Cannons boomed simultaneously in New York and San Francisco at the same moment the golden spike was hammered into the ground, connecting the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad companies at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869 (American 1). North America became the first continent to be connected by railroad from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast when the Transcontinental Railroad was finished (Gale 1). The railroad was an essential component of achieving manifest destiny. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad spurred settlement in the American West, encouraged immigration, and began an economic boom in the United States. Before the Transcontinental Railroad, there were no easy or dependable means …show more content…
The Transcontinental Railroad was comprised of nearly eighteen hundred miles of track, much of which was laid by Chinese and Irish immigrants (Immigration 1). Chinese immigrants had settled in California during the Gold Rush but were not allowed to become full citizens (Immigration 1). With the need for labor to work on the railroad, the Chinese were hired, although at a lower rate of pay than Americans and other immigrants (Immigration 1). The Central Pacific Railroad had employed over twelve thousand Chinese workers by 1868. They even set a record, laying ten miles of railroad track in twelve hours (Immigration 1). Over twenty-five thousand Chinese immigrants settled in the United States in 1868 and 1869 and eventually obtained citizenship (Cultural 2). The Union Pacific Railroad employed mainly Irish immigrants, many of whom had served in the Civil War. After the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, many new immigrants settled in the western states and territories. Immigrants who came in through immigration stations, such as Ellis Island, used the Transcontinental Railroad to move to new western towns. The railroad advertised with the hope of attracting European, African, and Russian immigrants to populate small western towns along the …show more content…
The railroads were the first to have a corporate organization, labor relations, and government regulation. The necessary structure of the railroad business brought order to the untamed west. Before the railroad, both time and space were estimated. The position of the sun produced an approximate time. For example, “The difference in time between Idaho City and New York is about two hours and forty minutes; between San Francisco and this place about thirty-five minutes” (Schwantes 3). Since trains shared a single track, timekeeping became critical to prevent train collisions. To keep a standard time, the railroad introduced time zones on November 18, 1883 (Schwantes 3). The distance was also estimated before land surveyors, paid by the railroad, came through to measure and draw maps. Keeping a standard width to within an inch between tracks was also important to keep the train from de-railing. However, the railroads began to collude to keep prices high. To combat this collusion, the government formed the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, which was America’s first regulatory agency (Binding
In the book, immigration is indispensably linked to the construction of the transcontinental railroad. For instance, Ambrose writes that the intense need of manual laborers during the railroad construction attracted immigrants mainly the Chinese and the Irish laborers (12). The Central Pacific Railroad (CPR) brought in Chinese laborers in large numbers, while the Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) brought in large number of Irish immigrants. Ambrose also praises the central roles the immigrants played during the building of the transcontinental railroad. For example, he describes that the conclusion of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit in May 1869 was the utmost national achievement that could not go without giving credit and praise to the immigrant laborers (174). Therefore, he recognized their efforts and determinations, which significantly led to the completion of the construction.
The Central Pacific tracks were officially joined to the Union Pacific rails at Promontory Point near Ogden, Utah, on May 10, 1869. There were many eloquent orations on that day but E. B. Crocker was one of the very few to pay any tribute to the role of the Chinese. In a speech at Sacramento he declared: "I wish to call to your minds that the early completion of this railroad we have built has been in large measure due to that poor, despised class of laborers called the Chinese, to the fidelity and industry they have shown."
