462area needed to import massive amounts of grain—milled
wheat and corn—to feed its people. The map also indicates that
the main grain-growing regions were in the Midwest, the north-
ern plains, and the South. The nation’s basic economic geogra-
phy presumed a transportation system to ship grain from the
Midwest and South to the cities of the industrial Northeast.
By 1890, the map also suggests that the nation’s railway
system served this purpose. Railroads linked the major wheat
markets of the upper Great Plains (principally Minneapolis and
Duluth) and corn markets of the central Midwest (Chicago,
St. Louis, and Kansas City) to the industrial cities of Ohio and
Pennsylvania and the urban region along the Atlantic coast
extending from Washington DC to Maine. The dense web of
competing railway lines should have kept freight charges low,
and it often did. Attempts to “pool” the available traffic and fix
high rates usually collapsed. One reason the railways were the
focus of much criticism was their centrality to the economy.
But in 1964 in Railroads and American
Economic Growth, economic historian Robert
Fogel challenged the assumption that the
late nineteenth-century rail system was
“indispensable” to economic growth. He
asserted that if the nation had instead
invested in building more canals and dredg-
ing more rivers, a water-based transporta-
tion system could have functioned nearly as
effectively as the railways.
Counterfactual premises are often used
by historians to examine the validity of
causal statements. In this instance, Fogel
argued that, in the absence of railroads, the
economy still would have grown rapidly.
The map entitled “A Hypothetical Water-
Based Transportation System, 1890” shows
how the nation’s navigable rivers, supple-
mented by existing and new canals, could
have collected cereals from agricultural
regions and moved them to eastern markets.
This map also suggests how a water-based
transportation system would have altered
the relationship among regions. In the
absence of the railroads, the dry upper Great
Plains would have remained nearly undevel-
oped, while commercial agriculture would
have been concentrated in the Mississippi,
Ohio, and Missouri River valleys, and along
the rivers that empty into the Gulf of Mexico
and the Atlantic seaboard. The major centers
of grain shipment would have been New
Orleans, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis, and
Charleston. Minneapolis, Duluth, Chicago,
and Kansas City would not have become
major economic centers.I
n 1891 financier Sidney Dillon credited the railroads for the
nation’s impressive economic growth during the previous
half century. Without them, he claimed, most of the nation’s
natural resources would have remained untouched, civiliza-
tion would have “crept slowly” on, and the immense spaces
from the Appalachians to the Pacific would have remained
“an unknown and unproductive wilderness.”
That the railroads were indispensable to the nation’s
economy during the nineteenth century has long been a
commonplace of historical writing. One of the main reasons
for it is summarized in the accompanying map,“The Railroads:
Moving Agricultural Products to Eastern Markets, 1890.”
This map shows that the urban areas of the nation, with a
population density of over ninety people per square mile
(shaded in blue), were chiefly located in New England, the
Middle Atlantic seaboard, and the industrial regions surround-
ing Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago. ThisMAPPING THE PAST
Were the Railroads
Indispensable?
ATLANTICOCEANL.Sup
eriorL.Mi
ch
iganL.H
uro
nL.ErieL.
OntarioCANADABostonNew York
Philadelphia
WashingtonBuffalo
DetroitDuluthMinneapolisChicagoKansas City St Louis
Cleveland
PittsburghCincinnatiSavannahOver 90 people per sq mile
Wheat growing
Corn growing
RailroadWheat
CornShipment of grain, 1890,
In thousand tons:
3450
3801500The Railroads: Moving Agricultural Products to Eastern Markets, 1890The railroad web
links the grain-producing regions of the Midwest with the population centers of the Northeast.