caning of charles sumner. >> the.com bubble of the late 1990's. this program is about an hour. >> good evening, and welcome to tonight's meeting. tonight program is being held in association with the california

historical society. it is my pleasure to introduce our distinguished guests, richard white, also professor of history at stanford university and codirector for the american west. and the author of the new book "railroaded: transcontinental and the makings of modern america." he has been at stanford since 19 98. he gives he taught at the university of utah and university of washington, where he took his phd. richard white is widely regarded as the leading scholar in three distinct but related fields, the history of the american west environmental history, and native american history. he has been the recipient of the

macarthur genius award and author of several notable works including the title it's your misfortune, none of my own. a general sweeping comprehensive history of the american west. a book entitled the middle ground indian empires that are in the great lakes region. also published in 1991. one of my favorites, the organic machine, the remaking of the colombian river. we now have his new book, transcontinental's and the making of modern america. the book has been reviewed in the boston globe just this last weekend, where it was described as a scathing and wonderful new book. i think the full implications are likely to be clear as we

proceed with this discussion. the book is not the classic story about building the transcontinental railroad. the story essentially begins when the railroads are virtually finished and his history is the history of how they were operated in the first 30 years of their existence and the last decade of the 19th century. this is not another epic saga of building the road but how the federal transcontinental line operated. richard, you have entered a field of study. names that may not be familiar to this audience. they studied railroads as precursors to the american economy and the modern corporation. your view is a little different

and i hope we will get to that. to begin maybe you can say something given how your issues have had to do with the west and native americans. how did your interest in railroads grow out of your previous scholarly work? or maybe it grew out of some other source altogether. richard: i wanted to get back to the american west. what i wanted was a subject that would allow me to look at the entire 20th century west also at the time i wondered why historians did not write about corporations. i turned to railroads. it was fairly easy. i thought i would start looking

at the railroads. i realize there are real roads in canada, railroads and mexico. initially i thought this was going to be pretty easy. i will look at how they operate. what i found out is it is one big railroad. whether they are in mexico or canada, whether they are in the united states, capital comes from the same place the technology comes from the same place. it is really an interlock system. at this point i realized i did not know what i was talking about and this became very different than the one i set out to right. i started out thinking these are going to be powerful efficient corporations.

i did find the birth of modernity. it is just not what i expected to find. mine has as much to do with failure. >> you conduct a running argument. he is most well-known for the phrase creative destruction, the history of capitalism and modern economies it is all about creative instruction. you want to tell us a little bit about your regard for the way you have taken him on? richard: what i do see is creative destruction taking place over the west.

what capitalism does is it is a revolutionary system and it has to destroy the old to bring in the new. where i began to differ is that in his account things always turn out well. entrepreneur as always, in fact, if they fail there are eliminated. they succeed they are defective britney in the new world. well, by entrepreneurs fail. they also failed and make a whole lot of money. that became the puzzle for me as i went on. i agreed. i didn't see the same results coming out of it, and i really wanted to understand why, how this process really worked. by virtually every railroader like that i ended up going bankrupt. many go bankrupt not once, but twice. some of the high achievers go bankrupt three times.

the widely hated and they cause all kinds of political, social environmental problems. the men who run them grow immensely well. that became a problem. that became the central puzzle of the book. how exactly does this system work? because if you fail your supposed to bear the burden of your failure. failed by any usual measure, but they did very well for themselves, and that is the strain that runs throughout the book. what i end up doing, it is about growth, but this is really down growth. this is growth were all kinds of things happen that probably would have been better if they didn't happen. sometimes i have this sense that it wasn't working in the north american west, watching the soviets would to your plan. it's not that this doesn't do things, but in hindsight it did not seem of very good idea.

>> that only the result of all this activity, but in the same since year-end determine environmental catastrophe. >> what i started to do, i started to try to isolate things that would not have happened, at least the way they did without the building a transcontinental railroads. i'll talk a little bit about the distinction i make about transcontinental. and the first one is the great plains. well, what happens in the great plains between the 1860's when the first row penetrated in the 1890's. well, the first thing is the demise of the bison which simply is not that the roads are fully responsible for the demise of the bison herd, but the final cut is a result of road-building. you could not get them out without ro ro tracks. so they unintentionally bring about the new distinction. it doesn't bother people very much at the time because you

have to replace them with cal. all kinds of cattle to go wind. cattle thrive carlisle. they thrived until the 1870's fee, 1880's. then you have a series of catastrophic winters on planes that are heavily overgrazed and you get the virtual collapse of the cattle industry almost overnight. bankruptcy's, and even hardened ranchers who said they never wanted to look at another cowboy again after they had seen the results of those winters. after that what you get is we farmers. the problem is they move on the plains. good years, badgers, it is equally catastrophic. it's time they dump large amounts of wheat. the price is falling. and then when draft becomes many of them. so what you look at is the railroad brings development. first of all, small-scale bison herd. then you have the cattle industry.

