reading the dime novel. And kit carson is upset because in the novel he saves the woman. This time he lost the woman. So here is an actual historical character. Now constructing himself out of these kinds of mets. Buffalo bill cody kinds of my ths. Buffalo bill cody, a great genius of the American West. The one who understood. He understood that the west itself could become an economy. The Buffalo Bills wild west show, which never called itself, the west show, will take the actual people who were involved. Buffalo bills wild west show indians joined Buffalo Bills wild west show up to fight custer on stage and in the arena. Before wounded knee, which buffalo bill will go out and scout for the army, indians were some of those that fought at wounded knee. At this point who can tell the reality and the fiction . It just goes back and forth. My larger point about the west is, you can demythologize the west all you want. You will never get it. You will never get at the heart of these stories. These stories are about met some of the west, they are about america. They are about this sense that you can reimagine yourself, you can begin again. There is a place that you can go which is untouched. All this is utterly magical. A place that is untouched where you can be the first person there. All of these things play very deeply into the american psyche. It is no wonder that when we talk about genres, there is a western. There is no midwestern. It encapsulates this sense of hope. So what i do, i love westerns. One thing i never want to do, i want to go see it. It is wonderful. It really does capture something. It captures what it was like an indian territory in the 1880s. Probably not. David as you well know, the man he shot liberty valance, the single most memorable line comes at the very end with a newspaperman says when the trip when the truth becomes a legend, print the legend. The west has been an engine of driving these myths of legendary proportions. There is at least one, im going to call it. At first glance it appears to be an outlier in your sense of balance. James j. Hamel who built the Great Northern railroad which at least by popular understanding is the one of the four major transcontinental that was built largely with of federal subsidy. It is the northernmost of the u. S. Transcontinental. I believe she wants said something he once said something to the effect that somebody living along the snow was not worth a tinkers them. He was trying to populate. He did not do it solely as a private enterprise. Plenty of opportunity for interface with the political system and a stand of corruption. Richard a little more complicated. His most famous quote was given me enough swedes and whiskey and i will build you a road to hell. But what he had, the only one who realizes that he foresees that he will build the railroad. With something to put on it. That is the major problem. A little early. Does not anticipate the depression of 1893. It is not true that he does not get a subsidy. His core road is st. Paul , minneapolis, and manitoba which has some of the largest land grants in minnesota and the dakotas. Very valuable. That becomes the core around which he sends the road into the Great Northern. But the real thing, he builds the road and about the time where for the first time you really need transcontinental. Because in 1890, after the depression of 1893, the American Economy takes off. There is traffic for these roads. The thing that struck me about the problems before that is the United States government subsidizes the Transcontinental Railroad. The Transcontinental Railroads built in california. The Transcontinental Railroads take part of the money they get and the steamship lines to raise rates back east. So they can compete. During this whole time the government can pay to a corporation who subsidizes another corporation so that they will raise rates so that they can in fact, they can make some money transferring. Otherwise virtually everything would have gone by ship down through roads into new orleans or up through the east coast. That is far and away the cheapest route. As it turned out because of the way that railroads run, i will not bore you with the details, but it is nearly as quick as putting it on our road. They have a hard time tracking these things. It will take a long time before you can find the car again. David james j. Hill did not do it differently. You also suggested other countries did it differently not necessarily mexico and canada, which is part of the continental Transportation System that everybody was in bed with everybody else, but you allude to the fact that the europeans did it differently. They build their Major Railroad Transportation Systems in a different model. How different were they . Were they something this country should have emulated . David people said that we should, but its too late. The cat was out of the bag. The techniques they had were very simple. Many of the problems did not happen in france or germany or england. Each one did it a little differently. What the english did is something really simple. If youre going to build the railroad you have to put your own money in it. There has to be stock that is bought and paid for. There is stock at risk in the railroad. Most american railroads are not built that way. They are built with bonds, borrowed money. Americans tried to control railroads by regulating the rates and the french are a lot smarter. The french say you are always going to have corruption internally. If we allow you to build a railroad anyplace you choose. So the roads have to be approved by the state. What they do not allow is what kills railroads in the west, and was competitive routes without traffic to support them endless competitive routes without traffic to support them. To be fair, they do not face the same problem the United States does. France, england, and germany are relatively small countries. The United States has this vast area. And at the time of the 19th century, french, england, and germany they had far more capital. We were up for nation. We were a poor nation. So is certainly going to be origination. We have to borrow a lot of money. The United States does not come off by any statistical measure very well. Our low