by Burt Folsom
3Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1971), 37-38, 43-44.
4J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails, and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929), 207. See also Stanley P. Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge: Soldier, Politician, Railroad Pioneer (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1967)
5Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 200-03.
6Perkins, Dodge, 231-33, 238. See also William F. Rae, Westward By Rail:The New Route to the East (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1871).
7Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 139-42.
8Perkins, Dodge, 205-06; Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 153.
9Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 224, 337-40, 346.
10Julius Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 1869-1893: A Study of Businessmen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962), 70-71.
11For a full description of the Central Pacific, see Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker,and of the Building of the Central Pacific (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1938).
12Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy,137. For A fuller account of Villard's career, see James B. Hedges, Henry Villard and the Railways of the Northwest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930).
13 Hedges, Villard, 112-211; Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 140, 185.
14Mildred H. Comfort, James Jerome Hill, Railroad Pioneer (Minneapolis: T. S. Denison, 1973), 64-65.
15Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 137.
16Albro Martin, James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 16-45; Stewart Holbrook, James /. Hill: A Great Life in Brief (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1955), 9-23.
17Stover, American Railroads, 76; Holbrook, Hill, 13-42. "Martin,
18Martin, Hill, 122-40, 161-71, passim; Holbrook, Hill, 44, 54-68.
19Martin, Hill, 183; Robert Sobel, The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1974), 140; Howard L. Dickman, "James Jerome Hill and the Agricultural Development of the Northwest" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1977), 67-144.
20Holbrook, Hill,93; Martin, Hill, 366.
21Martin, Hill,381-83; Comfort, Hill, 67-70.
23Martin, Hill,233, 236.
23Ibid., 225, 239-43, 264-70.
24Ibid., 298, 307, 338, 346, 494.
25Ibid., 410-11.
26Ibid., 300, 414-15, 442.
27Robert W. Fogel, The Union Pacific Railroad (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960), 99-100.
28Ibid., 25. Carl Degler has a variant of this viewpoint. He says, "In the West, where settlement was sparse, railroad building required government assistance." Later, he adds, "By the time the last of the four pioneer transcontinentals, James J. Hill's Great Northern, was constructed in the 1890s, private capital was able and ready to do the job unassisted by government." This argument suggests that the key variable is the timing of the building, not the subsidy itself. The main problem here is that Hill's transcontinental across the sparse Northwest, especially with the Canadian Pacific above him and the Northern Pacific below him, was just as risky as the Union Pacific was. That's why it was called "Hill's Folly." Also, Hill was building at roughly the same time as the Northern Pacific; but Hill succeeded, while the Northern Pacific failed. Finally, we need to remember that, in 1893, Hill flourished, while the Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, and the Santa Fe all went into receivership. This brings us back to the subsidy as the problem, not the timing of the gift. See Carl Degler, The Age of the Economic Revolution, 1876-1900 (Glenview, 111.: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1977), 19-20.
29For a development of much of this argument, see Albro Martin, Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of American Railroads, 1897-1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971). See also Martin, Hill, 535-44.
30Fogel, Union Pacific Railroad, 41.
31Holbrook, Hill, 161-63; Sobel, Entrepreneurs, 138; James J. Hill, Highways of Progress (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Co., 1910), 156-69.
32Holbrook, Hill, 162-63.
33Md., 161; Sobel, Entrepreneurs, 135; Martin, Hill, 464-65.
34Martin, Hill, 298-99, 307, 347, 442, 462.
35Hill, Highways of Progress, 156-184; Holbrook, Hill, 163; Ari and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 49-59.
36Hill, Highways of Progress, 169; Martin, Hill, 540.
37Dominick T. Armentano, The Myths of Antitrust: Economic Theory and Legal Cases (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington Press, 1972), 56-58.
38Martin, Hill, 494-523.
39Armentano, The Myths of Antitrust, 58-62; Martin, Hill, 515, 518.
40Armentano, The Myths of Antitrust, 58-59.
41Martin, Hill, 519.
42Robert Sobel, The Age of Giant Corporations: A Microeconomic History of American Business, 1914-1970 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), 189-94.
Notes to Chapter Three
The Scrantons and America's First Iron Rails
1For a good discussion of America's iron industry in the 1830s and 1840s, see Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Century America: An Economic Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964), 20-52.