then you have it with wheat farming. all of the men by the 1890's, catastrophe, environmental damage, and political turmoil. >> there is another native for indigenous population on the planes that is also impacted by the railroads. of course i am referring to native americans. i know you're talking about next weekend presidio, but i wonder if you might give us a little preview of what you're going to say then and summarize your views about what the transcontinental lines did to the native american population ? >> i have to be very careful when i say this. what i will say, though i might have to retreat a little bit railroads were probably the worst thing that happened to the indian people. to the great basin. i hesitate because so many bad things happened. it is hard to single out the

roads. but i am talking about is if you look at how american populations, a takes americans at the start of jamestown, to a half centuries to get a little more than halfway across. for all practical purposes, is beyond the river. it will take generation to move the rest of the way. you have for indian people to the rest, no time to adjust. everything happens virtually overnight. railroads manage to end the treaty system. the corrupt the treaty system which is correct enough to begin with. finally the corrupted in such a way that congress aggregate's the treaty system and still have an agreement. the railroads also have a problem. the transcontinental into subsidies for two reasons. the first is they have to secure california. the problem with that is the

civil war is over in 1865, and they have not release started building the railroad. so you don't really, you can use the civil war as an excuse. what is substituted is the real road is the way. and in fact, they are. perfectly true. they bring about the rapid subjugation of indians by the ability to move troops, but my argument would be without the railroads, there would have been no need to fight those forced to begin with. the sylmar web taken place much more gradually, and in the end much of the american west would look a lot more like the navajo reservation and the pine resin -- pine ridge reservation. the kind of development that takes place very quickly could have been postponed and coming back, it would have cost the united states little, gained the indians much. i'm not arguing that indians would become subjugated by the united states. i'm talking of when and where it happens, the speed, and how it happens. >> one of the audience asked the question, your description of roads feeling as owners profit

its outsell its recent bank failures. -- it sounds similar to recent bank failures. do you agree? let me just expand a little bit by sharing with the audience here up passage from your book where you offer a kind of summary judgment of what the story is you have been telling. he is your characterization of the railroads at the end of the day. overbuilt, prone to bankruptcy and receivership, politically correct, environmentally harmful, and financially wasteful. these corporations nonetheless help create a world where private success often came from lock, fortune, timing, and state intervention. profit arose more from financial markets and insider contracts and from successfully selling transportation. now, before you answer want to remind you of the subtitle of your book which underlies the question that i read from the audience. you're talking about the transcontinental syria as some kind of precursors of modern

america, some kind of harbinger of modernity in your story. so is it, in fact, a fact that the observation of the current economic and financial scene was part of your motivation? >> well, this book did 12 years. many of the disasters this seem so parallel had not taken place as i was writing this book. the other thing is, on as it may sound, finding some of these guys. it doesn't sound like it is from that. so i read this into places. i wrote it in seattle, and then i wrote it in palo alto. eroded when the beginnings of things like and ron, the dot com bust, finally the financial crisis which comes toward the end of the book. and then began to realize there were certain parallels here.

for business history. i learned a lot about it. but a very naive idea that the way people made money from corporations is the corporations made money selling subsidies. -- selling something. then they divided up among the stockholders. but i hit a whole bunch of corporations that lost money. the stockholders very often got riddled. yet the people who had controlled the corporations made that fortune. and so i began to see, especially among the dot com is. all of the companies which seemed to sell nothing. i was trying to sell a house of the same time in silicon valley. i knew anybody who walked in

