Pacific Railroad Company Research Articles

Consequences of Ignoring the Curvature of the Earth in Nineteenth-Century Large Surveys: A Case Study of Geometrical Geodesy and the Survey of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company Eighty-Mile Reserve

Consequences of Ignoring the Curvature of the Earth in Nineteenth-Century Large Surveys: A Case Study of Geometrical Geodesy and the Survey of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company Eighty-Mile Reserve

Erratum for “Consequences of Ignoring the Curvature of the Earth in Nineteenth-Century Large Surveys: A Case Study of Geometrical Geodesy and the Survey of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company Eighty-Mile Reserve”

Erratum for “Consequences of Ignoring the Curvature of the Earth in Nineteenth-Century Large Surveys: A Case Study of Geometrical Geodesy and the Survey of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company Eighty-Mile Reserve”

The income bond puzzle

The income bond puzzle

Entre el mutualismo y la institucionalización. Los trabajadores del Ferrocarril Sud Pacífico de México y los caminos de la negociación en el periodo institucional, 1917–1927

The aim of this article is to analyze the organization of workers of the South Pacific Railway Company of Mexico during the country’s initial constitutional decade. During this period, the management of their rights vacillated between mutualism and institutionalization. This analysis posits that workers in post-revolutionary Mexico did not immediately adhere to the provisions outlined in constitutional Article 123. Instead, these workers amalgamated mutualistic and normative elements as a negotiation tool in their conflicts against the capital. Through a review of bibliographic and documentary sources, this study reconstructs three distinct labor conflicts occurring in 1917, 1923, and 1927. I argue that the observed oscillation between mutualism and institutionalization was a consequence of various intertwined factors, of which the most relevant are the prevalence of general mutualism in Sonora, the legal ambiguity regarding the jurisdiction to arbitrate railway conflicts between local and federal authorities, and the influence of local political clientelism.

Revised Corporate History of Northern Pacific Railway Company As of June 30, 1917. Centennial Edition Including a Foreword with Later Corporate Changes

From the Foreword: Railroads have been important in American history since the mid-nineteenth century for national unification, the settlement of the American West, the industrial revolution, economic growth, models of complex organization for other large corporations, and the transition of America from rural, agrarian society to urban, industrial society. The railroads’ transformative influence of technological change and social change has been termed “railroadization” (Schumpeter 1939, 1:325-351). Alfred D. Chandler Jr. (1965, 9-12) characterized the railroad industry as the first big business in America. The transcontinental railroads were especially significant. A transcontinental railroad may be defined as a railroad whose eastern terminal is east of the Continental Divide and whose western terminal is on the Pacific coast.… This book, Revised Corporate History of the Northern Pacific Railway As of June 30, 1917, Prepared in Accordance With Valuation Order No. 20 of the Interstate Commerce Commission, is the official history of the Northern Pacific Railway, and it documents corporate changes from the Northern Pacific’s charter on July 2, 1864, to June 30, 1917. It was prepared in accordance with Valuation Order number 20 of the Interstate Commerce Commission. … In order to complete the history of the Northern Pacific Railway it is necessary to add the corporate changes that occurred from 1917 until its merger into the Burlington Northern in 1970.

Book Review: A Mighty Fine Road: A History of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company by H. Roger Grant

Book Review: <i>A Mighty Fine Road: A History of the Chicago, Rock Island &amp; Pacific Railroad Company</i> by H. Roger Grant

Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons by Lisa Siraganian

<i>Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons</i> by Lisa Siraganian

H. Roger Grant, A Mighty Fine Road: A History of the Chicago, Rock Island &amp; Pacific Railroad Company

Review of: A Mighty Fine Road: A History of the Chicago, Rock Island &amp; Pacific Railroad Company, by H. Roger Grant.

William E. Barnes, Forgotten Booster: Documenting Why Archaeology Came to the University of Arizona