Many came for gold and job opportunities, believing that their stay would be temporary but it became permanent. The Chinese were originally welcomed to California being thought of as exclaimed by Leland Stanford, president of Central Pacific Railroad, “quiet, peaceable, industrious, economical-ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work” (Takaki 181). It did not take long for nativism and white resentment to settle in though. The Chinese, who started as miners, were taxed heavily; and as profits declined, went to work the railroad under dangerous conditions; and then when that was done, work as farm laborers at low wages, open as laundry as it took little capital and little English, to self-employment. Something to note is that the “Chinese laundryman” was an American phenomenon as laundry work was a women’s occupation in China and one of few occupations open to the Chinese (Takaki 185). Chinese immigrants were barred from naturalized citizenship, put under a status of racial inferiority like blacks and Indians as with “Like blacks, Chinese men were viewed as threats to white racial purity” (188). Then in 1882, due to economic contraction and racism Chinese were banned from entering the U.S. through the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese were targets of racial attacks, even with the enactment of the 1870 Civil Rights Act meaning equal protection under federal law thanks to Chinese merchants lobbying Congress. Chinese tradition and culture as well as U.S. condition and laws limited the migration of women. Due to all of this, Chinese found strength in ethnic solidarity as through the Chinese Six Companies, which is considered a racial project. Thanks to the earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco, the Chinese fought the discriminatory laws by claiming citizenship by birth since the fires
There is one reason Chicago is as big as it is today and that is the fact that it is the largest rail city in the world. The railroad made Chicago what it is today, and although the canal was very important in the history of Chicago the railroads importance out weighs it by far. The canal was important because it was the vision of the first settlers of Chicago to have an all water trade route that would go through Chicago. What those first explorers saw was a way to make a canal so that they could transport goods from the St Lawrence River all the way to the Gulf of Mexico with less cost and with more efficiency. The canal was the reason Chicago was settled in the first place if not for it there might very well not be a city called Chicago. You could argue that the canal was the most important thing in Chicago's history but I think the railroads were much more important. The railroads enabled Chicago to become one of the biggest cities in the world by bringing in different business and all types of goods. Chicago is a very key location to have a railroad-shipping hub. This is because it is centrally located in the United States so goods can be shipped in almost any direction and received in a shorter amount of time. William Butler Ogden was the one who pushed for Chicago to adopt a large rail system and he should be known as the one who made this city boom. St. Louis or another centrally located city could have very well adopted the rail system and they would have reaped all the benefits.
The transcontinental railroad was a 1,800 mile railroad linking Omaha, Missouri with Sacramento, California. This railroad was built through varying environmental conditions including grassy plains, desserts, and mountains such as the Sierra. The railroad revolutionized transportation in the nineteenth century (Galloway 4). The First Transcontinental Railroad was built in the 1860s in order to connect the Eastern and Western coasts of the United States. In the book The Railroads, statistical data describes that “In 1830, 23 miles of railroad track were being operated in the United States; by 1890 that figure had grown to 166,703 miles, as cities and villages were linked across the lan...
The first transcontinental railroad employed over twenty Chinese laborers and as time went on the numbers increased. The Central Pacific Railroad Company saw how beneficial Chinese immigrants would benefit their workforce and before they knew over 50 Chinese workers were employed. The White American workers saw how hard the railroad labor was and were reluctant to take on such hazardous tasks. In addition, railroad work was hard in general, plus management was chaotic, leading to a high attrition rate ( ). The Central Pacific took off around 1864 and Superintendent James Strobridge and Director Charles Crocker both were in align to employ mostly
The growth of agriculture and railroads in Texas and in the United States helped form our economy today. Railroads today pass through a lot of Texas, and even in big cities like Houston or Dallas. Since there are so many farms and open farmland (especially in south and west Texas), railroads can carry the produce and livestock to their destination. James Watt invented the first steam engine in about 1769, and from then on, railroads were a must for transportation, since cars had yet to be invented. Railroads began to be built before the Civil War. It originally took about 6 months to get from the west of the US to the east, but now it only took 7 days. With railroads expanding all across the country, agriculture was affected in a mostly positive way. Now, crops and other goods could be transported by train anywhere in the US, and fast.
