The Gilded Age was the golden age of railroads. Railroad mileage almost quadrupled from 54,000 in 1870 to 193,000 in 1900. Four major trunk lines (New York Central, Erie, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore & Ohio) connected the eastern seaboard with the Midwest, and railroads penetrated the trans-Mississippi West. The East and West Coasts were first linked across the continent in 1869 when the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific along the central route; the connection was further solidified by the later completion of transcontinentals to the north (the Northern Pacific in 1883 and the Great Northern in 1893) and to the south (the Southern Pacific [1883] and the Santa Fe [1884]). Shorter feeder lines were acquired or constructed by trunk lines, creating large systems that crisscrossed the nation with a grid of rails, giving the United States the most extensive rail system in the world.
While railroad mileage almost doubled in the 1870s and the 1880s, only 30,000 miles of track were added in the 1890s. By then the roads concentrated less on expansion and more on improving existing lines and making them more efficient. Railroads were rebuilt, eliminating curves, reducing grades, replacing iron bridges with stronger steel structures, widening tunnels, retracking with heavier steel rails and better ties, double tracking in areas of great density, introducing more sophisticated signaling systems, enlarging freight yards, and building beautiful passenger stations. More powerful locomotives, attractive passenger cars, and capacious freight cars equipped with automatic couplers and air brakes were also introduced. With these improvements railroads by 1900 were able to reduce the cost of moving a ton of freight one mile (a ton mile) to three-quarters of one cent.
The impact of railroads, with their enormous and efficient carrying capacity, on the American economy and society can hardly be exaggerated. Railroads made possible the rapid settlement of the West and the spectacular growth of cities in the late 19th century. Railroads transported bulky products of mines, forests, and fields cheaply to smelters and mills for processing and refining, then to manufacturers, and finally to consumers in rural and urban areas. Railroads facilitated the phenomenal growth of large-scale factories by supplying them with materials, distributing finished goods far and wide, and by giving food to their workers and families. The railroad network converted mid19th-century regional economies into a national economy. For example, cheaper factory goods from the East caused less efficient California manufacturers to cut labor costs by using underpaid Chinese laborers, touching off racist riots. At the same time, superior California pears ruined Pennsylvania pear growers. Easy and rapid transportation also bound the nation closer, bringing outlying areas nearer to the mainstream. Trips that earlier in the 19th century were arduous, hazardous, and literally took months could be completed in a few days in comfortable sleeping cars during the Gilded Age.
By 1870 railroads had developed into the largest business enterprises the nation had seen. Major railroads built or acquired thousands of miles of track stretched over several states. They required enormous investments of capital in their rights of way, rolling stock, freight-handling facilities, and passenger stations. And they were built and operated by a labor force the size of an army and whose strikes were among the most spectacular of the era (the Great Strike of 1877, the Knights of Labor in 1885-86, and the 1894 Pullman Strike). Although railroads were pri-
A Currier and Ives engraving showing two express trains leaving the station, 1874 (Library of Congress)
Vate corporations, their construction (especially of western roads in sparsely populated areas) was financed in part by the federal land grants and by outright gifts from communities anxious for rail service. American and foreign, especially British, investors bought railroad bonds and financed most of their construction.
In 1870 some railroads were controlled by dishonest, corrupt managers who cheated their investors and bribed legislators. The construction companies they created (like the Credit Mobilier) to build the road (like the Union Pacific) would pad costs and pay the insiders enormous dividends, leaving the road—which they would abandon— deeply in debt and overcapitalized. This was accomplished by “watering” the stock, i. e., by selling more securities than the real worth of the railroad. In the late 1860s, because federal loans financed construction of the Union Pacific, the Credit Mobilier used some of that money to bribe members of Congress. Jay Gould of the Erie Railroad spent $1 million bribing the New York State legislature to legitimize the fraudulent issuing of stock. Overcapitalization took its toll. After Gould abandoned the Erie Railroad, it went bankrupt four times. Following the panic of 1893, railroads controlling one-third of the nation’s mileage were bankrupt.
By 1900, however, investment bankers like John Pierpont Morgan had reorganized bankrupt roads and squeezed most of the “water” out of railroad indebtedness. Morgan (among others) also worked to consolidate railroads into ever-larger systems. His efforts culminated in the 1901 Northern Securities Company, which controlled the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and the Chicago Burlington & Quincy, thus monopolizing territory from Chicago to Seattle. This led to the 1904 Northern Securities case, wherein the Supreme Court dissolved that holding company as a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890).