every time i saw anybody, i just walked out. i could not buy a house. but they were making huge amounts of money. all of those companies, the financial crisis was the same thing. a catastrophe. they have to be bailed out. but the banks themselves suffer very little. they do quite well. of began to think, this isn't something that is late 20th-century. in a weird way the late 20th century and the earliest 21st century seem to be a lot like the 19th century. everything seemed to be like the 19th century. the dangers for historians, oh my. i read about the past. people who live there were not like us. in many ways their differences. clearly the kinds of structural things, the kind of mundanity it really used to was already beginning to emerge for the first corporation in the american west that is first being settled. all very kinds of entanglements with washington, all the kinds of financial market, all the kinds of chicanery that we became all too familiar with. these guys are doing is simpler,

with much the same thing. >> ask a question that may be takes you quite a little bit beyond the boundaries of your own book, your own research and writing. there is a lot of history between the 19th century and now. though our own age may have some similarities to this, a lot of things have intervened. for example, the creation of the interstate commerce commission in the 1890's to try to bring some order to the railroad industry through federal government regulation and a series of other government initiatives to bring order to various marketplaces over the course of the late 1910 through the 20th century. the new deal would be one great moment. so what is there story? today correct some of the evils and problems ec in the 19th century? how we have let our guard down again? is this one continuous story of corruption and malfeasance from the 1860's for? >> you, john. the late 20th century, late 19th century is similar. that doesn't mean everything in between.

one of the things i noticed. there is a chart in the book fermenting this economic historian that started speculate per-capita income. i went into the rest thinking, say what you will, which is the usual thing to say what you will. there were rising standards of living all over the next states. well, actually, there weren't. indeed, they dropped from 87 to 1880. the job until 1900. and the progressives, if any of you follow this literature professional historians have been really hard. you probably should let the public. that is when per-capita income for individuals in the united states decided to rise. and they will continue to rise all the way through, as david says, the new deal, world war ii. in a you and they stagnate when

and and they stagnate when we began to get the kind of things that i'm seeing here. so there is a long. one of the things i say, most of the reviews so far stressed a you critical element. but one of the things i try to bring out is the gilded age, late 19th century was also a major reform. and in the 20th century many of those reforms worked. it's not that these things done manageable. is not that people can't take some control over them. and so i really do, you know not a happy face historian and never will be. it isn't going to happen, but i really do try to point out from the limits of reform in the late 19th century, it does achieve many things that show up in the 20th-century. people ignore the fact. and so many of them come out of opposition to the railroad. >> so, richard, someone in the audience asked the following

question, what was the biggest challenge you encountered in researching this book? in other words, when did you know you had to stop doing research? i assume you could have continued for years. in the course of your response you buy what to tell us a little something about your own research and writing habits. right at night or in the morning of the middle of the day? research assistants? >> usually i don't use research assistance. i/o virtually all my riding habits to my children when their small. the only time i could never write was to get up very early in the morning before they were up. i set a pattern of writing very early in the morning and helping get the kids riding for school. late at night and not much good.

i can read, but i really can't write off. much of the book will be written in the pre-dawn hours as i become very fond. a habit which is largely due to my children, but it is one that has served me well. great debt of gratitude. i guess i never expressed to them that way. and so that became a habit. the late 19th century. an all-out of it. i go into the archives. when i really want to do is get to know people. many other historians. they know what i mean. otherwise is the same kind estrange. the people i write about are more real to me than most of the people i see on the streets every day. this is something that scares my wife. she has gotten used to it after all these years. it really is true. once you begin to do when you know you know this is when you get through a situation and you and can't predict what they're going to do and they do it. at that point you think, okay, i really have reached some kind of understanding. much of the research is

technical. i technical. the core piece of research is i i read other people's mail. the thing i like to get these guys is i really came to respect the business letters. to the point, not long, has to be to see. goes right there. i can't, guys honest, but i would call them frank. they say things that i couldn't believe there were saying until i come to the bottom of the letter in this is destroy this letter, burn this letter. it's those a lot of the 19th century. so when the atoms in the archives that are clearly and burned and then destroyed. big guy they didn't have a tree or anything in the 19th century. they leave it for me to read. so skating. most of what i do is "what they say about each other. they really do come to dislike each other a great deal. then i have to organize it by

corporations. you can literally go on forever. when the yield of anything new really began to diminish, at that point it was time to stop. the of years is a long, long time. >> this is, i must say a prodigiously researched book. the narrative is truly phenomenal. very admirable. richard, he referred to the principles that appear in your story. kind of a grudging thomas for them. you enter into this very, very controversial area of corruption and tucker of their work. i am reminded of things that mark twain said, perhaps, in the famous novel he did the charlie, the gilded age. america has no native criminal class, except for the united

