Quotes About Railroads

Both refiners and railroads were struggling with excess capacity and suicidal price wars.

Rockefeller's supreme insight was that he could solve the oil industry's problems by solving the railroads' problems at the same time, creating a double cartel in oil and rails.

One of Rockefeller's strengths in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and then crafted mutually advantageous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper, albeit in a way that fortified his own position.

The Hepburn report, however, was both belated and insufficient in hobbling Rockefeller's triumphant march, for by this time he had parlayed his secret railroad contracts into preeminence in oil. More important, his firm had now advanced far beyond the railroads to more efficient pipelines.

What makes Flagler's ethics consequential for Rockefeller's career was that he was the mastermind of many negotiations with the railroads—the single most controversial aspect of Standard Oil history.

The world admires wealth and velocity—these are the things for which everyone strives. Railroads, the post, steamboats, and all possible modes of communication are the means by which the world overeducates itself and freezes itself in mediocrity.

The system of transportation is not coherent; it is not treated as integral. Roads compete with with railroads and airlines in chaotic fashion, and at immense cost to the nation.

While no one railroad can completely duplicate another line, two or more may compete at particular points.

Look at how the British covered India with railroads, and it is easy to view them as modernisers. Look, however, at the abysmal levels of mass illiteracy in the subcontinent they left behind in 1947, and they appear rather differently.

Railroads are the primary economic beneficiaries. It's a difficult project for the public sector.

We'll invest in infrastructure and productive infrastructure like railroads and ports and bridges and schools, things that will have a return, economic return or social return.

The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.

One of my more sharp-tongued respondents, dryly observed, when asked if nationalization of railroads was being considered, "Yes sure its being considered. There's hardly a bad idea that isn't being considered. If you think of a bad idea that isn't being considered, call me up collect. I'd like to hear about it. - pg 129

This is a pattern-bargaining industry, like railroads. You need to pay market to get a contract at all, and without contracts, you have a poor relationship with workers.

Over the following years, the farmers adopted even more daring political proposals, such as the abolition of private interstate banking; the nationalization of railroads, of urban public transport, of the telegraph and the recently invented telephone; a graduated income tax, the secret ballot, and direct election of senators.

She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought- and never worried about it again.

There is no way to measure or accurately compare, but it can be asserted that no men ever worked harder under more dangerous conditions than those who built the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific [railroads].

The Asian male has an interesting history as far as Western appropriation. At one point, we were completely sexless Chinamen building the railroads. Then, World War II came around, and it was like, Asian guys are coming after the white women. We became a menace for a second.

What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.

The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.

One role of government is to go where venture capital won't. In the Civil War, you had a president pay the railroads $16,000 for every mile of track they laid. You had Eisenhower invest $25 million in a defense agency called ARPA that came up with a thing that became the internet.

Railroads brought about lasting social effects, as well. The companies' ruthless attention to keeping time impelled passengers to carry pocket watches,* and led to the eventual establishment of time zones.

What the railroads lack is not opportunity but some of the managerial imaginativeness and audacity that made them great.

Having wallowed in a delightful orgy of anti-French sentiment, having deplored and applauded the villains themselves, having relished the foibles of bankers, railwaymen, diplomats, and police, the public was now ready to see its faith restored in the basic soundness of banks, railroads, government, and police.