San Francisco Chronicle Book Review (front page), Nov. 14, 1999
William T. Vollmann
"Empire Express," an extremely thorough history of the competition
between the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific railroad companies,
is rich with scandal, tragedy and visionary characters. In it, David
Haward Bain brings alive a freeróthat is, more
ruthlessóera of homegrown capitalism, when hardly anybody
worried about little things like ecocide or conflict of interest.
We read of Collis P. Huntington, who started out as a hardware
salesman, went to Washington with a satchel full of cash, bought
congressmen, got the job done, burned all the incriminating ledgers
just in time and died rich. Bain ventures to hope that such houses of
culture as the San marino library founded by Huntingtonís
nephew might have succeeded in "lowering the temperature being
applied to the souls of the departed empire-builders." Those of us
who love the railroadsóor, for that matter, my grandfather,
who made his living as a machinist for the Union Pacificómight
allow the Huntingtons a few more cartloads of ice cubes.
For what an achievement was that Empire Express! This book follows
its career from the days of railroad dreamers such as "Crazy Ted"
Jujdah, who went tramping through the Sierras, searching for the
perfect grade and the practical pass, to the days of the moguls, the
Huntingtons who shouldered the Judahs asideóand ended up under
investigation for corruption. (A few wrists got slapped.)
We also meet the brave Chinese laborers who hung over precipices
in handmade baskets planting explosive charges, the "can do"
efficiency experts such as Jack Casementóthe Union
Pacificís "little general"ówho got his Irishmen,
Mormons and demobilized Civil War veterans to lay more track per day
than anybody ever before, and the whores, gamblers and outlaws who
rushed by boxcar to every major railhead, building temporary flimflam
towns of vice which generated the expression "hell on wheels." And
every now and then we glimpse the Plains Indians, whose lifeways were
doomed by the Empire Express.
I, for one, cannot help longing for the olds days of the plains.
Once at the Library of Congress I happened to find a photograph of a
Sioux encampment, and it awed me to see tepees all the way to the
immensely distant horizon. But without the rialroad and its
aftermathóthe constellation of gas stations and
airportsóI, California-born, could never have contemplated
that three-day jaunt to Washington.
What the Empire Express rapidly planted was that American
monoculture that makes most of us watch the same television programs
from coast to coast. Was the railroad "worth it"? The buffalo herds
and the Indian women whose genitals got cut out for souvenirs
probably didnít think so. But now, who can now imagine our two
coasts unlinked?
Much of the fascination of "Empire Express" derives from
Bainís helping us to do precisely that. It is strange, indeed
almost eerie, to realize that the Nebraska plains, the Nevada deserts
and the California mountains were exotic and dangerous not very long
ago. Locomotives raced against galloping Indians. Usually they won
the race, but every now and then some warriors might derail them and
scalp a few railroad men.
In the Sierras, where only a few years earlier the snowbound
Donner party had been forced into cannibalism, snow continued to dog
chinese farmhands in the employ of the Central Pacific. Avalanches
engulfed their cabins and the graded declivities on which they were
supposed to lay track, but they built snow tunnels and worked on.
Bain often succeeds in describing all this vividly.
Although he has obviously stood on many of the landscapes about
which he writes, Bain is first and foremost an archivist, and his
descriptions of the shady business deals, the quick-rotting railroad
ties, the lies and tricky lobbying all delightfully appall the
reader.
Bain is a graceful stylist, gifted with empathy for the many mores and cultures involved in this story. This long and detailed book deserves both to be taught in American history classes and to be read for fun. I wish it were even longer.