states congress. i think another one was i'm once met a congressman who was in so be. why do i repeat myself? and there is more than little of that flavor in your book. maybe you want to sales something about what you mean by corruption, a word that appears is not on every page, certainly with high-frequency. his notion of corruption, i think, was the corruption of the body of politics, politicians are for sale, the definition of an honest congressman was on a was when he was what he would stay bought. it was the corruption of the political realm in particular. you have some of that on your mind, but as i read, you have an even broader definition of corruption. something about the nature of corruption. >> quite complicated. i will start simply. what i mean by corruption

basically is something very, very simple. a branch staff from there. i met in the exchange a public good for private favors. and that became the kind of thing. railroads to do favors for congressman. congressman went scranton charters, grant them subsidies grant them laws that help them against rivals, all of these things. essentially -- and this is what americans most feared. this is still years after the civil war, this still a jeffersonian element. the republicans going to fall because the main fact, private interests will take over. and the corporation, as they saw

it, was going to be the engine that drove all of this. now, that does happen. but i argue in the book is something more subtle really happens. the corporation was in anticipating running the united states. the corporation was interested in taking over politics. all these guys wanted to do was make some money. and so they really had limited ambitions. to make money there really had to make sure, and this is one of the central and sites for me of the book. they turned politics in tow way that businesses compete. it goes on. when one business wants to stop another business, and you can see between the banks, for example, an easy one, and retail merchants. fighting in congress for business advantage. and to do that everybody has come and it's a word that became in many of my books, i refer couple of years and then i go, that's what they mean. everybody here was friends. frank huntington, stanford hopkins, procter.

it sounds like quakers. but when you know that they don't like each other in the begin to gated. means something else. the key principles of social form. hatred is personal. french it is business. so you have this series. an honest congressman is somebody who when he is bust days but, isabela loyalty, is about trust. it might be in a bad cause, but many of them are union veterans who ran the red. the worst thing you can say about somebody is there a trader. the worst thing is treason. for them they carry over that kind of ethic which had once been saving the union into business relationship. that is of the whole thing operates. france your newspaperman, france to our politicians, france to our judges, friends who are businessmen, france are bankers. but if you want to understand the late 19th century it is tragic. they don't bribe each other.

bribery is the failure of. the bride somebody is an ad hoc purchase that you can't count on. but a friend does is a recent -- reciprocal interest. that is how this kind intersection of business and politics comes about. these guys was server you're too in congress. this sounds familiar. become lobbyists, corporate employers to my lawyers for the corporations and move back and forth. they get paid off. they're taking care of. but they have to bribe somebody. that raises the whole issue of the corruption of the government itself. it makes everything far too visible and messy. as of that there won't do it. they do do it, but they like to avoid it. >> i like to remind our radio audience that your listening to the commonwealth club of california radio program. our guest today is richard white. professor of history and co-director at the bill look

lane center. we are here discussing his new book "railroaded" and the myths about the transcontinental railroads and the building of the american west. richard, we have got more than one question here that i suppose you have anticipated about the founder of our university. so, one questioner says, the founder of the university that presumably plays your salary as well as that of the moderator. that's me. don't you have anything positive to say about the so-called robber barons? in the same vein another questioner, given your position with stanford, this may be a difficult question. how corrupt was leila's stamford? >> okay. first of all, you know, my wife said one of those things sometimes she thinks he bites the hand that fed him. that is fair enough.

but let me give you a piece of advice that probably most of you already. do not destroy your personal papers. if you destroy your personal papers, your side of everything that happens is pretty much going to be lost while all those other letters which she might have marked destroy when read arresting very safely in the archives. seoul abundant correspondence which does show quite corrupt. but it is unclear. there are abundant in damning. this testimony. so he is very much part of it. the people who ran the central pacific were known as the

assisted. things became so messy, and they all had so what's to hide that nobody could ever back out of the corporation. the only way you got out of the southern pacific was he died. it was sort of like the mafia. you had to come back again. and after awhile i said, that's because there never got to steal from each other, but that left out david cole, a famous 19th century trial. actually wonderful. the day they captured black art, the last stagecoach robber in california, the date of the cold and trial started.

