Notes

INTRODUCTION

    1.   Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 329.

    2.   President Barack Obama speaking in Roanoke, Virginia, on July 13, 2012. For the text and discussion of this passage, see Kathleen Hennessey in the Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2012.

    3.   Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 213–17, 284–92.

    4.   Burton W. Folsom Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons (Herndon, Va.: Young America’s Foundation, 2014).

    5.   The latest book on the National Road is Theodore Sky, The National Road and the Difficult Path to Sustainable National Investment (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2011). However, we still prefer Philip D. Jordan, The National Road (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1966). See also Karl Raitz, ed., The National Road (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 93–223.

    6.   Jordan, National Road, 79.

    7.   George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), 30.

    8.   Jordan, National Road, 95–102.

    9.   Ibid., 92, 98–99.

  10.   Ibid., 98, 283–85; Billy Joe Peyton, “Surveying and Building the Road,” in Raitz, ed., The National Road, 147–49.

  11.   Jordan, National Road, 282–85.

  12.   Ibid., 172.

  13.   Peyton, “Surveying and Building the Road,” 144; Gregory S. Rose, “Extending the Road West,” in Raitz, ed., The National Road, 187; Jordan, National Road, 175; and Sky, The National Road and the Difficult Path to Sustainable National Investment.

  14.   Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 691–98, 826–27.

  15.   Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (New York: Knopf, 2003), 220–23.

  16.   Robert L. Thompson, Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States, 1832–1866 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947), 27, 33; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 693.

  17.   Thompson, Wiring a Continent, 32–34.

  18.   Silverman, Lightning Man, 225–34, 249–96; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 691–98.

  19.   Larry Schweikart and Lynne Doti, American Entrepreneur (New York: Amacom, 2010), 107–108; Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 151–52.

  20.   Thompson, Wiring a Continent.

  21.   Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The Third ‘Fireside Chat’—‘The Simple Purposes and the Solid Foundations of Our Recovery Program,’ ” July 24, 1933, in Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1938), II, 295–303.

  22.   Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933,” in Rosenman, Public Papers, II, 11–16.

  23.   Roosevelt, “Campaign Address at Madison Square Garden, New York City, ‘We Have Only Just Begun to Fight,’ ” October 31, 1936, in Rosenman, Public Papers, V, 566–73.

  24.   Burton Folsom Jr. and Anita Folsom, FDR Goes to War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

  25.   For example, Professors John D. Black and Milburn Wilson wrote the foundation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

CHAPTER 1: BEAVER PELTS, BIG GOVERNMENT, AND JOHN JACOB ASTOR

    1.   Two classic works on the fur trade are Hiram M. Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [1901], 1986); and Paul Phillips, The Fur Trade, 2 vols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961). A useful recent account is Eric Jay Dolan, Fur, Fortune, and Empire (New York: Norton, 2010).

    2.   Good accounts of the early fur trade are found in Chittenden, American Fur Trade, and Phillips, Fur Trade.

    3.   Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 31–36. See also Prucha’s American Indian Treaties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

    4.   Prucha, The Great Father, 35–40; Phillips, Fur Trade, II, 76.

    5.   Prucha, Great Father, 35–40; Chittenden, American Fur Trade, I, 12–15.

    6.   Herman J. Viola, Thomas L. McKenney: Architect of America’s Early Indian Policy, 1816–1830 (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1974), 5.

    7.   Viola, McKenney, 2, 25–26; Phillips, Fur Trade, II, 76.

    8.   Viola, McKenney, 13, 25–26, 48–49, 68–69.

    9.   An early and usually reliable biography of Astor is Kenneth Wiggins Porter, John Jacob Astor: Businessman, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931). A useful short essay is William James Ghent, “John Jacob Astor,” in Allen Johnson, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), I, 397–99. The most reliable and most informative book on Astor is John Denis Haeger, John Jacob Astor: Business and Finance in the Early Republic (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991).

  10.   Haeger, Astor, 42–43, 46–56, 63.

  11.   Ibid., 57–60, 78–92, 203–204, 230–32.

  12.   Ibid., 57, 59, 67, 78.

  13.   Carolyn Gilman, Where Two Worlds Meet: The Great Lakes Fur Trade (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1982).

  14.   Haeger, Astor, 99–102, 105, 185–88, 205–43.

  15.   Porter, Astor, 711–12. An excellent and reliable historical novel that shows the fur trade in action is Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage (New York: Doubleday, 1937).

  16.   Gilman, Where Two Worlds Meet, 86; Haeger, Astor, 9, 13–14, 186.

  17.   Haeger, Astor, 14, 25–26, 68.

  18.   Viola, McKenney, 34.

  19.   Haeger, Astor, 238–39.

  20.   Ibid., 213, 221, 223.

  21.   Ibid., 228–29, 232–33; Porter, Astor, 589–638.

  22.   Viola, McKenney, 16–17, 19–20, 35, 48.

  23.   Porter, Astor, 686–790; Haeger, Astor, 226–27, 237.

  24.   Phillips, Fur Trade, II, 87; Viola, McKenney, 48, 54–55.

  25.   Viola, McKenney, 55.

  26.   Ibid., 57.

  27.   Ibid., 59; Prucha, The Great Father, 39; Phillips, Fur Trade, II, 89.

  28.   Viola, McKenney, 34–35, 56–57.

  29.   Viola, McKenney, 55–56; Porter, Astor, 706–707, 712–13; Haeger, Astor, 193; Phillips, Fur Trade, II, 69.

  30.   Haeger, Astor, 233–34.

  31.   Ibid., 208, 210–11; Prucha, The Great Father, 38.

  32.   Viola, McKenney, 57–58.

  33.   Ibid., 61.

  34.   Ibid.

  35.   Ibid., 48, 64; Haeger, Astor, 196–98, 209; Ida A. Thompson, The Michigan Fur Trade (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1919), 147–48.

