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The Life and Decline of the American Railroad by John F. Stover, and: London’s Termini by Alan A. Jackson, and: The Euston Arch and the Growth of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway by Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson (review)

1971; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1971.a894018

1097-3729

Carl W. Condit,

American History and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 109 lisher executed that design with only a few minor lapses. It gives a view of mid-19th-century America in a unique way by its use of the excellent drawing and painting by Wilcox and can be warmly recommended to canal buffs and local antiquarians. Wf.slf.y C. Williams* The Life and Decline of the American Railroad. By John F. Stover. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Pp. xi-j-324; illustrations, maps, table, bibliography. $7.50. London's Termini. By Alan A. Jackson. New York: Augustus M. Kel­ ley, Publishers, 1969. Pp. 368; illustrations, plans, maps, statistical appendixes, bibliography. $16.50. The Euston Arch and the Growth of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. By Alison and Peter Smithson. London: Thames & Hudson, 1968. No pagination; illustrations. 42x. These three books on railroad history reveal in their very disparity the breadth and complexity of the subject and hence the diversity of approaches that may be used in recording its evolution. John Stover, a professor of history at Purdue University, has attempted to sweep the whole American development into a text of fewer than 300 pages. He had previously demonstrated his competence for the task when he wrote the railroad volume for the Chicago History of American Civili­ zation (University of Chicago Press, 1961), and his present work rep­ resents a less formal, more journalistic rewriting of the earlier book. His approach is that of the business historian, and his way of dealing with the growth and decline of the rail industry provides a good ex­ ample of the strength and weakness of the method. The expansion of the railroad network in the United States reveals two overlapping phases: the first, extending from the beginning in 1830 to about 1915, was the construction of the basic physical plant; the sec­ ond, the limits of which are roughly 1900 and 1940, saw the transforma­ tion of this plant into a modern high-capacity, heavy-duty railroad system with automatic, electrically operated traffic control devices and a rational distribution of single-, double-, and multiple-track lines. Stover, however, has organized his book less according to this historical pattern than to one determined by financial developments. The first six of his ten chapters have to do with the primary phase, but his emphasis falls mainly on the activities of the railroad magnates, colorful fellows, undoubtedly, but men whose role continues to be grossly exaggerated, and on such related matters as financing, rates, regulation, and the even­ tual appearance of nonrail competition. The second phase receives scant attention because Stover is little interested in technology, the subject * Mr. Williams is curator of the History of Science and Technology Collection at Case Western Reserve University. 110 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE being relegated to four short and scattered passages totaling no more than twenty-five pages. The best part of the historical section is the chapter on the role of the railroads in the two World Wars, for it is here that Stover inquires most thoroughly into the organization and operation of the whole railroad system as a unified working entity. The final four chapters are not historical but are devoted to a survey of various aspects of the contemporary rail scene—the growth of high­ way, waterway, and air competition; the disappearance of passenger traffic; rising costs and declining earnings; featherbedding; piggyback freight; and mergers—all together representing a useful though uncriti­ cal summary drawn from the financial pages of the newspapers and such periodicals as Business Week, Railway Age, and Fortune. Stover’s threadbare bibliography reflects his point of view: the only book on motive power is White’s American Locomotives, easily the best but re­ stricted to the period before 1880; the only volumes on trains are two of Lucius Beebe’s lightweight, unreliable pictorial albums, and there is nothing on structures, signaling, right-of-way, or operations. There are many questions one might raise about business history as it is here used, but I will confine mvself to certain general matters associ­ ated with technological developments. Stover chooses 1916 as the turn­ ing point in the rise and decline of the railroad’s economic role...