William E. Barnes, Forgotten Booster:Documenting Why Archaeology Came to the University of Arizona David R. Wilcox (bio) It is now well known that the new president of the University of Arizona (UA) as of January 1915, Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid [1875–1964] (figure 1; see Bio Sketch 11), soon after indirectly hearing in mid-March 1915 from Byron Cummings [1860–1954] (figure 2) that he was interested in a position in archaeology at the UA, hired him in late June 1915 to be the founding professor of a Department of Archaeology and director of the Arizona State Museum (ASM) (Thompson 2005, 2015a, 2018a,b; Wilcox 2005, 2016a,b; Bostwick 2006; Ferg 2014, 2017). New research, however, shows that a movement in the direction of establishing these two institutions on an archaeological footing began with a public appeal by a businessman, W. [William] E. Barnes2 [1869–1916], the traveling freight and passenger agent of the Southern Pacific Railway Company headquartered in Tucson. Barnes in the fall of 1913 BC (Before Cummings) began to lobby the Arizona governor and the Arizona legislature to found a School and Chair of Archaeology at the UA and also an ASM there dedicated to archaeological studies. This was done without his apparently knowing that ASM as a natural history museum already had been authorized at the UA in 1893 via a bill introduced by then legislator (and later seven-time governor of Arizona, 1912–1917, 1923–1929, 1931–1932) George Wiley Paul Hunt [1859–1934] (figure 3) (Thompson 2005, 2018b; Wilcox 2005; Ferg 2014, 2017). To explain why Barnes succeeded so well—but not as well as he hoped—requires first a deeper examination of earlier efforts that built up public support that Barnes was able to capitalize upon. The forces in play included antiquarian interest in Arizona's prehistoric remains, which were at first regarded as curiosities or "curios" and "relics" of a mysterious race that attracted an audience locally but also nationally [End Page 143] and internationally. Gradually, concerned citizens of Arizona Territory began to realize that they were "losing" these resources to outside exploiters, and there then was a growing recognition that action was needed to find ways to keep these "resources" in the territory for the benefit of Arizona's citizens. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid. (UA Biographical File, KleinSmid, Rufus B. von, Special Collections Library, University of Arizona) [End Page 144] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Byron Cummings. (UA Biographical File, Cummings, Byron, Special Collections Library, University of Arizona) [End Page 145] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Governor George Wiley Paul Hunt in his office, March 1915. (AZ SW Photographic Collection, People, folder 60, HUG–HZ, Special Collections Library, University of Arizona) Following the building of the railroads through Arizona to California, and the housing boom in California in the 1880s, the economics of tourism became increasingly important in Arizona and the West (Pomeroy 1965, 1990 [1957]; Rothman 1998). By the 1890s, efforts to draw tourists' attention to some of Arizona's prehistoric "attractions" had begun in earnest by the Arizona Antiquarian Association. With the formation of women's clubs, however, highly valued civic reasons for the preservation of Arizona's ruins were formulated involving the importance of education, heritage preservation, and access for local benefit. By the early twentieth century, even more ambitious efforts along these lines were happening in adjacent western states or territories that also influenced public opinion in Arizona. By the time W. E. Barnes came to Tucson in August 1911, his employer, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, was increasingly interested in promoting local growth, increasing traffic on their routes, and publicizing the attractions and educational opportunities to be seen nearby. In the middle 1910s the [End Page 146] automobile also had become a vitally important factor, and the Good Roads Movement was promoting many interests parallel to those of the railroads (Devine 1997). It was fertile ground for a talented booster and publicist like Barnes to bring "sunshine" to the communities along the Southern Pacific's Sunset Line, one result of which was the creation of a...

The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad ed. by Gordan Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Reviewed by: The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroaded. by Gordan Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin Marimas Hosan Mostiller (bio) Gordan Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, editors. The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad. Asian America, Firstedition. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. xiii, 539 pp. Paperback $30.00. isbn978-1-5036-0924-2. The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroadis an anthology that aims to tell the story of Chinese railroad workers who are largely forgotten in the U.S. history. In popular and academic writing, Chinese railroad workers are viewed as mere background to center the railroad project, and little [End Page 247]is known about their actual lives. In the anthology's introduction, Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Hilton Obenzinger note that Chinese railroad workers are not viewed as "agents of history" (p. 3). This is in part because there are few written narratives and archives from these laborers. In 2012, the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University was formed, and over 100 scholars from a number of disciplines worked together to find primary sources in English, Chinese, and other languages to build the Project. This anthology is a production of this Project. The introduction of the anthology also states: "the story of Chinese railroad workers is necessarily a story of transpacific connections and of the intertwined social, economic, and political histories of nineteenth-century China and the United States" (pp. 5–6). With the passage of the 1862 Pacific Railway Act, the Central Pacific Railroad Company was set to build the first transcontinental railroad from Sacramento, California, to Promontory, Utah. The history of the railroad work was divided into four periods: (1) 1862–mid-1865 in which President Abraham Lincoln authorized the Pacific Railway Act and also the beginning of Chinese railroad work; (2) mid-1865 to mid-1867 in which Chinese workers began to organize and strike for better wages; (3) mid-1867 to May 1869, which marked the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah, but left Chinese railroad workers publicly unrecognized in the railroad's construction; and (4) June 1869–1889, which focused on the completion of the railroad, the continued nonrecognition of Chinese railroad workers, and the emergence of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. The story of Chinese railroad workers moves beyond knowledge of the railroad and is then also a story of the Chinese diaspora, which is foundational in ethnic U.S. history and Asian American history. The anthology is divided into four sections: (1) Global Perspectives, (2) Ties to China, (3) Life on the Line, (4) Chinese Railroad Workers in Cultural Memory, and (5) Chinese Railroad Workers After Promontory. "Section One: Global Perspectives" offered two essays that utilized a transnational approach to viewing Chinese railroad workers. In chapter 1, Gordon H. Chang examined how the railroad connected the United States and China and emphasized how the railroad was also utilized as an American nation-building tool to heal the nation from the more recent Civil War. In chapter 2, Evelyn Hu-Dehart focused on locales in which Chinese laborers lived and speculated on the reasons behind why laborers decided to work abroad. Hu-Dehart challenged the exaggeration that migrants from Pearl River delta of Guangdong Province were leaving for work simply because the region was impoverished, instead Hu-Dehart argued that it was likely that because these laborers lived near ports, they were less bewildered and intimidated by recruiters for these work opportunities. Hu-Dehart also speculated that laborers [End Page 248]who migrated to Cuba between the 1860s and 1870s were more likely forced into these positions than those who migrated and worked in California. "Section Two: Ties to China" offered three essays that examined the social, cultural, familial, and economic ties that Chinese railroad workers had to their home villages, which shaped their social behavior in the United States. In chapter 3, Zhang Guoxiong with Roland Hsu focused on the Chinese railroad workers' return home and explained how these hometowns were influenced by the return. In chapter 4, Yuan Ding, with Roland Hsu...

Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West by Jason E. Pierce

Reviewed by: Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West by Jason E. Pierce Mikal B. Eckstrom Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West. By Jason E. Pierce. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2016. 312 pp. Figures, maps, bibliography, index. $45.00 hardcover. Jason Pierce traces the process by which whites first feared the American West as an untamed place and later viewed it as an edenic space where they exercised authority over nonwhite peoples. For Pierce, the nexus of creating a white man's West began with the Louisiana Purchase, but the railroad was the engine that turned that mythic West into reality. Through-out the nineteenth century, white men controlled American Indians, Chinese, and Hispanics through violence. And because the work concerns itself with whiteness, the book pulls from intermountain West archival sources paired with national and regional newspapers. Making the White Man's West also relies on archives from Northern Pacific Railway Company to make a very crucial claim: railroads participated in social engineering throughout the Great Plains. They did so by recruiting and working with immigration agents that they felt best suited—both in musculature and moral terms—the needs of the railroads. This fact, along with how Pierce charts the shift from the wildness of the West to a white civilization, is what makes his book so persuasive. Disease, immigration, and contradictions shaped the West. As rates of tuberculosis rose, Colorado, California, and New Mexico actively competed by building sanitariums for the wealthy. The West transformed from a savage space to a safe haven from the "diseased East." Some characterized this not only in epidemiological terms, but also racially. The agreeable climate and the vision of a space where white masculinity and stamina could reimagine itself turned the American West from an expendable space into a white sanctuary from the sullied eastern seaboard. And yet, whites always knew that American Indians were there and that Hispanics and Chinese provided the necessary labor for the railroads and mining. Social critics like Frank Law Olmsted detailed how immigrant white farmers tilled their fields, while Charles Fletcher Lummis, a noted champion for American Indians, sought to ensure that white Anglo-Saxons remained secure in their dominant position. Mormons, who largely came from European stock, and Armenians also sought to stake their claims of whiteness in the West, albeit with mixed results. Pierce does a fine job unpacking the various ways in which whiteness operates in the American West. As he points out, debates over immigration and the control over who inhabits the West have not stopped, making his argument all the more important to the present. [End Page 154] Mikal B. Eckstrom Department of History University of Nebraska–Lincoln Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The Rock Island LineBillMarvell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Rock Island Line Bill Marvell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.A newspaper journalist and freelance writer for almost fifty years, Marvel has written the story of the legendary railroad, the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad Company, whose tracks spanned the Midwest, serving farms and small-town America for almost 140 years. Rock Island, which was one of the earliest railroads to build westward from Chicago, started in 1847 and was the first to span the Mississippi, advancing the frontier, bringing settlers to the West, and hauling their crops to market. By 1854, the line connected the Mississippi River to Chicago and then with the East Coast. By 1856, the line crossed the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi, connecting farms in Iowa and beyond to Chicago. When it finally succumbed in the early 1980s, the result was one of the biggest business bankruptcies ever, one of the longest and most complicated in US railroad history.Part of the Railroads Past and Present Series, Rock Island Line is a labor of love for the author and his enthusiasm for his subject shines through in the lavishness of the photographs he has selected. book will appeal to both the train enthusiast and to pop culture fans. It is quite readable, with six chapters and an epilogue. well-captioned photographs tell their own story although they also supplement the text.Chapter One, The Bridge, is one of the most interesting as it details the beginnings of the Rock Island Line, the problems of the early railroads as they replaced the much slower steamboats in transporting goods and passengers, and contains a sidebar about Abraham Lincoln (22). In May 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton, which usually plied the New OrleansLouisville run, rammed a bridge, then suddenly burst into flames. railroad's case was argued by Abraham Lincoln who stated that not only was the steamboat at fault in striking the bridge but that bridges across navigable rivers were to the advantage of the country. case went one way and then another in successive courts, but in 1866 the US Supreme Court held for the railroad.Another informative chapter, The Road to Ruin (Six), emphasizes the problems the Rock Island Line and other trains encountered in the late 1950s as the prosperity that had returned with World War Two largely dissipated. Jet airliners, which were replacing trains in popularity as a faster form of passenger travel, soon competed with a growing interstate highway system while freight moved in trucks and on barges. …

