Railroads and American Economic Growth
Social savings both was introduced and applied to the railroads in a seminal book by economic historian and scientist Robert Fogel. The social savings analysis involved using quantitative methods to imagine what the U.S. economy would have been like in 1890 if there were no railroads. In the absence of railroads, freight transportation by rivers and canals would have been only moderately more expensive along most common routes. America’s canal waterway system might have been expanded and its roads might have been improved as the next best alternative; both of these improvements would reduce the social impact of the railroad. Fogel concluded that the difference in cost (or "social savings") attributable to railroads was negligible - about 2.7% of GNP. This counterfactual history view was vastly different from views proffered by railroad historians and made a controversial name for cliometrics.
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“Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Shall the railroads govern the country, or shall the people govern the railroads? Shall the interest of railroad kings be chiefly regarded, or shall the interest of the people be paramount?”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The American man is a very simple and cheap mechanism. The American woman I find a complicated and expensive one. Contrasts of feminine types are possible. I am not absolutely sure that there is more than one American man.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
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—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)