2Ibid.t 47. Biddle's quotation is in David Craft, W. A. Wilcox, Alfred Hand, and J. Wooldridge, History of Scranton, Pennsylvania (Dayton: H. W. Crew, 1891), 247.
3America's first rails were built in the 1820s and were made of wood. These were gradually supplemented by English-made iron rails during the 1830s and 1840s. A couple of American firms, particularly the Mount Savage Works at Lonaconing, Maryland, experimented with making iron rails in the 1840s before the Scrantons did. But the Scrantons were the first to mass produce notable quantities of iron rails. See W. David Lewis, "The Early History of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company: A Study in Technological Adaptation," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 96 (October 1972), 456-58; Stover, American Railroads, 20-29; John Moody, The Railroad Builders (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919), 66-70; Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Century America, 109, 117.
4For a more detailed description of the Scranton experiment, see Folsom, Urban Capitalists.
5Much information on the Scrantons' efforts at economic development can be gathered from the Scranton papers, known as the Edmund T. Lukens Collection (hereafter cited ETLC), in the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. Another smaller collection of Scranton correspondence is available in the Lackawanna Historical Society (hereafter LHS) in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The best secondary source on the Scrantons' early attempts at iron and coal development is Lewis, 'The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company." For the quotation in this paragraph, see William Henry to Selden Scranton, March 8, 1840, Box 9, ETLC.
6The trauma of the Scrantons' early years in the Lackawanna Valley is described in the correspondence in Box 9, ETLC. For a good summary of
the Scrantons from 1841-43, see Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 435-51.
7Frederick L. Hitchcock, History of Scranton and Its People, 2 vols. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1914), 1:28.
8Ibid.; Personal interviews with Robert C. Mattes, Lackawanna Historical Society, October 1972, and April 1973.
9For a good discussion of this, see Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company."
10John P. Gallagher, "Scranton: Industry and Politics, 1835-1885," (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University, 1964), 39, 57; Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 454-55; Horace Hollister, Contributions to the History of the Lackawanna Valley (New York: W. H. Tinson, 1857), 166.
11Edward Hungerford, Men of Erie: A Story of Human Effort (New York: Random House, 1946), 76-78; Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 454-55; Hollister, Contributions, 166.
12Edward H. Mott, Between Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie (New York: Ticker Publishing Company, 1908), 91; Benjamin H. Throop, A Half Century in Scrant
on (Scranton, Pa.: Press of the Scranton Republican, 1895), 114-16.
13George W. Scranton to Selden Scranton, August 3, 1846, ETLC, Box 9, in Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 460-63. See also Frank W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 7th ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1923), 112-35. George Scranton later became an advocate for higher tariffs. See the Daily National Intelligencer, March 27, 1861.
14Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 1:51-57. Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 440, 464-66.
15Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 1:51-57; Report of Joseph J. Albright, coal agent, May 1852, ETLC, Box 11; Joseph H. Scranton to Selden T. Scranton, February 23,1854, ETLC, Box 11; Charles Silkman to Selden T. Scranton, March 28, 1849, ETLC, Box 13.
16Robert J. Casey and W. A. S. Douglas, The Lackawanna Story: The First Hundred Years of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951), 32-72, 208-11; Hitchcock, History of Scranton 1:55-57. Michael Meylert to Selden T. Scranton, August 3,1853, ETLC, Box 13; Horace Hayden, Alfred Hand, and John W. Jordan, Genealogical and Family History of the Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys Pennsylvania, 2 vols. (New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), 2:50-51, 154.
17Two of the important New Yorkers were Anson Phelps and William E. Dodge, who founded Phelps, Dodge and Company. See William B. Shaw, "William Earl Dodge," Harold U. Faulkner, "Anson G. Phelps," and Joseph
V. Fuller, "William Walter Phelps," DAB, 5:352-53, 14:525-26, and 533; Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 458-59. In a letter to Selden Scranton, John J. Phelps asserted, "The Erie Company is managed by Connecticut businessmen—of large means, and liberal views, and they will be disposed to go for ... the several interests of their city." See John J. Phelps to Selden T. Scranton, December 16, 29, 1845, ETLC, Box 13; and Hayden et al., Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys, 2:153-54.
