Thank you so much. I work for Boeing at night and just started a little machine shop in my garage. My first product will be ready soon.

Pt.3
In 1869 the final golden spike was driven but by 1874 the knowledge of the waste was so bad that congress passed the Thurman law in an attempt to recover some of the overages. When the panic of 1873 hit, 3 of the five transcontinentals went bankrupt. J.P. Morgan reorganized them bringing in businessman to bring them out of bankruptcy. While they languished J. Hill’s great Northern prospered under private funding and slashed costs 13 percent. He naturally argued against government furnishing any more capital to the failing railroads saying “The government should not furnish capital to [those] companies, in addition to their enormous land subsidies, to enable them to conduct business in competition with enterprises that have received no aid from the public treasury’ Albro martin, James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (New York: Oxford University Press,1976) 410-11 Hill’s private enterprise was in sharp contrast to the subsidized Union and Central Pacific. He went on to buy a Minnesota railroad previously subsidized and losing money in 1878 that had been called “Hills Folly” until he turned it around. Schweikart, Entrepreneurial Adventure, 152. Hill said “We want the best possible line, shortest distance, lowest grades and least cuvature,” identifying those characteristics that would ensure low costs. Stewart Holbrook, James J. Hill: A Great Life in Brief (New York: Knopf, 1955),93; Martin, James J. Hill, 366; Folsom, Myth of the Robber Barrons, 26-27.
One of Hills competitors was the Northern Pacific whose president Henry Villard who when receiving 42 million acres of free land from the government built the most lavish and scenic routes possible. Of course they were outrageously expensive, and the taxpayer was again on the hook. Villard tried to slow down Hill his capitalist competition by using his government connections to put up obstacles wherever possible. Even so Villard’s Northern nearly collapsed in 1893 and required massive loans. Hill simply said of his superior railroad, “[W]e have gone along and met their competiton.” Schweikart, Entrepreneurial Adventure,153.
Hill proved private financiers could fund and build a better transcontinental railroad and that it could survive while its government sponsored competitors failed. That is a lesson in the superiority and benefit of market economics!
As for the other examples in brief: The TVA has recently reported dam failures we don’t have the money to maintain and it created utility monopolies. It also had plenty of graft during construction and has benefited people locally more than it did nationally. The Panama Canal was given to the Panamanians after our great expense and is therefore at risk for the future benefit of Americans if the political winds change. Landing on the moon was a monumental achievement, but we have no moon base after 40 years and we are mothballing the shuttle program without a replacement ready and idling many NASA workers ostensibly because we don’t have the financial resources. We are now catching rides to the space station with the Russians. So much for winning the space race! Private entrepreneurs like Branson are now about to take the lead and offer space travel for far less than NASA can manage. So much for big government overreaching and overspending!
O.A.

Pt.2 0f 3
The role of stock sales became so important the entrepreneurs broke into two camps based on how they wanted to profit from the value of the railroads. One group of investors called the “political entrepreneurs” by historian Burton Folsom, wanted favors from local and state governments that would increase the value of the roads. Burton Folsom Jr., The Myth of the robber Barons (Herndon, VA: Young America’s Foundation, 1991). The other group “market entrepreneurs” usually turned to the market after failing to get government aid but almost without exception was more successful. “Political entrepreneurs” illustrated by the activities of Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, and Daniel Drew tried to use their political connections to manipulate stock prices, as in the “Harlem Corner’ (the trio bribed alderman to vote to allow the railroad to build through Harlem) or the “Erie war” where Fisk and Gould watered Erie Railroad stock, to gain advantage over opposition from Vanderbuilt. Their counterparts used tried and true business methods building quality products and providing the consumer with real value. The Political group obsessed with stock values in short term undercapitalized their roads and took shortcuts. The Market based railroad, Vanderbilt’s system the New York Central had long-term goals and ran a safer more efficient operation. Not a single person died in an accident compared to the 26 who perished under Gould’s direction on the Erie railroad alone. Schweikart, Entrepeneurial Adventure, 148. The contrast in efficiency was striking. Vanderbuilt cut costs 13.3 percent on the New York Central , increasing profits two hundred times.
There were always businessman who would take advantage of the government largess. During the civil war when the Union government was desperate to link coasts the Political entrepreneurs found legislators eager to fund their proposals. The Union and Pacific Railroads which were in theory to compete with one another in linking the coasts found the government structure advantageous for graft and sloppy construction and even connecting at all! Building the Union Pacific: From Wyoming Tales and Trails, http:www(dot)wyomingtalesandtrails(dot)com/pac2(dot)html The government paid per mile with a premium on mountainous routes which gave incentives to the builders to design the most circuitous mountain paths possible so as to maximize profit at the taxpayers expense. Folsom, Myth of the Robber Barrons, 18.

Public works, Keynsian economics, Capitalism:
Pt.1 of 3
It has been said that big government and big expenditures were necessary for the great public works to come into fruition and that they were of great benefit to society; that Keynsian economics were necessary and prudent. There is no doubt that they benefited society; but did they benefit all equally, were they fiscally responsible with taxpayer money and could they have been completed without great expense to the taxpayer? They no doubt benefited the workers at the time; but did they benefit the taxpayer long term, and were they responsible with the monies short term? For example did the Michigan taxpayer benefit as much as the Tennessee taxpayer when it came to the TVA? Some regional public works programs obviously benefit those in the region more than other taxpayers at a distance. The examples often put forward are the transcontinental railroad, the TVA, the Panama Canal, and NASA (moon landing). In general it can be argued that overall these things did benefit society. The way in which they were accomplished and maintained may be a different story.
Since much of Atlas Shrugged is centered around the railroad business it seems an appropriate topic to examine in detail, and in doing so we may find a different but largely typical perspective. We may find that the Nation would have had a transcontinental railroad without Federal involvement or monies anyway and it would have cost a lot less and avoided a lot of graft at the taxpayer’s expense. Entrepreneurs and capitalists are more efficient safer and avoid the graft inherent in big government programs and pork barrel spending because the looters/grafters bamboozle the bureaucrats and abuse the taxpayer.
A transcontinental railroad was built and completed by James J. Hill in 1893 without a cent of federal money. Virtually all the interstate railroads built before the civil war were financed by private companies or at worst, by state bond guarantees for the securities of construction firms. Schweikart, The Entrepreneurial Adventure; A History of Business in the United States (Fort Worth, TX; Harcourt, 2000) chapter 5, passim.
Entrepreneurs like Cornelius Vanderbuilt, Erastus Corning, J. Edgar Thompson, and Jay Gould financed most of the Nations large railroads from their own funds or that of stockholders. In fact the success was so great and the number of investors so large that it required the hiring of professional managers that started what would be called the “managerial revolution”. Alfred D. Chandler, Visible hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA; Belknap, 1977).

Hello terrycan,

I don’t believe a link would be helpful since the site has since been shutdown. However I do believe I might still have a copy of the piece saved somewhere. I will see if I can find it and perhaps re-post at least the most pertinent sections.

Regards,
O.A.