Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Railroads began as small lines connecting fairly close towns and cities in the 1820s-1830s. Over time these lines consolidated and formed larger sys- tems. By the time of the American Civil War of the 1860s railroads had become the dominant means of long-distance transportation of people raw materials. and finished goods. The railroad allowed vast amounts of raw materials to be carried over long distances at a speed never before imagined in the history of civiliza- tion plus the return of finished products from facto- ries to a widely-dispersed population in an ever- expanding continental nation. As railways were gaining acceptance as a means of cheap fast efficient transportation. the Industrial Revoution which had begun in England in the preceding decades flickered to life in the New World and thereafter manufacturing and railroad transportation became inextricably and inexorably linked. In the quarter century following the Civil War the American railroad network was built at an amaz- ing rate. Although it became overbuilt in some regions as competitive companies constructed dupli- cate lines to tap rich areas of natural resource extrac- tion or lucrative inter-city transport it largely grew as an arterial system spreading its tentacles through- out the continent tapping the richness of this most favored land and facilitating the flow of commerce as had not been seen in the history of the world. Created was the American industrial giant which has ac- counted for one-half of all the products ever made in the history of the world all within the last 150 years!