If you were to decide to build a railroad across a continent, would it have occurred to you to build TWO — one from the west heading back eastward, and one from the east, heading westward — and hope that when they met…they actually met?, and didn’t, you know, miss each other by several miles, or even meters. And yet, that was the plan. It involved granting many loans and subsidies and right-of-ways under the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, and, because there was a war on (the Civil one, for those of you keeping score), a second round of subsidies was required (sound familiar?), which they issued under the greatly imaginative title of the Pacific Railway Act of 1864. There followed much death, corruption, flagrant disregard of ethnic workers, rail companies’ selling of their own bonds…thanks heavens America has learned her lesson from that experience, and hasn’t ever re-exhibited any of that behavior. (Hint: read a chronicle about the PRA, if you’ve the stomach for self-improvement.)
Pacific Railway Acts