so if you go back to the san francisco papers he will have the accounts of the stage robber used to leave bad poetry with his victims. then you have the opening of the cold and dry which became the most famous trial in late 19th century california. an associate who was stealing from the other associates. when he died reassess its figured out that he embezzled. they went to his widow and stole it back. because the books for so corrective is very easy for employers to figure out his stock. by lars the assesses came to dislike each other, but they stuck together all the time. stanford is one of them. the real person runs the southern pacific is huntington. huntington is corrupt, but he is also funny, tough, mean. of all the people, i would hesitate to go up against them. it doesn't mean that you're going to lose the fight, but you probably aren't going to win it and you will almost certainly wish you were never there to begin with. a very formidable character,

much more so than stanford. >> the questionnaire asked about the robber barons. the term robber baron, as i understand, was put into the circulation by a book published in the 1930's which was very anti business, anti corporate sentiment in of the great depression. i just want to go through a list of some of the people who, i suppose, qualify as robber barons. in of want to ask you a question about the robber baron interpretation of history. but about a half-dozen or more people here. i'm quoting your characterization. you say have thomas durant that

he was a will fund. john murray forbes was narrow minded. silas seymour was corrupt and largely incompetent. james harvey was a racist brew misanthrope. allied air and eclectic hater who hated loudly and demonstrably. a buffoon. ames was belligerent and up to us. and the gaggle of southern pacific executives were divided, arrogant, and inept. that sounds a little bit like matt do justice. did you say in your introduction you think the robber baron interpretation of history is likely to be the most likely misinterpretation of what you try to argue. said given that town and the way you deal with individual robber barons how is it that you are distinguishable from that the justice account of the whole robber baron theory?

>> after ten or 12 years of reading correspondence, much of that is paraphrasing what they said about each other. i give you a taste, one." the golden age of american vitriol. so when i quote something i have to think, well, this is actually pretty mild. but a a kaelin, san francisco businessman involved often on with the southern pacific. the me see if i can get this right. he was a living walling monument to viciousness, vulgarity, and dishonesty. i'm up against masters year. compared to the kinds of things they said kamal what i say is quite mild. many of the things i do say, that is probably the nicest thing that anybody ever said about him. so yeah. i do say them, but i am reflecting pretty much the source is the half. but they're not robber barons. the two books that probably dominate most about our vision of what these are rich corporations are like were popular literature.

frank norris. my main differences my guys weren't nearly as confident. i think what you tend to have, if you look at the outside of these corporations, they seem to be so dumb. they seem to have an idea of what they want to achieve in go ahead and achieve it. they might be evil and rotten and corrupt, but they certainly are capable. there really seems to be no resisting. you go inside these corporations. you know, they're fighting over the control. it really is when chandler hugo's on visible hands, he wants the records. i'm looking at what the president's, vice presidents the managers, the workers. all of this, of very different view. and when you go into the boughs

of the organization, port charles francis adams who is one of the main characters of the book. he could not contain himself about the ineffectiveness, inefficiency and the indian pacific. what it turned into is other sells clothing that he was actually the head of this corporation that he could never, sacrificing many years of his life. so i think the differences they are not as confident. that is back to my central problem. all of this goes back in many ways to a conversation i had with my father when i must've been ten or 11 years old. my father was a businessman, vice-president at the time. you know, probably the equivalent of an organization like this. i was eating my breakfast. i didn't know what he was talking about. he said i want you to tell me something. i want you to tell me how when you go to work and nobody, nobody can do their job, nobody

knows what they're doing, nobody can give you an accurate piece of reformation, you cannot find an honest man, how is it that the world works, the sun is going to set, the sun is going to rise, and will do it all again tomorrow. i thought he was talking about me. it's also one of those questions that was asked grows some place in the back of your mind and becomes the mystery of our corporations work. they're dysfunctional, totally dysfunctional, but they function. they go on. the collapse in a heap and will be brought back and put back together by the courts and federal government and off they would go again. this is how this world begins to work. that became the puzzle i really was trying to figure out. very different than the kinds of managerial corporations, trenton on japan nor or anybody like the octopus or wrong or baron. it is not the way it works. and my account of its largely comes from this. the number of men in the 19th century who were on the verge of a nervous breakdown is unbelievable.

