In Richard White’s book Railroaded, White argues that although railroads were important to the development of North America, railroads were failures politically, economically, and socially. White makes a point that they should not have been built when they were and where they were. White states, “[Railroads] created modernity as much by their failure as their success” (Page XXI).
White says that although North Americans were aware of the Transcontinental Railroads failures, they chose to look past it because North Americans loved the railroads because it represented the era they were in. It was the era where technology was advancing. Many railroad companies had to be bailed out by the governments and forgiven for their loans that could not be paid back. By the end of the century, the Transcontinental railroad was even under political attack. The government had to suppress workers and protect the rights of their owners and managers for the sake of keeping public good and order.
White says that the railroad allowed people to travel and settle in the West. It also helped transport goods, like: silver, wheat, gold, timber, coal, corn, and livestock. However, White questioned why so many of the railroads were built when there was not much need of them yet. The railroads lured people to settle into places that produced crops, cattle, and minerals that the markets could not even absorb profitably. There weren’t markets created for such things yet, so it ended up for the most part, going to waste. From this, I can tell that White thinks it was a waste to invest so much into the railroads because its cost ended up exceeding their benefits in the long term (Page XXIV).
A good succinct summary of White’s main arguments, but I wonder if you could have delved a little deeper into some of the evidence he presents, and maybe tried to weigh/evaluate his interpretation. What were the other driving forces behind the construction of the transcontinentals, aside from the fact that Americans seemed to be in love with the idea of railroads and the progress they represented?
Having re-read this, I would add that there’s too much summary and not enough of your own analysis. At times you paraphrase White without quoting—be wary of this, since in some contexts it could be considered plagiarism!