Death Rode the Rails

For most of the nineteenthand much of the twentiethcenturies, railroads dominatedAmerican transportation.They transformedlife and they captured theimagination. Yet by 1907railroads had also becomethe largest cause of violentdeath in the country, in thatyear claiming the lives ofnearly twelve thousand passengers,workers, and others.In Death Rode the Rails,Mark Aldrich explores theevolution of railroad safety in the United States by examininga variety of incidents: the spectacular train wrecks,the smaller accidents in shops and yards that devastatedthe lives of workers and their families, and the deaths ofthousands of women and children killed while walking onor crossing the street-grade tracks.The evolution of railroad safety, Aldrich argues, involvedthe interplay of market forces, science and technology, andlegal and public pressures. He considers the railroad as asystem in its entirety—including its operational realities,technical constraints, economic history, internal politics,and labor management. Aldrich shows that economics initiallyencouraged American carriers to build and operatecheap and dangerous lines. Only over time did the trade-offbetween safety and output—shaped by labor markets andpublic policy—motivate carriers to develop technologicalimprovements that enhanced both productivity and safety.A fascinating account of one of America's most importantindustries and its dangers, Death Rode the Rails will appealto scholars of economics and the history of transportation,technology, labor, regulation, and business, as wellas to railroad enthusiasts. 40 halftones, 29 line drawings.