From their beginning, railroads had been subject to government regulation. Chartered by states as common carriers, railroads were forbidden to discriminate among their customers. But railroads were competitive at some points (usually cities served by other railroads or water transportation) and monopolistic over long stretches of their tracks (usually rural areas), and these facts encouraged them to discriminate. To boost the volume of freight carried between competitive points, railroads would offer large shippers like Standard Oil “rebates” (a refund of part of the published rate), charging them less for a long haul than they charged for a short haul along routes where they had a monopoly. Railroads preferred not to give rebates and occasionally attempted to create pools among themselves, dividing up tonnage or revenues and thus avoiding ruinous rate wars between competitive points.
Farmers, merchants, communities, and even regions were outraged by discrimination and by monopolistic pools, and in the 1870s they turned to politics and formed the Granger movement (Patrons of Husbandry) to seek redress in government regulation. Responding to their demands, state legislatures in the Midwest passed legislation setting rates and eliminating the long-haul/short-haul abuse, and in 1876 the Supreme Court in Munn v. Illi nois upheld state regulation of railroads even if involved in interstate commerce. Ten years later, the Court reversed itself in Wabash v. Illinois (1886), holding that states could not regulate interstate commerce and triggering demands in the West and South for federal action. Congress responded in 1887 with the Interstate Commerce Act, which was too strong for the railroads and too weak for reformers. Railroads were disturbed when pools were outlawed, but there was a loophole in the clause that prevented long-haul/short-haul discrimination, so while railroads had to adhere to published rates, the law did not specifically provide for rate regulation. It did provide for the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to administer the act. The ICC was effective until 1897, when the Supreme Court specifically outlawed its power to set rates (Maxi'mu'm Freight Rate decision) and so interpreted the long-short haul clause to render it useless (Alabama Midland case). The ICC was reduced to collecting statistics, and effective railroad regulation was postponed until the Progressive Era.
Further reading: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., ed., The Railroads: The Nation’s First Big Business (New York: Arno, 1981); Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 1845-1890: The Business Mind in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953); Ari Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative (New York: Norton, 1976); Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Reconstruction, end of See Hayes, Rutherford B.
Red Cloud (Mahpiya Luta) (ca. 1822-1909) leader in the war for the Bozeman Trail
An Oglala Sioux war leader, Red Cloud was one of their fiercest warriors, rivaling fellow Oglala Crazy Horse. However, once Red Cloud recognized the futility of further warfare, he became one of the “statesmen” of the Sioux people, traveling to Washington, D. C., to broker peace deals and establish reservations in the Dakotas.
Red Cloud was born along the North Platte River in modern-day western Nebraska. After his father died, he was raised by his maternal uncle, Chief Smoke. Red Cloud earned a reputation as a skilled warrior while fighting rival tribes such as the Pawnee, Crow, Ute, and Shoshone. He sided with his uncle in an Oglala dispute, which prevented him from becoming chief of the tribe at that time, but by the 1860s he was considered one of the war leaders of the Oglala.
In the spring of 1865 Red Cloud’s forces began attacking whites who encroached on Oglala land on their way to gold mines in Montana. After failed negotiations with the U. S. government, Red Cloud’s warriors and other Lakota, in the War for the Bozeman Trail (1866-68), forced the army to abandon its Bozeman posts. That war is notable as the one western engagement decisively won by Indian forces. Red Cloud negotiated a treaty at Fort Laramie in 1868 establishing the Great Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, but several bands refused to accept the treaty and move to that reservation and criticized him for pursuing diplomacy. Although he was a great warrior, Red Cloud in subsequent Sioux wars consistently advocated peace. He traveled to New York and Washington, D. C., in 1870 and settled on the reservation in 1871. The move of white settlers onto Sioux lands following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills led to the War for the Black Hills (1876-77). Red Cloud opposed that war and encouraged Crazy Horse to surrender in 1877, but the army suspected Red Cloud of having secretly supported his fellow Sioux in the campaign culminating in General George A. Custer’s disaster at the Battle of Little Bighorn, where indeed his son had fought. General George Crook denounced Red Cloud and tried unsuccessfully to depose him as chief.