All Aboard! Travel Films, Railroads, and the North American West, 1897–1910

Beginning with the first travelogues of the late 1890s, the film and tourism industries collaborated both directly and indirectly to shape representations of North America’s western landscape and its people. These non-narrative motion pictures intersected with the rise of mass consumerism, modern tourism, the forces of imperialism and colonialism, as well as industrialized forms of transportation. In particular, railroad travel films from the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and the Northern Pacific Railway Company transformed motion-picture goers into armchair tourists, exposing audiences to the scenic wonders of the West. These transcontinental railroads, themselves products of nation-building initiatives, competed against one another to increase passenger traffic by marketing the sublime and often overlapping landscapes of the American and Canadian Wests as potent nationalist and unifying symbols that heralded each country’s uniqueness.

The Treaty with China: Its Provisions Explained

The Treaty with China: Its Provisions Explained

Farmers, Phantoms and Princes. The Canadian Pacific Railway and Filmmaking from 1899-1919

The development of motion pictures coincided with the development of active publicity campaigns by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. It did not take the CPR long to realize the potential of the new medium and capitalize on the public's fascination with train and motion. In order to encoutage immigration and settlement to western Canada, the company developed an extensive system of promotion which included the use of films. CPR filmmaking fell broadly into two categories, those which were designed with a specific intent to educate, inform and persuade and those which were primarily intended as entertainment. If CPR did not define the type of filmmaking rathet it facilitated the production of contemporary appeal.

Building the Union Pacific Railroad: a study of mid-nineteenth-century railroad construction accounting and reporting practices

America's greatest technological achievement of the nineteenth century was the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The ensuing political scandal over the disposition of millions of dollars in government bonds led to congressional hearings that revealed accounting and reporting practices for construction contracts that obscured the relationship between the two companies involved – the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Credit Mobilier of America. Some of the accounting practices, such as the reporting of assets, liabilities, and capital matched contemporary practices of the mid-nineteenth century. Other practices, such as accounting for stock dividends and bond discounts, may have been first employed by the two organizations, but some eventually made their way into common practice among railroads of that era.

Contraception Coverage: Employers May Exclude Contraception Coverage from their Health Insurance Plans – Standridge v. Union Pacific Railroad Company