The Underground Railroad was an extremely complex organization whose mission was to free slaves from southern states in the mid-19th century. It was a collaborative organization comprised of white homeowners, freed blacks, captive slaves, or anyone else who would help. This vast network was fragile because it was entirely dependent on the absolute discretion of everyone involved. A slave was the legal property of his owner, so attempting escape or aiding a fugitive slave was illegal and dangerous, for both the slave and the abolitionist. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass understands that he can only reveal so many details about his escape from servitude, saying, “I deeply regret the necessity that impels
People immediately began to migrate to the area now known as The Great Plains, and populations in the states along the route began to prosper at record percentages. The original railroad sparked inspiration for other tracks that could branch off of the main line and go to other areas of the country. By the year 1893, there were about four different transcontinental railroads and modifications were made to the original cars, such as a freezer box that was designed to keep crops fresh during the few day voyage. This new improvement also provided the country with several new jobs that were never needed before. All areas such as construction, maintenance, and operation workers were now needed to ensure that things went the way they were supposed to and that the hard work and dedication that went into this six year project did not go to a waste and give the opposite effect than
After the Gold Rush had concluded, Chinese immigrants were needed for employment such as, rail road construction and mining. The immigrants were accepted because they were hard workers. According to Schaefer (2015),
The economy would also blossom during this expansion. First, the Manifest Destiny included extremely inexpensive land for sale in the west. In some cases it was free since it was government land, and they passed things like the Homestead Act to encourage westward settlements. With so many people taking part in horizontal mobility by moving west, it gave the economy a chance to expand commerce. We would do this by building ports and increasing trade with countries in the Pacific. The economy also got a kick when there were gold or silver rushes in the west. These occurred in Denver, Colorado (1859), Virginia City, Nevada (1859), Last Chance Gulch (1861), and in the Black Hills of the Dakotas (1875). All of these sporadic improvements of the economy helped us grow into a big super power.New inspirations entered the art world at this time too. Many artists tried to capture the image of Manifest Destiny by illustrating families traveling west.
in large groups on the West Coast between 1850s and 1860s to work in the gold mines and railroads. They encountered a very strong opposition violent as riots and physical attacks forced them out of the gold mines (citation needed). The Central Pacific railroad hired thousands.But after the line was finished in 1869 they were hounded out of many railroad towns in states such as Wyoming and Nevada. “Most wound up in Chinatowns or areas of large cities which the police largely ignored. The Chinese were further alleged to be "coolies" and were said to be not suitable for becoming independent thoughtful voters because of their control by tongs. “The same negative reception hit the Asians who migrated to Mexico and Canada”.
The transcontinental railroad would eventually become a symbol of much-needed unity, repairing the sectionalism that had once divided the nation during the Civil War. The construction of the transcontinental railroad was also an extension of the transportation revolution. Once commodities such as gold were found in the western half of America, many individuals decided to move themselves and their families out west in search of opportunity. Not only did the railroad help to transport people, but it also it allowed for goods to be delivered from companies in the east. In the end, the American transcontinental railroad created a national market, enabling mass production, and stimulated industry, while greatly impacting American society through stimulated immigration and urbanization.
During the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad, the Chinese workers possessed undefeatable courage which helped them to overcome incredible obstacles and contribute to the successful construction of the railroad project. In 1864, the railroad company was stopped by the difficult site of Bloomer Cut near Auburn, California. This location was consisted with steep terrain which was impossible for train to pass through without geological fixation. However, the only way to level the terrain was using picks, shovels and black powder which was time consuming and dangerous. According to Stanford University, “This was the first major engineering challenge for the Railroad, and it was dangerous works.” After roughly a year of tremendous effort, the bloomer cut railroad site was completed by Chinese workers. On the other hand, the site of Cape Horn was also one of the most challenging obstacles that the Chinese workers accomplished with their amazing courage and power. In the summer of 1865, the railroad construction of Cape Horn started. The goal of this project was to plant railroad on Sierra Nevada terrain that is 1300 feet above Colfax, which initiated an enormous difficulty for these Chinese working soldiers. Meanwhile, workers had to clear difficult obstacles such as trees, rocks, and stumps. Moreover, the black powder was used to clear rocks and form a ledge which dramatically elevated the risk of death. According to Sierra Nevada Geotourism, “Construction took a year, and more than 300 Chinese workers fell to their death in the process.” Also, there was a rumor of Chinese workers being lowered down the steep cliff with basket connected to fragile rope to help construct the railroad; their selfless courage helped them to tackle these dangerous operation. As a result, the
The Underground Railroad despite occurring centuries ago continues to be an “enduring and popular thread in the fabric of America’s national historical memory” as Bright puts it. Throughout history, thousands of slaves managed to escape the clutches of slavery by using a system meant to liberate. In Colson Whitehead’s novel, The Underground Railroad, he manages to blend slave narrative and history creating a book that goes beyond literary or historical fiction. Whitehead based his book off a question, “what if the Underground Railroad was a real railroad?” The story follows two runaway slaves, Cora and Caesar, who are pursued by the relentless slave catcher Ridgeway. Their journey on the railroad takes them to new and unfamiliar locations,