Saturday, November 8, 2014

Hiding in Plain Sight: Federal Support of the Transcontinentals


Being still in the midst of Richard White’s Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, I cannot pretend to write effectively yet regarding its overall impact, success or themes. That said, as I progress, I find my thoughts repeatedly turning to another work that seems to offer a fascinating companion viewpoint to that White seems to be putting forth.

Brian Balogh’s book, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America, argues that the laissez-faire style of government we all learned about in high school, that hands-off approach favored by the American government during the Gilded Era, was a myth. The federal government may have governed differently than its more pro-active European counterparts, Balogh says, but that does not mean it governed less. Balogh asserts that, despite embracing an attitude of American exceptionalism founded on strong beliefs of individualism and free market self-reliance, Americans frequently looked to the federal government throughout the 19th century, and that “the national government proved to be most influential when it was least visible.”1 Americans expected their national government to play an active role in their communities, in westward expansion, in economic development, and in other areas of American life; they just did not wish to see that activity. Hence Balogh’s theme of a “government out of sight”.

Balogh’s position resonates as one reads White’s Railroaded. The United States government was so deep in bed with the railroad companies that there was hardly room for everyone under the covers. White demonstrates just how crowded that bed was when he unpacks the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which “implicated not only the leadership of the Union Pacific Railroad but also Schuyler Colfax, the vice-president of the United States; James A. Garfield, a congressman who would be a future president of the United States; James G. Blaine, a Speaker of the House who desperately wanted to be president; and a covey of leading senators and representatives who scattered like so many quail for shelter.”2 And that was just one railroad.

Not only were a number of elected officials on the railroads’ lucrative dole, but their assumptions about the projected success of the railroads (when they would eventually be built) and their utter lack of understanding of how the railroad companies operated (due to the railroads’ intentional opacity and outright lies regarding their financial activities) led them to enact legislation favorable to the railroads, unfavorable to the federal coffers, and that the railroads would ultimately manipulate to their further advantage using another federal entity: the courts.3

Most Americans, I suspect, were not aware of the intricacies of Congress’s activities with regard to railroad financing or, if they were, probably did not understand them. How could they, when Congress did not? Thus, it seems plausible, even despite contemporary newspaper exposés, that Americans did not recognize just how embroiled in the railroads their government truly was, nor could they understand the enduring and damaging repercussions of that entanglement on the federal treasury. The lack of a sustained and substantial public outcry (at least through the portion of the book that I have completed) would seem to indicate the truth of my suspicion, though perhaps my continued reading will disabuse me of this notion.

Balogh tells us that Americans expected much from their national government, but that they avoided large bureaucratic federal efforts in favor of less visible governing styles, where “the law, the courts, trade policy, fiscal subsidies – supported by indirect taxes – and partnerships with nongovernmental partners” shaped the nation’s economic development.4 This appears evident in the narrative White is unfolding: out of sight, out of mind, coupled with an “if you build it, they will come” enthusiasm that appears to have been chimeric. 

Bibliography

Balogh, Brian. A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.


[1] Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America, 2.
[2] White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, 64.
[3] Ibid., 22–23.
[4] Balogh, 379.

4 comments:

  1. Your post reminds me of another book that revises the "laissez faire 19th century" sound bite: The People's Welfare:Law and Regulation in 19th century America, by William Novak. Much of the regulation he examines in various areas - public safety, the market, health and others - was enacted at the state and local level, and in many cases was quite well-defined and disseminated. I haven't read Balogh, but I'll put it on my list.

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  2. Carol- I was thinking the same thing regarding laissez-faire revisionist historiography. Two authors who have written about the "Myth of the Weak State" are William Novak and Tracy Steffes. In a 2008 article, Novak details the difference between European despotic power and American infrastructural power. In a 2012 book titled School, Society and State, Tracy Steffes analyzes infrastructural power through the lens of rural school reform in the early 20th Century. Both the article and the book are fascinating. While reading Railroaded, I felt that he described a system that was simultaneously infrastructural and despotic in terms of the definitions Novak provides. I would love to see Novak and White have a conversation about this topic

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    1. The above comment is from Dan Curry. Not sure why id came out the way it did.

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    2. Dan, I wholly concur with your observation - the Novak article also came to my mind. I'm unfamiliar with Steffes, but Novak and Balogh certainly go hand in hand.

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