Always on track, ewv! You may enjoy The Man Who Found the Money: John Stewart Kennedy and the Financing of the Western Railroads by Saul Engelbourg. (My review and reader comments here: http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Boo...

All the more reason it should be shown to OUR employees so the can see and hear what industry can, has done to make America the greatest country in the world to live in. Also the greatest example of what "free thinking, free people are capable of accomplishing". This morning on the history channel I was viewing what we are ding with respect to going to Mars, which I happen not to agree with, waste of money, but that aside it certainly is a major human accomplishment. The dunces in wash. d.c wouldn't understand anyway.

I thought the president of the NYC was correct in pointing out that the taxes they pay were used to build facilities for their competition; airports for the airlines, and superhighways for the trucks. He was advocating primarily for that to be reformed so the railroads could compete on a level playing field. But he went on to say if that couldn't be accomplished, then provide railroads with a subsidy. That was where I got off his train! But he was prophetic in that the reforms he asked for did not happen, and Penn Central (the merged RR of the NYC and the PRR) went bankrupt in 1970, which basically marked the end of intercity passenger railroading in the US. Amtrak has been a continuing national embarrassment since it was formed, and has required operating subsidies ever since. To me, what the government did to the railroads since the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act perfectly illustrates the dictum that whatever the government sets out to regulate, it eventually kills.

I wrote a college term paper on James J. Hill and the building of the Great Western railroad when I was in college, so I am familiar with the story. I was inspired to research Hill based on reading about him in Ayn Rand's non-fiction writing. I actually quoted Rand in my paper, and my prof loved it.

Yes, land grant railroads like the UP and CP benefitted from government largesse, but others like the Great Northern and the New York Central were mostly built without help from the government.

What are you counting as subsidies? The land grants along the right of way across Federal lands in the west were for unowned land that was supposed to be settled and claimed as it was used privately. We can question how it was allocated and how much, but in principle it was the way it should have been done, not subsidies.

WWII also saw Ham radio activities curtailed. I'm somewhat surprised, though not disappointed, that this hasn't happened, since.