amazon/dp/B00D1G9ZO2 I am collecting books on the transcontinental railroad, and I am quickly filling my library with them. This topic has been popular since the 1930s, and is the subject of many books. There are many myths that have been written about the railroad and the men who built it. In reviewing the literature, I will attempt to point out truth from fiction, and give my opinion on which are the best books. I begin with an interesting book but not one that I necessarily recommend that you buy, “The Great American Railroad War' by Dennis Drabelle. This is less a book about the railroad and more of an exploration of two writers, Frank Norris, who wrote “The Octopus” and Ambrose Bierce, a Civil War veteran who wrote chilling, macabre short stories. His most famous tale is “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” The story was turned into a film, which was shown in schools and aired on the Twilight Zone in the 60s. You can watch it in You Tube. Bierce was also a journalist noted for his poison pen and pointed attacks on public figures. Norris and Bierce were fierce critics of the Central Pacific Railroad. Bierce despised the deal the railroad made with the federal government for bonds and land to build the railroad. When the bonds came due 30 years after they were issued, the story goes, Collis P. Huntington, one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, tired to get a bill through Congress that would get the railroad off the hook for paying the government back. Bierce, in the employ of William Randolph Hearst, wrote a series of articles that exposed the bill and derailed (sorry!) Huntington’s efforts to avoid paying Uncle Sam. In 1901 Frank Norris wrote “The Octopus,” a novel that serves as an expose of the “abuses” of the railroad, much like “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair exposed the excesses of the meat-packing industry. The fight over the bond repayment was big news at the time, and Drabelle provides an interesting account of that issue. But the book provides many pages explaining the literary influences and personal lives of the two writers, and gets quite a bit off-track (sorry again!) from the railroad story. Drabelle makes a minor mistake when he writes that James Strobridge, the construction foreman on the Central Pacific, lost an eye during an accident involving the use of nitroglycerin while blasting through the granite of the Sierra Nevada. In fact, Strobridge lost an eye during a black powder accident at Bloomer Cut in April, 1864, a few years before and many miles from the construction in the mountains. However, the author does a good job in separating myth from truth in the Mussel Slough incident. He also explains the myth behind the reported encounter between Huntington and Bierce. The oft-told story went that Huntington, tired of Bierce’s published criticism of him, confronted Bierce on the steps of the Capitol and told Bierce to name his price. Bierce supposedly answered, “my price is one hundred thirty million dollars. If, when you are ready to pay, I happen to be out of town, you may hand it over to my friend, the Treasurer of the United States.” This never happened, and Drabelle tells the less dramatic true story. The book often talks about the railroad controlling California politics and over-charging customers. But Drabelle does not give many specifics about these issues. If entire cities and shippers were outraged about the railroad’s tactics, there must be some compelling stories about it? Drabelle offers a few tidbits, but I would have welcomed more detail about how the railroad operated, and specific criticisms from shippers. The Great American Railroad War would be a better book if it focused more tightly on the war and not the details of the writers’ lives and the literary worlds they inhabited.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 21:10:08 +0000
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