Customer Reviews

Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800-1890

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3 star:		(1)
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Carter Goodrich's "Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads 1800-1900" is a classic of American economic history. One of the works commissioned and supported by the Committee on Research in Economic History, it provides the first comprehensive and coherent account of government promotion of transportation improvements in the United States. Based on his own as well as the work of a large group of Goodrich's students, it remains the standard source for understanding what governments tried to do in the first century of American history to promote economic development.

I was motivated to write this review when I happened to see that someone had given the book three stars, largely because Goodrich did not write about the Panic of 1873. The reviewer admits that she did not thoroughly research the book before purchasing it.

This is not a history of railroads or a history of canals. It is a history of "government promotion" of transportation projects in America. As the recent, 2011, state of the union address suggests, government promotion/investment in economic activities is a problem that will never go away in a democratic society where citizens must regularly decide whether and how to use their common resources to promote the common good.

Goodrich clearly identifies the political and economic challenges involved in pursuing large projects with public funds. He shows how American national, state, and local governments sometimes succeeded beyond their dreams and often failed miserably to use public action to promote economic development.

If you are interested in what happens when governments, particularly democratic governments, get involved in large public projects, you cannot afford not to read Goodrich.

I bought this book hoping to find out more about the technical details of the development of the railroad in the U.S. This is a case of me not researching a book enough before I bought it. There is nothing in here about the collapse of the financial world in 1873 due to the over-speculation of the railroads. Without that, this book, to me, seems meaningless.

If you want to find details on federal debate and decision before 1830, or the "Appalachian Competition," whatever that is, or the line between Boston and Mobile before 1861, which I can imagine might be interesting, or the Era of National Subsidy which is between 1850 and 1872, you might like this book. There are references to specific places, but nothing in the index about Jay Cooke's banking collapse.

In the last chapter the author notes, "The preceding chapters have presented an account of the part played by public agencies in the promotion of canals and railroads."

Here's what it says about the 1873 panic - "When railroad building revived after the depression of the seventies..."

That's it. And nothing on President Grant in the index either.

Again, it's my fault for thinking this would be a helpful book without knowing ahead of time what was in it. And yet - how do you write about railroads in the 1800s without the Panic of 1873?