When Railroads Were New (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from When Railroads Were New Concerning certain aspects of the railroad, such as its finance, both high and ordinary, its construction and operation from a technical viewpoint, its moral turpitude and its predilection for manslaughter, whole libraries have been published. The fact that more libraries are constantly being added indicates a sustained interest in the subject which is not at all surprising, considering how intimately the railroad enters into the life of everybody, from the hosts who look directly to it for their bread, to the farmer and the manufacturer whose products it takes to market, the baby who depends upon it to bring the daily supply for his bottle, and the millionaire who expects it to furnish him an income. What is surprising is that the general reader might search in vain throughout the wilderness of words for any satisfactory account of how the railroad came to America; of how Smith and Jones and Robinson quarreled first about what a railroad was, then about its desirability, then about how to build and run it; how they struggled with poverty, ignorance, and other inevitable obstacles, blundered and struggled on again until they had at last developed a method of transportation that, measured by its influence in accelerating the march of Progress, is the greatest achievement in the annals of the race. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historica