Following Crazy Horse’s surrender, the Oglala Sioux were confined on the Pine Ridge Agency in western South Dakota, and Red Cloud was regarded as their chief by the Oglala and the federal government. Red Cloud soon ran into difficulty with Valentine T. McGillicuddy, the government agent in charge of the reservation, who regarded him as a nonprogressive opponent of acculturation. Red Cloud petitioned for McGillicuddy’s removal and fought to preserve the Great Sioux Reservation. Red Cloud opposed the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, which redistributed reservation land to members of Native American tribes, replacing communal ownership with individual ownership and reducing the size of reservations. Red Cloud continued to oppose individual ownership and only in 1905, feeble and nearly blind, did he accept his allotment. Nevertheless, he remained a man of peace. During tensions stemming from the Ghost Dance movement in 1890, Red Cloud again tried unsuccessfully to prevent bloodshed. Although opposed to acculturation, he made it a two-way street by mingling Lakota and Christian religious ideas, and prior to his death on December 10, 1909, he was baptized as a Roman Catholic.
Further reading: Robert W. Larson, Red Cloud: War-rior-States'man of the Lakota Sioux (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997).
—Scott Sendrow
Reed, Thomas Brackett (1839-1902) politician Thomas Brackett Reed, the powerful Speaker of the House of Representatives, was born on October 18, 1839, in Portland, Maine, the son of Thomas Brackett Reed, Sr., and Mathilda Prince Mitchell. Following his graduation from Bowdoin College (1860), Reed taught school and began to study law in California. In 1863 he returned to Portland and was appointed in 1864 as an acting assistant paymaster in the navy, serving to the end of the Civil War. After his discharge from the navy, Reed resumed his legal studies in Portland and in 1865 was admitted to the Maine bar. In 1870 Reed married Susan Merrill Jones, with whom he had two children.
Reed was a member of the Republican Party. From 1868 to 1869 he served in the lower house of the Maine state legislature and in 1870 in the state senate. Elected as the attorney general of Maine in 1870, he served from 1871 to 1874 but failed to be renominated, and from 1874 to 1877 he served as city attorney for Portland. Elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1876, Reed assumed the seat vacated by James Gillespie Blaine when he was elected to the Senate.
In the House, Reed quickly distinguished himself. In 1878, as a minority member of the Clarkson Potter Committee investigating the disputed presidential election of 1876, Reed uncovered evidence of fraud and violence in Louisiana and discredited several Democratic witnesses. As a congressman, he favored federal policies that would secure voting rights for African Americans in the South, advocated protective tariffs, supported the gold standard, and opposed greenbacks, bimetallism, and the Free Silver movement. He voted against the Bland-Alli-son act of 1878 and in 1893 supported President Grover Cleveland’s demand for the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890.
In 1889, when the Republicans regained control of the House, Reed was chosen Speaker and moved to expedite business. Opposition members had paralyzed the House by refusing to answer the roll call and preventing the quorum necessary to legislate. As Speaker, Reed achieved a quorum by counting as present members who refused to answer the roll call. He then forced the adoption of the so-called Reed rules, strengthening the Speaker’s control over floor procedures, and by so doing was called “Czar Reed.” Using his power as Speaker, Reed enabled the 51st Congress (“billion dollar Congress”) to enact such legislation as the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). However, when the Democrats returned to power after the 1890 elections, they restored the old rules in the 52nd and 53rd Congresses.
The Democrats lost control of Congress in 1894, and the Republican majority reelected Reed to the speakership and reinstated his rules. In 1896 Reed was mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate. A powerful but acerbic figure in Congress, he could not attract national support. The Republicans instead nominated the far more affable William McKinley for the presidency. After the Republican victories in the 1896 elections, Reed was again elected to the speakership. Reed pushed the Dingley Tariff (1897) through the House but unsuccessfully opposed going to war with Spain in 1898 and the acquisition of colonial possessions. Disgusted with imperialism, Reed resigned from Congress in 1899 and entered private law practice in New York City, where he resided until his death on December 7, 1902.
Further reading: Ronald M. Peters, The American Speakership: The Office in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); William A. Robinson, Thomas B. Reed, Parliamentarian (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1930).
—Phillip Papas
Reid, Whitelaw (1837-1912) journalist Whitelaw Reid was born near Xenia, Ohio, on October 27, 1837. A bright and ambitious youth, he excelled in Latin, foreign languages, and science and graduated in 1856 with honors from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He had published items in the local paper and was a partisan of the new Republican Party. A year as a schoolmaster rid him of any desire to teach, and in 1858 he found his life’s work when he acquired part ownership of the Xenia News and edited it for two years. In March 1861 he began covering the Ohio legislature at Columbus for three papers, including the Cincinnati Gazette. Later that spring he became the latter’s city editor.