18William Henry to Selden T. Scranton, March 8,1840, June 8, July, and August 24,1841, ETLC, Box 9; Charles Silkman to Selden T. Scranton, March 28, 29, 1849, ETLC, Box 13; Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 442.
19Throop, A Half Century in Scranton, 135.
20This terminology comes from Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Terminology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).
.21Hollister, Contributions, 124-25.
22Some members of this committee were upset that the North Branch Canal would not provide a feeder to connect their farming area to outside markets. Wilkes-Barre Advocate, December 19,1838, cited by Hollister, Contributions, 105. For an additional description of the opposition to economic development, see Throop, A Half Century in Scranton, 124-26.
23Horace Hollister, History of the Lackawanna Valley (New York: C. A. Alvord, 1869), 238; William Henry to Selden T. Scranton, March 10, 1841, ETLC, Box 9; Sanford Grant to Selden T. Scranton, June 9,1841, ETLC, Box 9; George W. Scranton to Selden T. Scranton, May 23, 1846, ETLC, Box 9.
24Hollister, Contributions, 116; Hollister, History of the Lackawanna Valley, 231-32; Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 454; Sanford Grant to Selden T. Scranton, June 9,1841, ETLC, Box 9. One contemporary insisted, "The Lackawanna Iron Works, supposed to be hopelessly bankrupt, were of no account to the old settlers in their struggles for a single gleam of financial sunlight." John R. Durfee, Reminiscences of Carbondale, Dundaff, and Providence Forty Years Past (Philadelphia: Miller's Bible Publishing House, 1875), 103.
25Hollister, Contributions, 108, 118, 124, 133; Throop, A Half Century in Scranton, 263-76.
26Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 1:360-62; Scranton Republican, March 30, and April 13, 27, 1866; The Legislative Record: Debates and Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Legislature, Session of 1866 (Harrisburg, 1866) 825-26.
27Scranton Republican, April 13, 1866. Henry C. Bradsby, History ofLuzerne County, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Selections (Chicago: S. B. Nelson and Co., 1893), 473-74, 520.
28Durfee, Reminiscences, et passim; R. G. Dun Credit Ledgers, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County, 89:49, 53, 71, 89.
29W. David Lewis, "William Henry, Armsmaker, Ironmaster, and Railroad Speculator: A Case Study in Failure," in Proceedings of the Business History Conference (Ft. Worth, Texas, 1973), 51-94; Manuscript Census Returns, Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, Luzeme County, Pennsylvania, National Archives Microfilm Series, M-593, Roll 1368; Personal interview with Robert C. Mattes, October 1972. See also John H. Frederick, "George Whitfield Scranton," DAB, 16:513-14; Daily National Intelligencer, March 27, 1861.
30The listing of wealth for Scranton, Blair, and Platt is in Manuscript Census Returns, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, 1870. The quotation is from Joseph H. Scranton to Selden T. Scranton, February 28, 1843, Box 9, ETLC, which is discussed in Lewis, "The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 449.
31The information on wealth holding is available in the federal manuscript censuses of 1850 and 1870. The 1870 census citation is in note 29. The 1850 census citation is Manuscript Census Returns, Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, National Archives Microfilm Series, M-432, Roll 793.
32This deduction is implied from other studies of city and hinterland. For example, see James W. Livingood, The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 1780-1860 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947). A recent study that involves coal and Pennsylvania regions is Edward J. Davies II, Anthracite Aristocracy: Leadership and Social Change in the Hard Coal Regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1800-1930 (DeKalb, 111.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985).
33Pennsylvania's Schuylkill region is an example of a coal area that did not develop a strong local elite and became subordinate to nearby Philadelphia. See Davies, Anthracite Aristocracy. See also Robert Baldwin, "Patterns of Development in Newly Settled Regions," Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies 24 (May 1956) 161-79.
34For a more detailed description of Scranton attracting investors from nearby towns, see Folsom, Urban Capitalists, chapters 3, 4, and 6.
35New York Sun, May 10,1935, in Obituaries Notebook No. 7, in Lackawanna Historical Society, 74; Hitchcock, History of Scranton 1:10-13; Throop, A Half Century in Scranton; Hollister, Contributions, 132-33; Personal interview with Robert C. Mattes, April 1973; Personal interview with William Lewis, July 1978.
