T
he United States experienced one of the most rapid
and thorough economic transformations in modern
history after the Civil War. Industrialization was
characterized by boom-and-bust cycles that affected
urban and rural Americans alike. Though we commonly date
this economic upheaval to the 1870s, in fact industrialization
was accelerated by the exigencies of the war itself. Ironically,
while the Civil War destroyed much of the economic capacity
of the South, it catalyzed industrialization in the Northern
states. The logistical demands of the Union war effort refined
existing technologies such as the telegraph, which delivered
intelligence to the military and news to the home front.
Lucrative defense contracts expanded the nation’s economic
capacity, while the wartime mobilization of resources and
capital ushered in a system of large-scale production that
demanded a steady supply of inexpensive and relatively
unskilled labor. By the end of the century, most Americans
lived in urban areas and worked for wages.
At the center of this economic revolution were the
railroads. Railroad track mileage tripled between 1860
and 1880, and then tripled again by 1920. This astounding
growth brought railroad companies unprecedented power
and influence. Initially hailed as technological wonders, the
railroads provoked scorn and rage across the country by the
1870s, and for good reason. They benefited disproportionately
from federal subsidies, especially the enormous land grants
made to stimulate transcontinental rail construction. They
fueled growth in some years, but sparked financial ruin in
others. As feats of engineering, a mode of transportation, an
economic force, and sources of corruption, railroads were
both a cause and a consequence of industrialization.
More generally, this chapter explores the modernization
of American society from the end of Reconstruction to the
eve of World War I. We begin with maps designed to unearth
one of the raw materials of industrialization: coal. The earliest
geological map of Virginia on page 152 was part of a concerted
effort by state leaders to rebuild the economy after the Civil
War. Over the next two decades, coal mining drew Kentucky
and the Virginias into an international web of economic
relationships that fundamentally changed the lives of its
people. All of this hinged on the construction of railroads,
for without transportation—which required significantcapital—the coal of Appalachia was of little value (page 154).
The outsized influence of the railroads was felt everywhere.
When these corporations announced yet another round of
wage cuts in the summer of 1877, angry workers in West
Virginia organized a strike that quickly spread widely along
the country’s rail routes. In Pittsburgh, the strike culminated
in a standoff between Pennsylvania Railroad workers and the
state militia. Ultimately the militia fired on the large crowd of
strikers, killing over twenty and driving the strikers to destroy
train cars, tracks, and the roundhouse of the nation’s largest
private company. As strikes consumed industry, farmers
similarly protested a system that left them at the mercy of
a fluctuating world market. This discontent coalesced in a
populist movement that advocated—among other things—
public ownership of the railroads. In the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, both farmers and industrial workers
revolted against corporations that had not even existed a
generation earlier.
The power of the railroads even extended to the experience
of time. In 1883 the major railroads lobbied the federal
government to create four standard time zones, which in
turn facilitated consistent train schedules. Perhaps most
contentious was the sway that the transcontinental railroads
held over land and transportation in the West. The 1883
political broadside on page 158 captures the anger against the
Northern Pacific Railroad, branded by the Democratic Party as
a “soulless corporation” that controlled not just Washington
Territory, but the entire Republican Party. Throughout the late
nineteenth century, the two parties jockeyed for the upper
hand by trading accusations of corruption in an era of high
voter turnout and exceptionally competitive elections. That
political landscape is captured by the first “red and blue”
map of American electoral politics on page 156. This high
turnout produced political stalemate and a series of one-term
presidents, two of whom failed to win the popular vote.
Industrialization also fueled the growth of American
cities, and maps were both tools and weapons in this era of
unprecedented urbanization. The maps on pages 164, 166,
and 168 reflect the contemporary enthusiasm for cartography
as an instrument of urban reform. Political leaders in San
Francisco designed sensationalistic maps to control the
Chinese population. Florence Kelley and Agnes HolbrookIndustrialization and Its Discontents