rates are largely because we carry cheap commodities very long distances. It is not so if the total rate or the total fair but rate for miles is low because we carry them so many miles. David you write quite substantially not just about the managers and the mismanagement but also the workers. Especially the confrontation between the American Railway union and the management of the nationwide rail rate system in the 1890s. In what way on the labour side of the dimension here do we see a template for maternity the way you argue when we see it on the business and financial side . David in some ways we dont. I mean, one of the interesting things going back, i discovered something which historians tend to ignore because what we do is divide it up between labor unions, populist, green backers, and at the time people call the something much simpler, and to antimonopolist. There was a strong anti monopolist wing in the republican party, strong antimonopolist wing in the democratic party. The third party as well, antimonopolist, worker antimonopolist. What they mean is corporation. Pretty much they use the word synonymous. The reason they dislike corporations is they think control is being taken away from ordinary people. I began to realize that in the 19th century there is something that is not modern because it has vanished from current politics. If it is here, i have not seen it. Americans in the 19th century, not all of them, but that is the reason the reforms work, but a majority believe that the purpose of an economy, a Republican Society is to produce republican citizens. It is not to produce the highest Gross National product. Instead, what they say is it should produce citizens are able to take this simple republic and are very clear on what theyre talking about. The workers should be able to support a family, a kind of independence among producers. Nobody can dictate the conditions which they will reach market. They really hold these things very, very seriously, and it becomes the core of this politics. It is a politics that they that we misunderstand now. Then tested it very well the time. So the unions, the next of labor are not a modern labor. The businessmen, lawyers, all kinds. Instead they see themselves taking the ideals, republican ideals and bringing them over into the economy. They thought the economy should be subservient to the republic and not vice versa. That it wasnt the governments job to serve business, but the business should produce certain kinds of citizens so the American Republic would survive. It is very linktone he and. Lincolian. They see the country has largely made up of mill people. They define these things in terms of manhood. And they mean white manhood. Most anti monopolists are racist to the core. Its also about men. It is about the ability of man to support a family. It is about women being a domestic, being in the home. So there are real limits. It is not the kind of thing you bring over into the late 20th century, but to me it was another one of those revealing points. Im looking at a different way of seeing the world. Americans in the late 19th century are not like us. They thought of the world in a very, very different way. Once you understand that the politics becomes much more comprehensible. Richard you i want to dwell for a minute. I would be remiss if i didnt. One of the stylistic properties of this book. Its not merely a deeply researched and compellingly told analytic and narrative history but you sprinkle through the book, im not sure quite what to call them, elements, that reminded me of the way so many different elements are put together in that famous u. S. A. Trilogy. You call yours railroad life. Or railroad lives. Which are these little vignette passages scattered throughout the narrative itself. How did you come to the conclusion you wanted to put that kind of thing in theire andr what is the purpose it is intended to serve for the readere . Richard this is my author should never be allowed to give an account. David said to me today that it sounded like john and i said that is where i got it from because i used to love john as a teenager. It did not cross my mind. I did it probably for the same reason he did. This is a big narrative. What i wanted to do was bring it down to daily life. What i wanted to bring it down to not just the associates, Charles Francis adams and big corporations, but how the railroad transforms daily lives. Like any history and i found historian i found stuff in the archives that were too good not to use. It had nothing to do with the main lines. The trick is all of the Railroad Lines to show how working out in this new the gritty way the bigger things than i am talking about. Are will give you an example. I ran across a scattered correspondence. A young woman named Joanna Grogan. Who was run over by huntingtons railroad. Railroad work was incredibly dangerous in the 19th century. Every year more workers are killed that were killed in the civil war battle of silo every year. Huntington workers died in the tens, hundreds, more. Most of the time that never entered this correspondence. Joanna grogan a lot of stuff that is written about it. It turns out Joanna Grogan made one dollar a day. She worked as a maid in a hotel in missouri. By the time they were done she died, she had her leg amputated by very incompetent doctors. Her hospital bill amounted to give you years of her work. Two years of her work. She would have to work two years to pay the bill for the hospital. Huntington doesnt want to pay the bill but realized she was being cheated. By all of of the local people, the undertaker and all the doctors. They see this as a chance to make some money off of that. What they have done is taken on somebody on such a colossal scale they have no idea what they have gone into. They wont treat huntington. What he does do is break them all down so they settle for much less or get nothing at all. He buys out her fathers farm. He had five children. None of them had shoes. Final details come in. Where did the mortgage come from . This is a typical gilded age story. The mortgage came from a county clerk who embezzled school funds and loaned it out to local farmers so at this point from bottom to top no wonder mark twain called it