36Samuel C. Logan, The Life of Thomas Dickson: A Memorial (Scranton, Pa.: n.p., 1888); Gerald M. Best, Locomotives of the Dickson Manufacturing
Company, (San Marino, Ca.: Golden West, 1966); Chapman Publishing Company, Portrait and Biographical Record ofLackawanna County, Pennsylvania (New York: Chapman Publishing Co., 1897), 502-03, 455-57; Hitchcock, History of Scmnton, 1:89-90; 2:22-24, 37-40, 498-501; R. G. Dun Credit Ledgers, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County, 93:119, 94:330.
37Joseph J. Albright to Selden Scranton, July 7, 1850, October 14, 1850, and November 9, 1850, Boxes 36 and 10, ETLC; Chapman Publishing Company, Lackawanna County, 205-07.
3SR. G. Dun Credit Ledgers, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County, 94:40, 91:939; Chapman Publishing Company, Lackawanna County, 205-07.
39Phillip Walter to Selden T. Scranton, May 19, 1852, ETLC, Box 10; for a brief description of Walter's relationship to the Scrantons, see Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 1:7.
40The Welshman was Lewis Pughe. See W. W. Munsell and Company, History of Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Wyoming Counties with Biographical Sketches of Some of their Prominent Men and Pioneers (New York: W. W. Munsell and Co., 1880), 438D, 392B; Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 1:211-12, 426-34.
41Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 2:1-5. See also Luther Laflin Mills, Joseph H. Twitchell, Alfred Hand, Frederick L. Hitchcock, James H. Torrey, Eugene Smith, Edward B. Sturges, Charles H. Wells, James McLeod, and James A. Beaver, eds., Henry Martyn Boies: Appreciations of His Life and Character (New York, 1904).
42Thomas F. Murphy, History of Lackawanna County, 3 vols. (Topeka: Historical Publishing Co., 1928), 1:614-16.
43IWd., 617-18; Craft et al., History of Scranton, 283-84.
/> 44In 1900, Scranton's population was 102,026. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900: Population (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902), 2:606-07.
45For a more detailed analysis of this Scranton elite, see Folsom, Urban Capitalists, chapter 7.
46Personal interviews with Robert C. Mattes, April 1973, and William Lewis, July 1978.
47For a fuller discussion of this point, see Burton W. Folsom, "Like Fathers, Unlike Sons: The Fall of the Business Elite in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1880-1920," Pennsylvania History 46 (October 1980), 291-309.
48Logan, Thomas Dickson; Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 1:89-90, 254-55; 2:22-24; Chapman Publishing Company, Lackawanna County, 456-57; 502-04; Mills et al., Henry Martyn Boies, 51; Scranton City Directory, 1921; Murphy, History of Lackawanna County, 682-83.
49R. G. Dun Credit Ledgers, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County, 95:133, 93:380, 91:1136; Murphy, History of Lackawanna County, 1:128-29; Rowland Berthoff, "The Social Order of the Anthracite Region, 1825-1902," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 89 (September 1965), 261-91.
50Hitchcock, History of Scranton 2:10-13; New York Sun, May 10, 1935, cited in Obituaries Notebook No. 7, in Lackawanna Historical Society, 74; Personal interview with Robert C. Mattes, director of the Lackawanna Historical Society, April 1973.
51Obituaries Notebook No. 7, in Lackawanna Historical Society, 40; R. G. Dun Credit Ledgers, Pennsylvania, Luzeme County, 96:249.
52Hitchcock, History of Scranton, 1:254-55; 2:10-13.
53Most historians and scholars have argued that continuity from wealthy father to son is typical. See E. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1958); Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co., 1973); Ferdinand Lundberg, The Rich and Super-Rich (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1968); John N. Ingham, The Iron Barons: A Social Analysis of an American Urban Elite, 1874-1965 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978).
For a point of view different from these studies, see Lee Benson, Robert Gough, Ira Harkavy, Marc Levine, and Brodie Remington, "Propositions on Economic Strata and Groups, Social Classes, Ruling Classes: A Strategic Natural Experiment, Philadelphia Economic and Prestige Elites, 1775-1860" (unpublished essay, University of Pennsylvania, 1976). My thinking on this issue has been strongly influenced by Professor Benson.
