With their speed and geographical reach, America’s railroads
reigned supreme through much of the nineteenth century, knitting
together the sprawling country as no other mode of transportation
was able to do. Around 1900, however, an upstart challenger—the
automobile— arrived on the scene. At first regarded as little
more than a plaything for the wealthy, the new invention rapidly
gained popularity, especially after Henry Ford’s innovative
mass-production techniques made cars affordable to the middling
classes. In this engaging book, John A. Jakle and Keith A.
Sculle—renowned experts on the wide-ranging effects of
automobility on American life—examine the various ways in which
the railroads responded to their new competition, not just from the
automobile itself but from its close cousins, the motor truck and
motor bus, through several decades up to the eve of World War II.
Drawing on extensive research in the trade publications of the
period, the authors examine the development of interurban and
intraurban rail transport, the transition from steam to electric
and diesel power, and the railroads’ close involvement in the
nascent trucking and passenger-bus industries. They devote a
chapter to the places where trains and automobiles came most
directly and dangerously into conflict—railroad crossings—and
pay special attention throughout to the key role of government in
the competition, whether through antitrust legislation, taxation,
or the building of the “good roads” that were so necessary to
the rise of auto, truck, and bus transport. Although the railroads
remain with us, it was the automobile that emerged as the
predominant transportation form, owing to its promise of speed,
convenience, flexibility of movement, and, most important,
self-gratification. In a country that places such high value on
individual freedom, the romance of motoring has proven
irresistible.
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