American Railroad Politics, 1914–1920

K. Austin KerrHistory
American Railroad Politics, 1914–1920

Author: K. Austin Kerr

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

ISBN: 9780822975694

Category: History

Page: 260

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This book examines the concern of a variety of interest groups with federal policy toward railroads, concentrating on the crucial years during World War I when the federal government ran the industry, and prior to the passage of the Transportation Act of 1920. Through extensive archival research, James A. Kerr describes the political dealings among those involved in railroad-government relations: labor leaders; shippers; railroad executives; and financiers; and analyzes the motivations that influenced policymaking.

Railroads and American Law

James W. Ely, Jr.Law
Railroads and American Law

Author: James W. Ely, Jr.

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

ISBN: 9780700611447

Category: Law

Page: 376

View: 551

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No enterprise is so seductive as a railroad for the influence it exerts, the power it gives, and the hope of gain it offers.—Poor's Manual of Railroads (1900) At its peak, the railroad was the Internet of its day in its transformative impact on American life and law. A harbinger and promoter of economic empire, it was also the icon of a technological revolution that accelerated national expansion and in the process transformed our legal system. James W. Ely Jr., in the first comprehensive legal history of the rail industry, shows that the two institutions-the railroad and American law-had a profound influence on each other. Ely chronicles how "America's first big business" impelled the creation of a vast array of new laws in a country where long-distance internal transport had previously been limited to canals and turnpikes. Railroads, the first major industry to experience extensive regulation, brought about significant legal innovations governing interstate commerce, eminent domain, private property, labor relations, and much more. Much of this development was originally designed to serve the interests of the railroads themselves but gradually came to contest and control the industry's power and exploitative tendencies. As Ely reveals, despite its great promise and potential as an engine of prosperity and uniter of far-flung regions, the railroad was not universally admired. Railroads uprooted people, threatened local autonomy, and posed dangers to employees and the public alike-situations with unprecedented legal ramifications. Ely explores the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which those ramifications played out, as railroads crossed state lines and knitted together a diverse nation with thousands of miles of iron rail. Epic in its scope, Railroads and American Law makes a complex subject accessible to a wide range of readers, from legal historians to railroad buffs, and shows the many ways in which a powerful industry brought change and innovation to America.

The Oxford Handbook of American Political History

Paula BakerBiography & Autobiography
The Oxford Handbook of American Political History

Author: Paula Baker

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 9780199341788

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 569

View: 813

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"American political history, like military history, has never lost a popular audience. If anything, the appetite for books dealing with the nation's founding, its presidents, and elections has grown in recent years. Written by historians, academics in other fields, independent writers, and journalists, some of these books have sold very well. A few jumped from the printed page to film and theater. Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton inspired a hit Broadway musical. Though some films depicting presidents spun fanciful stories-at least one hopes no teachers had to correct student misconceptions about Abraham Lincoln dispatching vampires-others had a stronger commitment to the historical record. Since 2000, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush have been the focus of films with various levels of attentiveness to historical scholarship and box-office appeal. Teachers could do worse than Charlie Wilson's War as a tool for illustrating how Congress works. Even the more obscure and distant historical figures have had their turn: James A. Garfield's truncated presidency is the subject of a popular book and documentary"--

Building Gotham

Keith D. RevellArchitecture
Building Gotham

Author: Keith D. Revell

Publisher: JHU Press

ISBN: 0801882060

Category: Architecture

Page: 348

View: 409

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These issues of city-building and institutional change involved more than the familiar push and pull of interest groups or battles between bosses, reformers, immigrants, and natives. Revell explores the ways in which technical values - a distinctive civic culture of expertise - helped to reshape ideas of community, generate new centers of public authority, and change the physical landscape of New York City."--Jacket.

Land and Liberty

Christopher William EnglandBusiness & Economics
Land and Liberty

Author: Christopher William England

Publisher: JHU Press

ISBN: 9781421445403

Category: Business & Economics

Page: 360

View: 937

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"This work is a comprehensive treatment of the single-tax movement. The author studied a network of well-connected political entrepreneurs committed to Henry George's plan to effectively nationalize land through a confiscatory tax in the early twentieth century in the United States"--

Regulating a New Economy

Morton KellerBusiness & Economics
Regulating a New Economy

Author: Morton Keller

Publisher: Harvard University Press

ISBN: 0674753623

Category: Business & Economics

Page: 324

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Morton Keller, a leading scholar of twentieth-century American history, describes the complex interplay between rapid economic change and regulatory policy. In its portrait of the response of American politics and law to a changing economy, this book provides a fresh understanding of emerging public policy for a modern nation.

Crossroads of a Continent

Peter A. HansenTransportation
Crossroads of a Continent

Author: Peter A. Hansen

Publisher: Indiana University Press

ISBN: 9780253062383

Category: Transportation

Page: 394

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Crossroads of a Continent: Missouri Railroads, 1851-1921 tells the story of the state's railroads and their vital role in American history. Missouri and St. Louis, its largest city, are strategically located within the American Heartland. On July 4, 1851, when the Pacific Railroad of Missouri began construction in St. Louis, the city took its first step to becoming a major hub for railroads. By the 1920s, the state was crisscrossed with railways reaching toward all points of the compass. Authors Peter A. Hansen, Don L. Hofsommer, and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes explore the history of Missouri railroads through personal, absorbing tales of the cutthroat competition between cities and between railroads that meant the difference between prosperity and obscurity, the ambitions and dreams of visionaries Fred Harvey and Arthur Stilwell, and the country's excitement over the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 color images of historical railway ephemera, Crossroads of a Continent is an engaging history of key American railroads and of Missouri's critical contribution to the American story.

Prophets of Regulation

Thomas K. McCrawBiography & Autobiography
Prophets of Regulation

Author: Thomas K. McCraw

Publisher: Harvard University Press

ISBN: 0674040767

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 420

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"There is properly no history, only biography," Emerson remarked, and in this ingenious book Thomas McGraw unfolds the history of four powerful men: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, and Alfred E. Kahn. The absorbing stories he tells make this a book that will appeal across a wide spectrum of academic disciplines and to all readers interested in history, biography, and Americana.

Regulating Railroad Innovation

Steven W. UsselmanBusiness & Economics
Regulating Railroad Innovation

Author: Steven W. Usselman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9780521806367

Category: Business & Economics

Page: 417

View: 794

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Efforts to create and mould new technologies have been a central, recurrent feature of the American experience since at least the time of the Revolution. In Regulating Railroad Innovation, historian Steven Usselman brings this neglected aspect of American history to light. For nearly a century, railroad technology persistently posed novel challenges for Americans, prompting them to re-examine their most cherished institutions and beliefs. Business managers, inventors, consumers, and politicians all strained to contain the forces of innovation and to channel technical change toward the ends they desired. Moving through time from the first experimental lines through the polished but troubled railroad machines of the early twentieth century, Usselman examines diverse forums ranging from legislatures, and evolving corporate bureaucracies to laboratories, engineering societies, and world's fairs. In the process, his book situates technology within the dynamic history of an emergent industrial nation and elucidates its enduring place in American society.