How The Transcontinental Railroad Affected America?

In Railroaded, Richard White tells his version of how the transcontinental railroad affected America after the reconstruction. While it is obvious White has done wide-ranging research on the matter, the book is often tiresome, as he tells again and again of how everyone involved was a greedy crook. White’s goal in the book was to prove that building the Railroad when it was, came at too high a cost. Destroying the economy, corruption, destruction of land, Indians and buffalo was not worth it when it was cheaper to transport and travel on existing modes. Corruption was certainly rampart but it did not start and end with the railroad. The book was an entertaining version of Richard White’s view of the railroad and how it affected America, …show more content…
At the time there was not enough people living in the plains and areas between the east and west coast, and building with the “hope” that business would come may have been short-sighted. At the time roads and Canals were just as good as the railroads were, but maybe some people did see the future of immigration and that America would soon be overflowing with the masses of tired and the weary and that safer, faster and more efficient ways to move people and products would be needed to get this done. What White never brings in to play is the simple fact that once man invents something he never stops improving. Fire to the missile, wheel to wagon, rafts to ships to cross the oceans, once those engines were built we were going to cross the Americas and make it west, and it did not matter who or what got in the way. There were many other technological advances going on at the same time that is never mentioned, for example the buffalo who’s near extension White blames on the railroad, but fails to mention the new tanning machines that allowed for the hides to be mass produced, there was just too much progress exploding in the late 1800’s to blame just one entity for