Contraception Coverage: Employers May Exclude Contraception Coverage from their Health Insurance Plans - Standridge v. Union Pacific Railroad Company1 - The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently held that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA) does not require employers to cover contraception as part of their health insurance plans.2 The court further held that employers do not violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), as amended by the PDA, by excluding contraception from their health insurance plans.3 Union Pacific Railroad Company (Union Pacific) provided health care benefits to its employees through several different health plans.4 These plans provided coverage for services such as routine doctor visits, tetanus shots, and drug and alcohol treatments.5 The plans excluded, for both males and females, prescription and non-prescription contraception unless the contraception was medically necessary for a non-contraceptive purpose, such as treating skin problems.6 Two of Union Pacific's female employees, Brandi Standridge and Kenya Phillips, brought suit against Union Pacific for sexual discrimination under Title VII.7 Specifically, Standridge and Phillips alleged that Union Pacific discriminated against its female employees by failing to cover prescription contraception.8 Title VII provides, in pertinent part, that [i]t shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer ... to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, of such individual's . . . sex.9 After the Supreme Court held that denial of pregnancy benefits did not violate Title VII in General Electric Company v. Gilbert, 10 Congress enacted the PDA.11 The provides: The terms because of sex or the basis of sex include, but are not limited to, of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs, as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work ... .12 The district court interpreted the broadly, holding that requires employer health plans to the risk of pregnancy no less favorably than the Plans treat other similar health risks.13 Applying this interpretation, the district court found that Union Pacific violated Title VII, as amended by the PDA, it treats medical care women need to prevent pregnancy less favorably than treats medical care needed to prevent other medical conditions that are no greater threat to employee's health than is pregnancy.14 On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed.15 In reaching its decision, the court relied extensively on its holding in Krauel v. Iowa Methodist Medical Center,16 where the court held that the PDA does not extend to treatment.17 In Krauel, the court distinguished from pregnancy and childbirth infertility prevents conception, while pregnancy, childbirth and medical conditions related to them can occur only after conception.18 Applying Krauel, the court held that the does not apply to contraception because, like treatments, contraception is a treatment that is only indicated prior to pregnancy.19 In addition, the court stated that contraception and are similar in that they are gender-neutral terms they apply equally to both men and women.20 Consequently, the court found that Union Pacific's policy of denying coverage for contraception did not violate Title VII, as amended by the PDA.21 The court also considered whether, under a general Title VII analysis, Union Pacific's coverage plan discriminated on the basis of sex.22 Under a claim of disparate treatment, Standridge and Phillips had to establish that Union Pacific's plan treated its female employees less favorably than treated its similarly situated male employees. …

Posters of the Canadian Pacific

Three hundred vintage advertising and promotional posters. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company (CPR) was widely hailed as World's Greatest Travel System. The Canadian Pacific transcontinental railroad spanned North America from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans. The company also operated luxury hotels and resorts, passenger ocean liners, cargo ships, and an airline. To promote the company and Canada to the world, Canadian Pacific produced more than 2,500 stunning lithographic and silkscreen posters -- 1,000 of which were created in its own graphic studio. Posters of the Canadian Pacific is a treasury of three hundred of the finest posters published by the company. They were displayed in Canadian Pacific offices and independent travel agencies worldwide from the 1880s until the 1970s. These posters enticed millions to visit and even settle in Canada. The posters span the years 1883-1973 with special focus on the Art Deco style posters of the 1920s and '30s. They focus on travel and leisure -- activities on ski slopes, golf courses, beaches, and luxury resorts. Other posters feature Canadian Pacific ocean liners in exotic locations around the globe such as the West Indies, Rio, Hawaii and the Orient. Posters of the Canadian Pacific will appeal to a wide audience including art lovers, history buffs and railroad enthusiasts.

The Saint Paul &amp; Pacific Railroad: an empire in the making, 1862-1879

Beginning in 1862 as a small carrier connecting St. Paul and Minneapolis with outlying towns, the Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad became the foundation of the vast rail system that would open the entire Northwest. As a pioneering line in virgin territory, it played a vital role in the early development of Minnesota's economy. When railroad tycoon James J. Hill took over the troubled company in 1879, its tracks were extended into westward lines that eventually, as the Great Northern Railway, reached the Pacific Ocean. Written by leading railroad historian Augustus J. Veenendaal Jr. this finely researched book examines the growth of the fledgling Saint Paul & Pacific as it struggled to lay track, meet the schedule, and make the payroll. The railway's leaders and workers took risks of injury and ruin during these years on the frontier, when everything except hardship was in short supply. Veenendaal devotes an entire chapter to the accidents and disasters that befell the new enterprise, including deadly collisions and derailments. He also chronicles triumphs, such as the use of the Miller coupler and the refurbishment of the famed Wm. Crooks, a 4-4-0 woodburning engine that was the first locomotive in Minnesota. Veenendaal reveals the strategic importance of foreign investment in American railroads in particular, Dutch investment. The Saint Paul & Pacific was one of the first railroads to attract the attention of Dutch bankers, who would eventually become the second largest group of foreign investors in American railroads. After James J. Hill bought out the Dutch interest in the railroad, he reorganized it as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad. Today, after the megamergers of recent years, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe system owns the ghost of the old Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad Company.

The Licensee's Period of Grace: Bellotti Reconsidered

At present the law fails to provide an adequate balance between the interests of licensor and licensee when a licensor revokes a licence but gives an unreasonably short notice. The prevailing orthodoxy has followed the Court of Appeal decision in Minister of Health v. Bellotti. This article will argue that the consequences of this decision have proved disastrous for both licensors and licensees. In direct conflict with Bellotti is the Privy Council authority of Canadian Pacific Railway Company v. The King.