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55). Railroad Construction Accelerated Large Increases In Transatlantic ...

55). Railroad construction accelerated large increases in transatlantic trade, fuelled by the increased spending power of a British population that was aware that the steam train and the steam ship together allowed goods to be received and sent over a much shorter time span. American ports on the Atlantic coast had to expand to handle higher levels of imports and exports. In 1875 alone the USA's east coast ports received 5.8 million tons of imported goods. The existence of railroad systems allowed American ports to handle ever increasing amounts of imports and exports, helping to speed up the industrialisation of the USA (Hobsbawm, 1975 p. 58).

In the USA the economic potential of constructing railroad systems was grasped quickly. For instance, the first railroad route between Baltimore and Ohio commenced passenger and freight carrying services as early as 1830, in other words only a short period after the railroads in Britain had begun operating (Ward, 2003 p. 128). Prior to the construction of railroad systems goods and services were mainly transported on land via stagecoaches, or by water down rivers, canals, or even by ocean travel. The transport systems especially over land ones were slow and restricted trade and economic expansion (Seavoy, 2006 p. 133). By 1851 the longest stretch of railroad track was the Eyrie Railroad that went from Lake Eyrie through to New York City, an impressive achievement that demonstrated the USA expanding financial and industrial capacity (Ward, 2001 p. 147). The expansion of the railroad system was not particularly rapid to begin with. That was due to the majority of railroads only covering short distances, with expansion being constrained by the need to secure finance and resources, as well as the engineering problems that some of the terrain in the USA posed. The USA had produced considerably less than a million tons of iron a year during the 1830s. By 1870 the annual production of iron was nearer two million tons, an increase accounted for by the construction of railroads and the material demands of the American Civil War and post-war reconstruction (Hobsbawm, 1975 p. 40).
There was also a difference between the Northern and the Southern states in terms of the scope, speed, and extent of railroad constructions. Those differences could be explained by the slowness by which industrialisation occurred in the Southern states, were landowners and entrepreneurs seemed to spend more time and effort keeping slavery intact than investing in new machinery and railroads that would raise productivity and expand trade opportunities (Brogan, 1999 p. 288).


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