Engines of Redemption: Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South by R. Scott Huffard Jr

Abstract

Reviewed by: Engines of Redemption: Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South by R. Scott Huffard Jr John Majewsk (bio) Engines of Redemption: Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South. By R. Scott Huffard Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 305. Cloth, $90.00; paper, $32.50.) Engines of Redemption is an innovative and imaginative work that seeks to put late nineteenth-century southern railroads into the framework of the new history of capitalism that Edward Baptist, Sven Beckert, and Walter Johnson have formulated for the antebellum era. While capitalism figures prominently as an organizing principle in the book, Engines of Redemption is not so much an economic history as a cultural history. The result is a fascinating blend of stories that cover booster rhetoric, Jim Crow segregation, railroad accidents, train robbers, yellow fever, and anti-monopoly sentiment. In the end, though, it is not clear how these stories, however interesting in themselves, come together into a coherent whole. Huffard’s starting point is the magical thinking that railroads promoted. Boosters portrayed railroads as agents of prosperity for large cities and small towns alike, while the speed, size, and power of locomotive cast a “spell” over travelers. Huffard argues that railroad rhetoric and experiences often constituted a “phantasmagoria” that created a momentary illusion of prosperity and modernity. He uses the metaphor of magic throughout the book; words and phrases such as “casting the spell,” “phantasmagoria,” “netherworld,” and “spectres” appear in section and chapter titles. Huffard’s invocation of magical speech highlights the irrational elements of capitalism that are often overlooked. No amount of magical thinking, however, could hide how railroads adapted to the violence and racism that permeated the New South. Undercapitalized railroads lobbied for the use of cheap convict labor, which the corporations often used for the most difficult and demanding jobs. State regulators demanded that railroads comply with new Jim Crow laws that compelled segregated waiting rooms and cars. Southern railroads [End Page 588] blamed railroad accidents on mythical sabotage (often casting suspicion on innocent African Americans) to escape legal liability for shoddy construction and careless engineers. Train robbers, who received sensational press coverage, came to highlight the relentless and amoral pursuit of profit that increasingly defined the New South. If railroads were somehow magical, they represented capitalism’s worse devilry. Perhaps the chapter that best speaks to our own historical moment focuses on railroads and yellow fever epidemics. Yellow fever epidemics periodically struck coastal cities such as New Orleans, which offered an inviting climate for the mosquitoes that spread the disease. Railroads allowed it to spread to upland railroad towns. These terrifying yellow fever epidemics led to disrupted supply chains, fragmented and ineffective government responses, protracted debates about the efficacy of quarantines, and racial disparities in who could leave afflicted communities and who had to stay. Such issues are now frighteningly familiar to twenty-first-century Americans. The other chapter that stands out focuses on efforts to break up the Southern Railway. The rapid expansion of the southern railroad network in the 1880s created a number of struggling, undercapitalized lines. Many financiers and railroad executives believed that the only solution was to consolidate these lines into a coherent system that eliminated ruinous competition and further rationalized the system. The Southern Railway Corporation, formed in 1894 with the backing of J. P. Morgan, began consolidation primarily in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, but with lines running throughout the South. Business leaders in cities such as Macon, Georgia, began to fear that the Southern would ignore their city’s interest in favor of northern financiers. An antimonopoly movement to break up the Southern, with strong support from both jilted boosters and the Populist Party, began in Georgia and North Carolina. The movement ultimately failed, but it exposed two different visions of railroad capitalism: one focused on regional and national consolidation and integration, and the other based on service to local interests. The antimonopoly chapter dispenses with the framework of railroad magic that is so prominent in the rest of the book, suggesting the limitations of such conceptual metaphors. The emphasis on “railroad magic” captures the sense of fantasy and...