the gilded age. Everywhere you see these stories. I later found there are plenty of honest people in the 19th century. Not many in the railroad archives. But plenty of people in the 19th century. David we have come to the point in our program where there is time for one last question. Kind of a big question. I will paraphrase several versions of it that came up from members of the audience. One standard narrative of the Transcontinental Railroad is it is the first in a series of federal investments in the development of the American West. Nationbuilding, federal nation building that extends from the Transcontinental Railroad itself to federally subsidized through the great hydro projects of the early and middle 20th centuries. Hoover dam, shasta dam, brand coulee dam. Grand coulee dam. The interstate highway act of the 1950s and the federal subsidies for highspeed rail in california. Some would argue theres a direct genealogy here and all these are part of a longrunning historical project to invest in the kind of communication and transportation and Energy Producing infrastructure that has made this region. To the extent that is the story you are arguing that the initial sense of this process was misplaced at this time. Should we extrapolate from that to critical judgments about the later installations of this same general strategy, the hydro projects, the interstate highway system, and something that you opined about in the pages of the New York Times close vote recently, times recently, high speed rail. Richard make my decisions as clear as i can. I am clearly opposed a highspeed rail because let me just say i see that as more like a transcontinental i am not against federal infrastructure investment. All i ask is you do two things. First of all, when you build something you think about the consequences of building it and you think if it is needed now. Much of the problems with the friends come to mental the way ahead of demand. Friends Continental Railroad is that they are built way ahead of demand. By the time you have those railroads they are behind what was built years later. Think about your house. Build your house and moved into with 40 years later because there will be no house to move in to. You keep pouring money into it to keep it up. Once you build these things they become this constant demand as money pours in. When you dont need them is going to be extraordinarily costly. Most of the railroads up to that would have been built by federal subsidies. It would have been built anyway. Railroads in california would have been built without federal budgets. They would have drained into San Francisco. Subsidies are really needed in between the 100th meridian and the sierras. My question is if you need it then why then . What are the costs of having them . I wrote a book on Columbia River the organic machine. The organic machine was about building dams. Federal subsidies. But things turn out differently. In the dams, United States got incredibly lucky. The critics were exactly right. What are you going to do . We have a farm surplus. Why are you going to irrigate morland when you are trying to more land when you are trying to get people to abandon them . Those are perfectly rational arguments. What happened was world war ii. A contingent event that had nothing to do with the building of the dam. Suddenly you needed all that electricity. And the fact you needed as much food as you could produce. That might be great planning on somebodys part. But really, it was just sure luck. Sheer luck. Sometimes you are just bailed out. Not counting on being bailed out, crossing subsidies. My argument is not against subsidies per se but this kind of dumb growth. Think about what we are subsidizing and why because people give you all the arguments that the ends continentals transcontinentals are wonderfully plausible and end up not being true. David thanks to Richard White professor of history at Stanford University and codirector p. Mclean center for the American West and most importantly for our purposes here this evening the author of railroaded the transcontinentals and the making of modern america. I can assure you it is a book that both entertains and provokes on virtually every page. We also thank our audience here on radio, television and the internet and tonights program held in association with the California Historical society. I am professor David Kennedy from stanford and this meeting of the Commonwealth Club of california, the place for you are in the know, place where you are in the know is , adjourned. [applause] wonderful program. As always [inaudible conversations] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] next week, while congress is out for the holiday break American History tv is on im time. In time. Monday, the manhattan project. Tuesday, a symposium on the debate between baldwin and buckley on the american dream. Highlights of the cities tour. Thursday, examine the text of the declaration of independence and the efforts. And friday the welcoming ceremony of the french sailing ship that brought lafayette to america in 1780. Watch the primetime edition of American History tv starting monday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. And to then as we tell americas story on cspan3 to end as we tell americas story on cspan3. Like many of us, first families take vacation time. And a good read can be the perfect companion. What better read than one that peers into the personal life on every american first lady . First ladies president ial historians on the lives of 45 iconic american women. A great summertime read. Available from Public Affairs as hardcover or ebook, through your favorite bookstore or online bookseller. The author of reagan remembered gilbert, was joined by other cabinet members and administrators to recall the president s personal side as well as his days in the white house. The National Press club hosted this event. Its 40 minutes. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. Were here today to celebrate the publication of reagan remembered. This is a true president ial first. Never before have so many prominent members of an Administration Come together to offer up their thoughts on a former president. 81 in total including president