Steam City: Railroads, Urban Space, and Corporate Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Baltimore

David Schley

Published by University of Chicago Press 2020

Steam City

Railroads, Urban Space, and Corporate Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Baltimore

David Schley

In the series Historical Studies of Urban America

https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226720395

Overview
Contents

About this book

Anyone interested in the rise of American corporate capitalism should look to the streets of Baltimore. There, in 1827, citizens launched a bold new venture: a “rail-road” that would link their city with the fertile Ohio River Valley. They dubbed this company the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O), and they conceived of it as a public undertaking—an urban improvement, albeit one that would stretch hundreds of miles beyond the city limits.

Steam City tells the story of corporate capitalism starting from the street and moving outward, looking at how the rise of the railroad altered the fabric of everyday life in the United States. The B&O’s founders believed that their new line would remap American economic geography, but no one imagined that the railroad would also dramatically reshape the spaces of its terminal city. As railroad executives wrangled with city officials over their use of urban space, they formulated new ideas about the boundaries between public good and private profit. Ultimately, they reinvented the B&O as a private enterprise, unmoored to its home city. This bold reconception had implications not only for the people of Baltimore, but for the railroad industry as a whole. As David Schley shows here, privatizing the B&O helped set the stage for the rise of the corporation as a major force in the post-Civil War economy.

Steam City examines how the birth and spread of the American railroad—which brought rapid communications, fossil fuels, and new modes of corporate organization to the city—changed how people worked, where they lived, even how they crossed the street. As Schley makes clear, we still live with the consequences of this spatial and economic order today.

Author / Editor information

David Schley is assistant professor in the Department of History at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Reviews

"Steam City is deeply researched, intellectually ambitious, and lucidly presented. Historians of capitalism and of the city, as well as cultural and historical geographers, will take note. Make no mistake: this is an outstanding and important book."

— Tamara Plakins Thornton, University at Buffalo

"Have enormous private corporations ever been accountable to the governments that support them with tax dollars? Tackling this once-again urgent question, Schley traces the lamentable uncoupling of public money and public regulation over the course of the nineteenth century. Steam City is a lucid and learned account of railroad corporations and municipal governance, but the relationship of American democracy and capitalism is truly what’s at stake in this important book."

— Seth Rockman, Brown University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Maps, Figures, and Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Urban Origins of the American Railroad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2. Tracks in the Streets Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
3. The Rise and Fall of the B&O Note Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
4. Straight Lines and Crooked Rates Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
5. The Smoking, Puffing Locomotive Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
6. Privatizing the B&O Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
7. The Railroad Unbound and the City Contained Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
8. The Great Strike Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Appendix: The Board of Directors during the Stockholder Revolt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Abbreviations in the Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301

Language: English
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 352
Illustrations
- Other: 22 halftones
Keywords: railroads; urban space; corporations; capitalism; privatization; Baltimore; municipal government; infrastructure; labor; circulation

eBook

Published: October 6, 2020
ISBN: 9780226720395