Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America By Michael A. Hiltzik

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From Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Hiltzik, the epic tale of the clash for supremacy between America’s railroad titans In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the transcontinental railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. Once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, America’s railways soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and visionaries. The vicious competition between empire builders such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and E. H. Harriman sparked stock market frenzies, panics, and crashes; provoked strikes that upended the relationship between management and labor; transformed the nation’s geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle that shook the nation’s financial markets to their foundations and produced dramatic, lasting changes in the interplay of business and government. Spanning four decades and featuring some of the most iconic figures of the Gilded Age, Iron Empires reveals how the robber barons drove the country into the twentieth century—and almost sent it off the rails.

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The railroading of America is an old story, one that has been told many times. Why tell it again?There are several outstanding books on the subject, including Albert Fishlow, "American Railroadsand the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy" (Harvard UP, 1965), Steven W. Usselman,"Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology and Politics in America, 1840-1920" (Cambridge UP, 2002), and Richard White's magisterial "Railroads: The Transcontinentalsand the Making of Modern America" (W.W. Norton, 2011). Yet one looks in vain for anymention of these authors, let alone any citation of their work. Likewise, when it comesto someone as important to the history of American labor (and politics) as Eugene Debs,without whom (e.g.) Bernie Sanders wouldn't even exist, there is nothing to be found inthe pages of Mr. Hiltzik's book except a rehash of 19th century newspaper articles, plusa cursory review of a few speeches and court decisions. Only one secondary source is inthe bibliography, that being Ray Ginger's "The Bending Cross," published in 1949. Sincethen, Bernard Brommel, "Eugene V. Debs: Spokesman for Labor and Socialism" (Chicago,1978), Nick Salvatore, "Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist" (Urbana, IL, 1984) and mostrecently, Jill LePore, "Eugene V. Debs and the Endurance of Socialism" (The New Yorker,Feb. 11, 2019) have brought Debs back to life, and into the conversation between pastand present, with an eye toward the future of the American polity. On that subject, Mr.Hiltzik wavers between admitting that there was a "dark side" to the emergence of theRobber Barons during the Gilded Age (p. xiii) and excusing their conduct on the groundsthat they "remade America in their own image" (p. 372), as if that were anything to beproud of, here or elsewhere. That they were collectively "unreasonable" (p. 370) is simplya tautology; but equating irrationality with historical greatness is a fallacy--witness Hitler,among others. In the same way, the "great bankers" who took advantage of gullible andfoolhardy farmers by foreclosing on barren land for pennies per acre [after "drummers"lured them to invest on promises of fertile soil west of the hundredth meridian] can't bepardoned because they waited until those "hardy pioneers" were both "exhausted" and deadbroke (p. 370, quoting Justice Brandeis). They waited, alright: they weren't stupid, just cruel.One does not prevent the guillotine from falling before serving the head on a plate of gold.A book that is filled with rationalizations of that kind, that makes no attempt to examine theavailable literature, and that combines hero-worship with resignation in the face of the mythof progress, does not deserve to be taken seriously. As if that weren't enough, Hiltzik has noqualms about saying things like "then there were the Indians" (p. 80), in his own voice, not asindirect discourse. He titles Part III of his book "The Ghost Dance" (p. 281), sans irony yet withno particular relevance to Wovoka. Indeed, by the time we encounter Sitting Bull proclaiming"I hate white people" (p. 261), one begins to see why, even if the Hunkpapa didn't say it on theoccasion in question (p. 394n), or perhaps not at all. I could go on--but why? There's nothinghere that you won't find in the Classics Illustrated version of Manifest Destiny. Only that hadmuch better art work, and (when I was young) cost a lot less to read. As Alfred Chandler saidto Adam Smith, "whatever happened to that hidden hand?" Smith replied "look behind thee."That's where you'll find those railroad tycoons--traveling first class, on Satan's empty throne.Railroads, my . . . thumb.

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