this wonderful moment in the panic in 1873. we will call it. about as tough and individual as i have ever encountered. huntington sits in his office and says, i sit here going nowhere, not knowing what to do. he writes at another time that he has slept maybe three hours in the last week. and this is the kind of things that happen. the literally feel overwhelmed by a system that both creating which clearly is not under their control. that is the problem with robber barons. they are in control. i can't find the people who are in control running the corporations. and i am talking about the transcontinental, other railroads. historians, avid cherry base. devonshire base, not necessarily universalized from other corporations. so,. >> part of what you're doing, i think very cecily, is demythologizing this inherited notion of these supreme

potentates known as. dave might have had that lifestyle but not power, even over their own corporation. so a lot of demythologizing going on. but among the people that you are demythologizing or people who thought even at the time or people like frank norris and the octopus. so many californians students have read over the generations people lows for two. and even, it would appear, one of california's most famous governors, hiram johnson he made his political career by taking on the octopus, a southern pacific railroad, much of the political system we have in the state today, not least of all an initiative and referendum and recall, the direct product of his attack. but by your accounts by his day the octopus was, as you would

say, and in deceit. there was no true power. how can contemporaries have gotten the long? >> a brief window between 1882 and 1894. salmon cisco is and was a colorful city. so what he does is set up with a guy here is the blind boss. what they do is essentially run the state. he buys the elections. very clear at the time. the octopus, 1892 is essentially divided machine. he trains them far too well. the convening grand jury. he decides he is suffering poor health. even the grand jury indictment illegal, thrown out, riding on the wall.

he is done. huntington comes to stanford and says, here is the evidence that you bought the senate seat. here's what i want you to do. we will send you back to the senate to resign as president of a southern pacific railroad. huntington take silver. given the seven pacific out of politics, but he is not getting it out of politics. southern pacific will be running three different candidates three different factions of the southern pacific. with a seat in 1892 is the miraculous. they allow somebody named stephen weiss, no relation to me, to become a democratic and

independent bit -- anton monopolists senator. and it is really like far more. he breaks. the memory of eight years. that is what goes on. he uses that. and that think it would be very interesting to go back and look. my sense is, i can't prove it. a really smart politician. the octopus is far too valuable. they might not know its as powerful, but he turns it into something that he can slip back and forth. he comes in and takes over the southern pacific. not a political operator that he is, no match for johnson. but what johnson will do is still the road and make it a progressive republican and put in an awful lot of reform.

did by the early 1890's. >> pretty thoroughly demythologize the railroad transcontinental. the all powerful entities. but what if we brought the terms of that point and asked just generally speaking what if anything at all, the broader myths of the american west cowboys, homesteaders, ore. trecker, california trails trekkers and so on. anything above mythic history that is still defensible on historical standards? the whole thing is to be put into the table dustbin. >> any set of stories that can have the power that the stories

have, it makes no difference if there true or not. they become their own truth. what happens here is people themselves really begin to live according to these methods. so would you will have wonderful account which others have used. it captures the way. did carson comes to rescue a woman who has been captured. in fact, what they do is their right away. and in going through this stuff that has been captured, he begins going through. he finds the dime novel about kit carson rescuing a woman from the apache. and he's upset. he gives them the novel. this time. so here is an actual historical

character. distracting himself. buffalo bill. a great genius of the american west. the one who understood. he understood that the west itself could become an economy. never called selfish show. we'll take the actual people who were involved. buffalo bill's wild west show indians joined buffalo bill's wild west show up to fight custer on stage and in the arena. before wounded knee, which buffalo bill will go out and sell for the army, indians were some of those that fought at wounded knee. at this point who can tell the reality and fiction. it just goes back and forth. my larger point about the west is, you can demythologize the west all you want. you will never get it. really about not so much the west.

there are about this says that you can read imagine yourself, you can begin again. there is a place that you can go which is untouched. all this is utterly magical. a place that is on touched or you can be the first person there. all of these things play very deeply into the american psyche. no wonder. we talk about john rest. note midwestern, this whole said. so what i do, i love westerns. a lasting never want to do, i want to go see it. it is wonderful. it really does capture something. it captures what it was like an indian territory in the 1880's. probably not. much larger. >> as you well know, the man he shot liberty valance, the single most memorable line comes at the very end with a newspaperman

says when the trip becomes a legend, print the legend. the west has been an engine of driving these myths and floods in their proportion. >> there is at least one, i'm going to call it ron baron. at first glance it appears to be and out liar in your sense of balance. james j. hamel who built the great northern railroad which at least by popular understanding is the one of the four major transcontinental that was built largely with of federal subsidy. it is the northernmost of the u. s. transcontinental. he was trying to populate. but you -- maybe i misunderstood. a solely private enterprise. plenty of opportunity for interface with the political system and a stand of corruption. >> a little more complicated.

