An original history of the railroad in the Old South that challenges the accepted understanding of economic and industrial growth in antebellum America. Drawing from both familiar and overlooked sources, such as the personal diaries of Southern travelers, papers and letters from civil engineers, corporate records, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Aaron W. Marrs skillfully expands on the conventional business histories that have characterized scholarship in this field. He situates railroads in the fullness of antebellum life, examining how slavery, technology, labor, social convention, and the environment shaped their evolution. Far from seeing the Old South as backward and premodern, Marrs finds evidence of urban life, industry, and entrepreneurship throughout the region. But these signs of progress existed alongside efforts to preserve traditional ways of life. Railroads exemplified Southerners’ pursuit of progress on their own terms: developing modern transportation while retaining a conservative social order. Railroads in the Old South demonstrates that a simple approach to the Old South fails to do justice to its complexity and contradictions. “The time is right to bring the South into the story of the economic transformation of antebellum America. Aaron Marrs does this with force and grace in Railroads in the Old South.” —John L. Larson, Purdue University “I am hard pressed to think of another volume that better catches the overall effect railroads had on the Old South.” —Kenneth W. Noe, Auburn University “Interesting regional history . . . It is a thoughtful and instructive study that examines not only the pervasiveness of transportation but also some of the social, political, and economic consequences associated with the evolution of southern railroads.” —Choice

American historians tend to believe that labor activism was moribund in the years between the First World War and the New Deal. Jon Huibregtse challenges this perspective in his examination of the railroad unions of the time, arguing that not only were they active, but that they made a big difference in American Labor practices by helping to set legal precedents. Huibregtse explains how efforts by the Plumb Plan League and the Railroad Labor Executive Association created the Railroad Labor Act, its amendments, and the Railroad Retirement Act. These laws became models for the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. Unfortunately, the significant contributions of the railroad laws are, more often than not, overlooked when the NLRA or Social Security are discussed. Offering a new perspective on labor unions in the 1920s, Huibregtse describes how the railroad unions created a model for union activism that workers’ organizations followed for the next two decades.

Focusing on a story largely untold until now, Theresa A. Case studies the "Great Southwest Strike of 1886," which pitted entrepreneurial freedom against the freedom of employees to have a collective voice in their workplace. This series of local actions involved a historic labor agreement followed by the most massive sympathy strike the nation had ever seen. It attracted western railroaders across lines of race and skill, contributed to the rise and decline of the first mass industrial union in U.S. history (the Knights of Labor), and brought new levels of federal intervention in railway strikes. Case takes a fresh look at the labor unrest that shook Jay Gould's railroad empire in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois. In Texas towns and cities like Marshall, Dallas, Fort Worth, Palestine, Texarkana, Denison, and Sherman, union recognition was the crucial issue of the day. Case also powerfully portrays the human facets of this strike, reconstructing the story of Martin Irons, a Scottish immigrant who came to adopt the union cause as his own. Irons committed himself wholly to the failed strike of 1886, continuing to urge violence even as courts handed down injunctions protecting the railroads, national union leaders publicly chastised him, the press demonized him, and former strikers began returning to work. Irons’s individual saga is set against the backdrop of social, political, and economic changes that transformed the region in the post–Civil War era. Students, scholars, and general readers interested in railroad, labor, social, or industrial history will not want to be without The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor.

Lawyering for the Railroad provides the first full account of railroad monopoly power, tracing its sources and effects in the southern political economy. Issues touching on railroad development were major components of politics in the days of both Populism and Progressivism, and railroad attorneys -- often in their role as lobbyists -- were always in the middle of the action. They distributed free passes to legislators, retained the best counsel for their clients, laid out the legal agreements to form monopolies, and instituted practices to ensure quick and favorable settlements for the railroads. In this intriguing work, William G. Thomas introduces the southern attorneys who represented railroads between 1880 and 1916, closely examining their role in the political economy of the South during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, a period in which the region experienced sharp change, explosive growth, and heated political contests. Thomas tells his fascinating story with legal department records from some of the largest interstate railroad companies in the South. With the help of these records, he demonstrates how the railroads tried to use the law and the legal process to mold the southern political economy to their ends and what kind of opposition they faced. Standing at the crossroads of business, law, and politics, Lawyering for the Railroad gives context, depth, and specificity to what have been cursory glimpses into the shady world of corporate power in the Gilded Age. From small-town lawyers to big-city firms, the story of the railroad attorneys brings into focus the many ways the interstate railroad transformed the South.

