ved as far as Columbus, Ohio, but the road was in constant need of repair and never reached far into the West. Every means of transportation at the time was both difficult and expensive both for freight and for passengers.
The railroad would bring massive economic changes to the nation, though not all of the economic change brought about by railroads is viewed as positive. The pattern set by the railroads would be the pattern followed by other monopolistic enterprises in the late nineteenth century, for instance, and often the railroads were complicitous in the creation of such monopolies as large business entities whose business served the needs of the railroads for shipping and the like. The problems associated with employee relations and this new entity, Big Business, also started with the railroads before being repeated again and again with other large-scale enterprises. Alfred D. Chandler accepts readily that the railroads brought about economic change in the American landscape and that they did this through a technological transformation of transportation and communication beginning in the 1830s and continuing through the rest of the century. He notes that this new business brought about a profound alteration in the existing patterns of American agriculture, industry, and commerce:
Besides stimulating national production and income, the new forms of transportation, particularly the railroad, helped to create new economic methods and institutions that were essential in guiding and shaping the American drive to industrialism.
The railroad made transportation and communication less costly than they had ever been, and the telegraph which accompanied the growing railroad meant almost instantaneous communication to nearly every part of the nation. Chandler argues that the railroad was America's first big business and created new patterns of economic and business activity and new institutional forms for business. This...