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What role did railroad technology play in shaping the nation's economy?

By 1869, the first transcontinental railroad connected the East Coast with the port of San Francisco. In 1871, the United States had about 45,000 miles of railroad tracks. By 1900, it had over 200,000 miles. A massive expansion of infrastructure along railroad lines created new towns, and it allowed goods, raw materials, and people to travel relatively quickly across the entire country.

Joining the tracks for the first transcontinental railroad
The linking of the transcontinental railroad in 1869

Without the railroads, the development of a truly national U.S. economy would not have been possible. Trains destroyed distance and linked remote regions, connecting isolated local agricultural economies to towns and cities. Before the development of the railroad, a wagon journey from Missouri to the West Coast would take about five months. After the development of the railroad, the journey would take less than a week. Suddenly, farm produce and manufactured products could be delivered to distant markets relatively cheaply and efficiently.

Although the locomotive certainly improved the U.S. economy by linking people, raw materials, and markets, there were human costs to the development of the railroad. In Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau said, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us . . . . if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon." Hundreds of thousands of men worked to build the railroads, and many were injured or killed building bridges, digging tunnels, or even driving spikes with hand-held hammers.

statue of John Henry
Statue of John Henry

The most famous railroad builder, of course, was John Henry. According to legend, Henry, an African American "steel driving man," challenges a steam-driven drilling machine to a race to dig a tunnel. The event on which the legend is based probably occurred in West Virginia in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Using only the power of his body combined with a hammer and spike, John Henry bests the machine but dies of a heart attack. The legend suggests the human cost of the heavy construction work required to build the railroads—and also the cost to human self-reliance and dignity when machines perform the work of men better than most men can.

Question

What were the social costs of building the railroad?

As Thoreau argues, the social costs were high and included the killing or maiming of workers whose families most likely lived nowhere near where their loved ones died. Beyond that, the railroad disrupted established ecosystems, broke apart local communities, and disrupted older forms of transportation such as canals and stage coaches. Along the way, entire livelihoods were eliminated.