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Allene Symons
Dreamers and dirty dealers abound in Bain's engrossing account of
the saga of what, in a way, was the Internet of its time: the
2,400-mile transcontinental railroad. The railroad aroused the
national imagination, created a billionaires club, opened new
frontiers and expanded global possibilities. Sounds familiar, doesn't
it?
At the heart of the book is the win-at-any-cost competition
between the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific.
Told in the context of three turbulent decades from 1843 to 1873,
"Empire Express" appears daunting at more than 700 extensively
researched pages. But Bain portrays key characters and events in a
way that makes each chapter a fascinating story on its own.
At the heart of the book is a race: the win-at-any-cost
competition between two companies, the Central Pacific Railroad
(blasting and tunneling its way east from Sacramento) and the Union
Pacific (grading and laying track west across equally challenging
terrain, starting from Omaha).
Set against the drama of the two railroad companies heading toward
convergence, Bain portrays the colossal project largely from the
perspective of the pivotal players, visionaries such as Asa Whitney,
a Napoleon look-alike who foresaw a railway across the nation to
"annihilate the distance" around the Cape of Good Hope so as to
expedite his journeys to Canton and expand Sino-American
commerce.
Whitney's idea was ridiculed by the New York Herald, and Bain
convincingly shows why. It was not only thought an impossible
engineering feat to cross the steep Sierra Nevada mountains but,
coming from the other direction, the proposed transcontinental line
had to cross the lands of Native American tribes, who were
understandably hostile after decades of broken treaties and attacks
by the U.S. Army.
One of the most sympathetic characters in Bain's account is civil
engineer Theodore Judah, whose correspondence with his feisty young
wife provides a private glimpse into the era. An ambitious and
tenacious young man, Judah saw the proposed rail project as a chance
to be part of a historic opportunity and to prove his talent for
devising innovative solutions. But his skill and enthusiasm, and his
wife's unflagging support, were not enough to offset his
naiveté about political realities. Eventually his hopes were
dashed by investors - the clique of Collis Huntington, Leland
Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins - squabbling over the
spoils
Despite unscrupulous dealings and a financial scandal, the railroad's two lines finally converged at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, with the insertion of a golden spike into a pre-drilled hole, a symbolic act that set off a national celebration. Newspapers, ministers and politicians declared that a new American century was born. But as Bain points in this graceful account, it was accomplished at "unimaginable cost, and only barely foreseeable benefit."