The Filth of Progress explores the untold side of a well-known American story. For more than a century, accounts of progress in the West foregrounded the technological feats performed while canals and railroads were built and lionized the capitalists who financed the projects. This book salvages stories often omitted from the triumphant narrative of progress by focusing on the suffering and survival of the workers who were treated as outsiders. Ryan Dearinger examines the moving frontiers of canal and railroad construction workers in the tumultuous years of American expansion, from the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 to the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1869. He tells the story of the immigrants and Americans—the Irish, Chinese, Mormons, and native-born citizens—whose labor created the West’s infrastructure and turned the nation’s dreams of a continental empire into a reality. Dearinger reveals that canals and railroads were not static monuments to progress but moving spaces of conflict and contestation.

Walter Licht chronicles the working and personal lives of the first two generations of American railwaymen, the first workers in America to enter large-scale, bureaucratically managed, corporately owned work organizations. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Before the widespread popularity of automobiles, buses, and trucks, freight and passenger trains bound the nation together. The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience explores the role of local frontline workers that kept the country's vast rail network running. Virtually every community with a railroad connection had a depot and an agent. These men and occasionally women became the official representatives of their companies and were highly respected. They met the public when they sold tickets, planned travel itineraries, and reported freight and express shipments. Additionally, their first-hand knowledge of Morse code made them the most informed in town. But as times changed, so did the role of, and the need for, the station agent. Beautifully illustrated with dozens of vintage photographs, The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience, brings back to life the day-to-day experience of the station agent and captures the evolution of railroad operations as technology advanced.

Perhaps no other industrial technology changed the course of Mexican history in the United States--and Mexico--than did the coming of the railroads. Tens of thousands of Mexicans worked for the railroads in the United States, especially in the Southwest and Midwest. Construction crews soon became railroad workers proper, along with maintenance crews later. Extensive Mexican American settlements appeared throughout the lower and upper Midwest as the result of the railroad. The substantial Mexican American populations in these regions today are largely attributable to 19th- and 20th-century railroad work. Only agricultural work surpassed railroad work in terms of employment of Mexicans. The full history of Mexican American railroad labor and settlement in the United States had not been told, however, until Jeffrey Marcos Garcílazo's groundbreaking research in Traqueros. Garcílazo mined numerous archives and other sources to provide the first and only comprehensive history of Mexican railroad workers across the United States, with particular attention to the Midwest. He first explores the origins and process of Mexican labor recruitment and immigration and then describes the areas of work performed. He reconstructs the workers' daily lives and explores not only what the workers did on the job but also what they did at home and how they accommodated and/or resisted Americanization. Boxcar communities, strike organizations, and "traquero culture" finally receive historical acknowledgment. Integral to his study is the importance of family settlement in shaping working class communities and consciousness throughout the Midwest.

On July 2 and 3, 1917, race riots rocked the small industrial city of East St. Louis, Illinois. American Pogrom takes the reader beyond that pivotal time in the city's history to explore black people's activism from the antebellum era to the eve of the post-World War II civil rights movement. Charles Lumpkins shows that black residents of East St. Louis had engaged in formal politics since the 1870s, exerting influence through the ballot and through patronage in a city dominated by powerful real estate interests even as many African Americans elsewhere experienced setbacks in exercising their political and economic rights. While Lumpkins asserts that the race riots were a pogrom--an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group--orchestrated by certain businessmen intent on preventing black residents from attaining political power and on turning the city into a "sundown" town permanently cleared of African Americans, he also demonstrates how the African American community survived. He situates the activities of the black citizens of East St. Louis in the context of the larger story of the African American quest for freedom, citizenship, and equality.