but give me an of swedes and whiskey in 00 road to hell. but what he had, the only one who realizes that he foresees that he will build the railroad. that is the major problem. a little early. does not anticipate the depression of 1893. it is not true. his core road is st. paul minneapolis in manitoba which has some of the largest land grants in minnesota and the dakotas. very valuable. that becomes the core around which she's been severed. but the real thing, he builds the road and about the time where for the first time you really need transcontinental. in 1890, after the oppression of 1893 he takes off traffic for these roads.

they take part of the money they get and pay the subsidy they can compete. during this whole time the government can pay to a corporation whose subsidizes another corporation so that everybody can raise rates said that, in fact, they can make some money transferring. otherwise virtually everything would have gone by ship down through roads into new orleans or up through the east coast. that is far and away the cheapest route. as it turned out because of the re railroads run it is nearly as quick as putting it on our road. they have a hard time tracking these things.

>> james j. hill did not do it differently. you also suggested other countries did it differently not necessarily mexico and canada, which is part of the tunnel transportation system that everybody was in bed with everybody else, but you allude to the fact that the europeans did it differently. they build their major railroad transportation systems in a different model. how different were the? >> people said that we should, but it's too late. the cat was out of the bag.

many of the problems did not happen in france or germany or england. each one it is a little differently. but the english did is something really simple. if you're going to build the railroad you have to put your own money and. there has to be stock that is bought and tell -- paid for. in this railroad. capitalist raids. by selling stock. you're always going to have great problems, all is going to have corruption. they have to be approved by the state. the united states says this vast area. and at the time of the 19th century they had far more capital. we were up for nation. so is certainly going to be origination. we have to borrow a lot of money. the french do it that way. the germans have much more control. each do it a different way.

to be fair they both face the same problem as the united states france, england, and germany are all relatively small countries. at the time of the 19th century france, england, and germany have more capitals than the united states. we are certainly going to be a rich nation very fast and have to borrow a lot of the money that comes in. the united states does not, by any statistical measure. our low rates are largely because we carry cheap commodities very long distances. rates per mile are low because we carry so many miles.

>> you write about the workers and especially the confrontation between the american railway to -- american railway union. in what way on the labor side of the dimension to we see a template for madame eddie -- for madame eddie -- fromfor modernity. richard: what we did is we divided it up between labor unions, popular screen actors, and at the time people called it much simpler, and time and up a leap. there is a strong anti-monopolist wing in the den -- in the democratic party. what they mean is corporation. they use the word synonymously. the reason they dislike corporations is they think control is being taken away from

ordinary people. i began to realize in the 19th century there is something that has vanished from current politics. americans in the 19th century not all of them that many of them believe the purpose of an economy in a republican society is to produce republican citizens. it is not to produce the highest grossed -- highest gross national product. instead, what they say is it should produce citizens are able to take this simple republic and a very clear on what they're talking about. the workers should be able to get a family, a kind of independence among producers. nobody can dictate a but the conditions which they will reach. they really hold these things very, very seriously, and it becomes the core of this politics. the politics that really misunderstand now.

then tested it very well the time. so the unions, the nicest, not a modern labor. the businessmen, lawyers, all kinds. instead they see themselves taking the ideals, republican ideals and bringing them over into the economy. they thought the economy should be subservient to the republic and not vice versa. it wasn't the government's job to serve business, but the business should produce certain kind of citizens. they see the country has largely made up of mill people. they define these things in terms of man head. most anti monopolist are racist to the core. there really is about white man. it's also about man. it is what the ability of man to support a family. it is about women being a domestic, being in the home. so there are real limits. is not the kind of thing you bring over into the late 20th century, but to me it was another one of those revealing points.

i'm looking at a different way of seeing the world. americans are not like us. they thought of the world in a very, very different way. once you understand that politics becomes much more comprehensible. >> you -- drill for a minute. i would be remiss if i didn't. one of the stylistic properties of this book. it's not merely a deeply researched and compellingly told analytic and narrative history but you sprinkle through the book, i'm not sure quite what to call them, elements, that reminded me of the way so many different elements are put together in that famous u.s.a. trilogy.