The Civil War, beginning in 1861, enabled Reid to demonstrate his ability as a newsman. He earned praise for his intelligent coverage of campaigns in western Virginia and the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. After 1862 he became an eastern correspondent for the Western Associated Press and provided a classic account of the Battle of Gettysburg.
In Washington, D. C., Reid was close to such Radical Republicans as Salmon P. Chase and Henry Winter Davis. With peace Reid went south for two years and was unsuccessful as a cotton planter in Louisiana and Alabama, before returning to the Cincinnati Gazette in 1867.
Horace Greeley gave Reid his great opportunity, calling him in 1868 to the New York Tribune. Within a year
Reid was the Tribune’s managing editor. He secured literary contributors such as Mark Twain and Bret Harte and added John Milton Hay, who had been Abraham Lincoln’s secretary, to the editorial staff. When Greeley was nominated for president by the Liberal Republican Party in 1872, Reid became the acting editor of the Tribune. When Greeley died, shortly after being decisively defeated by Ulysses S. Grant, Reid held on to the editorship, after borrowing money from Jay Gould and buying stock in the Tribune.
At 35 Reid was editor of one of America’s most prestigious papers, but it was running a deficit and faced financial disaster. Reid’s editorial policies won back the Tribune’s regular Republican base (lost during the election when the paper supported Greeley and Liberal Republicans) and turned around the paper. Reid emphasized his devotion to true Republican Party principles, while criticizing Grant and his stalwart cronies, as his second administration became mired in corrupt scandals. Unlike Liberal Republicans, Reid had little sympathy for civil service reeorm and none for tariff reform. His ideal statesman was James Gillespie Blaine, whom reformers considered unfit for the presidency but whom the Republican rank and file idolized. to Reid’s policies and intelligent, responsible reporting, the Tribune’s circulation recovered and leveled off at about 60,000 daily in 1876. With renewed prosperity the Tribune moved into an impressive new building in 1875—only the spire of Trinity Church was higher—and Reid quickly adopted technological advances, such as the Mergenthaler linotype machine.
Under Reid the Tribune regularly supported Republican presidential candidates, beginning in 1876 with Ruthereord B. Hayes. Hayes defeated Samuel Jones Tilden, Democrats charged, because of Republican fraud in counting votes in the South. Tribune staff members, however, in 1878 decoded the mysterious “cipher dispatches,” sent from Tilden’s home, which attempted to buy the 1876 election. The Tribune’s scoop silenced Democratic charges of Republican fraud, delighting Hayes, who invited Reid to a state dinner at the White House. There, First Lady Lucy Hayes sat him next to Elizabeth Mills, the daughter of a millionaire California banker. They married on April 26, 1881, and had two children.
The political scene altered dramatically for Reid with the July 1881 assassination of his good friend, President James Abram Gareield, and with his death in September, the assumption of the presidency by Chester Alan Arthur, the stalwart lieutenant of Reid’s political enemy Roscoe Conkling. Believing Arthur was strengthening stalwart Republicans in New York, Reid refused to support the party’s gubernatorial ticket in 1882. That move backfired when the Democrat Grover Cleveland triumphed so impressively that he won his party’s presidential nomination in 1884, and narrowly defeated Reid’s hero Blaine.
Reid had been highly critical of Cleveland in the campaign and continued to criticize him during his presidency. But, meanwhile, marriage, wealth, and capable lieutenants enabled Reid to step back from the paper and lead a more active social life. He supported Benjamin Harrison for president in 1888, and when he won, Harrison appointed him minister to France. After three enjoyable years he returned to the United States to work for Harrison’s reelection in 1892 and was rewarded with the vice presidential nomination. Naming Reid, however, did not inspire the New York Republican machine, controlled by Conkling’s successor, Thomas C. Platt, whom Reid had consistently opposed, and Cleveland carried New York and won the election.
Four years later, with William McKinley’s election to the presidency in 1896, Reid was rewarded for his unswerving support. He embraced Manieest Destiny and supported the Spanish-American War (although he had not clamored for it in the Tribune). As a commissioner to negotiate peace with Spain, he advocated annexing the entire Philippine archipelago and defended the treaty against the attacks of the Anti-Imperialist League. Reid supported President Theodore Roosevelt’s highhanded policy in Panama, and in 1905 he gave up the editorship of the Tribune and went as Roosevelt’s ambassador to Great Britain. He remained in that post until his death on December 15, 1912.
Further reading: Royal Cortissoz, The Life of Whitelaw Reid, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921); Bingham Duncan, Whitelaw Reid: Journalist, Politician, Diplomat (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975).
World History
