Why did American railroads decline from the glory days of the early
twentieth century? Why did so many railroad mergers in the 1950s
and 1960s, intended as a panacea for the ills of an outdated
system, go sour and, in fact, make a bad situation worse? Saunders
addresses these and many other issues in this authoritative history
of US railroads and their corporate mergers. Beginning with a
wide-ranging analysis of the role of railroads in the economic and
social fabric of American life, Saunders traces the causes and
results of the twentieth century's "merger mania." Mergers, he
explains, were expected to save money, to improve service to
customers, and to help railroads compete against other modes of
transportation, such as the growing airline and trucking
industries. Saunders then gives colorful, richly detailed accounts
of the mergers and shows the reasons-including corporate greed and
the inept blundering of government regulatory agencies-the outcomes
fell far short of expectations. Merging Lines explores the impact
of shifting political control of railroads as no history has done
before. The fates of both workers and railroad companies were
dictated by the rise and fall of business and governmental leaders,
including Bill Brosnan, Robert R. Young, Alfred Perlman, President
John F. Kennedy, and President Lyndon B. Johnson. As power
struggles erupted, the original goals of the mergers were thwarted
by consumer frustration, violent labor strikes, and organizational
collapse. Saunders explores these and other crucial developments in
this extensive work, carefully designed for railroad historians and
enthusiasts at any level. Encyclopedic in its scope, Merging Lines
includes sixty-eight maps, a list of court cases involving railroad
mergers, and a wealth of information on American railroads from
coast to coast. An extensively revised, updated, and supplemented
edition of Saunders's earlier classic, The Railroad Mergers and the
Coming of Conrail (1978), it is essential reading for all who are
interested in railroad and transportation history.
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