you call yours railroad life. are these little masters scare -- masters scattered through the narrative. what was your conclusion to put that kind of thing in their and what is the purpose is intended to serve for the reader? richard: this is why authors should never be allowed to give an account of what they did. i said that's where i got it from. i used to love him as a teenager. it didn't cross my mind. it was clearly working back there somewhere. this is a big narrative. what i wanted to do was bring it down to daily life. i wanted to bring it down to corporations. how the railroad transforms

people in their daily lives. like any historian i found stuff in the archives that was just too good not to use. these had nothing to do with the mainline. the trick is all of the railroad lives is to tell how working out is the bigger things i am talking about. i will give you an example. iran across a series. a young woman who is right over by huntington railroad. railroad work was incredibly dangerous in the 19th century. every year more workers are clean -- are killed then in the civil war battle. workers died in the tens, hundreds, and more. most of the time it is just correspondence. there is a lot of stuff that was

written about them.

some people would argue there's a direct genealogy here and all of these things are part of the long struggle to invest in the energy-producing struggle. you are arguing that it's back to the initial set. should we extrapolate from that about the later installations of this same federal strategy

something i know you have a kind about in the papers, in the "new york times" recently. i'm clearly is -- opposed to high-speed rail. i see that is much more like the transcontinental. do not like the transcontinental but i'm not against federal infrastructure investment. all i ask is that we do two things -- first of all, we build something, you think about the consequences of building it and you think about if it is needed now. much of the problems with the transcontinental railroad is they were built way ahead. by the time you have those railroads they are behind what was built years later. think about your house. you don't build your house and moved into with 40 years later because there will be no house to move in to. you keep pouring money into it to keep it up. once you build these things they become this constant demand as money pours in.

when you don't need them is going to be extraordinarily costly. most of the railroads up to that would have been built by federal subsidies. railroad in california would have been built without federal budgets. they would have drained -- into san francisco bay. subsidies are really needed in between the 100th meridian and the sierras. if you need it then why then? whatever costs of having them? i wrote a book on columbia river the organic machine. the organic machine was about building dams. federal subsidies. things turn out differently. the dams, united states got incredibly lucky. the critics were right. what are you going to do? we have a farm surplus. why are you going to irrigate more land when you get people to abandon them? those are perfectly rational

arguments. what happened was world war ii. a contingent that had nothing to do with the building of the dam and you needed all that electricity. and the fact you needed as much food as you could produce. that might be great planning on somebody's part. sometimes you just bailed out. not counting on being bailed out, crossing subsidies. my argument is not against subsidies per se but this kind of dumb growth. think about what we are subsidizing and why because people give you all the arguments that are wonderfully plausible and end up not being true. >> thanks to richard white professor of history at stanford university and co-director p. mclean center for the american west and most of portly from purposes here this evening the author of "railroaded: the transcontinentals and the making

of modern america". i can assure you it is a book that both entertains and provokes virtually every page. we also thank our audience here on radio, television and the internet and tonight's program held in association with the california historical society. i am professor david kennedy. this meeting of the commonwealth club of pennsylvania is adjourned. [applause] >> wonderful program. thank you so much. were going to bring you out and let you sign books. >> on history bookshelf, here from the country's best-known american history writers of the past decade, every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern. to watch these programs any time, visit our website. you are watching american

history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. this weekend, the c-span cities tour partnered with comcast to learn about the history and literary life of key west, florida. ernest hemingway wrote several of his novels at this home in key west. >> they found this house for sale and bought it were $8,000 in 1931. pauline actually converted this hay locked into his first formal writing studio. here, he fell in love with wishing. he fell in love with the clarity of his writing, how fast he was producing the work. he knocked out the first rough draft of "a farewell to arms" in tune of weeks. he once had a line that said if you really want to write, start with one true sentence. >> for a true writer, each book should be a new beginning. he should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed.

>> key west is also where president harry truman sought refuge from washington. >> president truman regarded the big white house is the great white jail. he felt he was constantly under everyone's eye, so by coming to key west, he could come with his closest staff, let down his hair. sometimes some of the staff would let their beards grow for a couple of days. they certainly at times used off-color stories, and they certainly could have a glass of bourbon and visit back-and-forth without any scrutiny from the press. a sportswear company said a case of hawaiian shirts to the president with the thought that if the president is wearing their shirt they will sell a lot of shirts. so president truman wore those free shirts that first year and then organize what they call the loud shirt contest, and that was the official uniform o