  36.   Viola, McKenney, 48, 61–62.

  37.   Jedidiah Morse, A Report to the Secretary of War (Washington, D.C.: Davis & Force, 1822), 12.

  38.   Morse, Report, 13–15.

  39.   Ibid., 56.

  40.   Ibid., 61.

  41.   Viola, McKenney, 68–69; Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years View (New York: Appleton, 1854), I, 13, 20–21.

  42.   Phillips, Fur Trade, II, 94–95; Viola, McKenney, 68–69; Benton, Thirty Years View, I, 20–21.

  43.   Viola, McKenney, 71–80 (quotations on 74, 76); Francis Paul Prucha, Lewis Cass and American Indian Policy (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967), 10–11.

  44.   Viola, McKenney, 80.

  45.   Haeger, Astor, 220–23, 232–38.

  46.   Ibid., 234; Prucha, Lewis Cass, 10–11.

  47.   Haeger, Astor, 236.

  48.   Ibid., 107–109, 186, 236.

  49.   Ibid., 238–40.

  50.   Ibid., 236–37; Viola, McKenney, 201.

  51.   Viola, McKenney, 92–95.

  52.   Ibid., 98, 176.

  53.   Ibid., 173–75.

  54.   Ibid., 200–203.

  55.   Haeger, Astor, 242–43, 244–79, 282.

  56.   Viola, McKenney, 223, 268–77, 281, 292, 295–300.

CHAPTER 2: VANDERBILT GOES UPSTREAM AGAINST THE SUBSIDIES

    1.   Kirkpatrick Sale, The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream (New York: Free Press, 2001), 21.

    2.   John S. Morgan, Robert Fulton (New York: Mason/Charter, 1977), 21.

    3.   Ibid., 27.

    4.   Ibid., 66–67, 81–82, 132.

    5.   Fulton’s monopoly rights are clearly spelled out in a pamphlet titled The Right of a State to Grant Exclusive Privileges in Roads, Bridges, Canals, Navigable Waters, etc. Vindicated by a Candid Examination of the Grant from the State of New York to and Contract with Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton for Exclusive Navigation (New York: E. Conrad, 1811). For a good description of the steamboat monopoly, see Maurice G. Baxter, The Steamboat Monopoly: Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824 (New York: Knopf, 1972), 3–25. See also Morgan, Fulton, 178–88.

    6.   Baxter, Gibbons v. Ogden, 25–26; and Robert G. Albion, “Thomas Gibbons” and “Aaron Ogden,” Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928–37), VII, 242–43; VIII, 636–37 (hereafter cited as DAB). Two useful studies of Vanderbilt are Wheaton J. Lane, Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of the Steam Age (New York: Knopf, 1942); and William A. Croffut, The Vanderbilts and the Story of Their Fortune (Chicago: Belford Clarke, 1886). More recent and also helpful is T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Random House, 2009).

    7.   Chief Justice Marshall’s written decision has been reprinted in John Roche, ed., John Marshall: Major Opinions and Other Writings (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 206–25. A lively account of the Gibbons v. Ogden case is in Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916–19), IV, 397–460. See also Baxter, Gibbons v. Ogden, 37–86; David W. Thomason, “The Great Steamboat Monopoly,” American Neptune 16 ( January and October 1956), 23–40, 279–80; George Dangerfield, “Steamboats’ Charter of Freedom: Gibbons vs. Ogden,” American Heritage, October 1963, 38–43, 78–80; and Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 152–55. For a newer study, see Erik F. Haites, James Mak, and Gary M. Walton, Western River Transportation: The Era of Internal Development, 1810–1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).

    8.   David L. Buckman, Old Steamboat Days on the Hudson River (New York: Grafton Press, 1907), 53–55.

    9.   Lane, Vanderbilt, 43–49; Morgan, Fulton, 179, 187; Albion, New York, 152–55.

  10.   Lane, Vanderbilt, 47, 50–51.

  11.   Albion, New York, 154–55; Lane, Vanderbilt, 56–62.

  12.   Harper’s Weekly, March 5, 1859, 145–46; Lane, Vanderbilt, 50–84, 231; Albion, New York, 156–57.

  13.   Sailing ships (called “packets”) and clipper ships were still competitive carriers of freight (not passengers) before 1860. Their reliance on wind, not coal, made them cheaper, if not faster. During the 1850s, clipper ships captured a lot of trade to the Orient. The most thorough account of steamships is William S. Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce, 4 vols. (London: Sampson, Marston, Low, & Searle, 1874). See also John G. B. Hutchins, The American Maritime Industries and Public Policy, 1789–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), 348–62.

  14.   For a good history of the Cunard line, see Francis E. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, 1840–1973 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1975). See also David B. Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 142–45; Royal Meeker, History of the Shipping Subsidies (New York: Macmillan, 1905), 5–7; Hutchins, American Maritime Industries, 349; and Lindsay, Merchant Shipping, IV, 184. For an excellent critique of shipping subsidies, see Walter T. Dunmore, Ship Subsidies: An Economic Study of the Policy of Subsidizing Merchant Marines (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), esp. 92–103.

  15.   Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 2nd session, 755–56. Cunard later began weekly mail and passenger service. See also Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, 136–48; and William E. Bennet, The Collins Story (London: R. Hale, 1957).

  16.   For a defense of mail subsidies, see “Speech of James A. Bayard of Delaware on the Collins Line of Steamers Delivered in the Senate of the United States, May 10, 1852” (Washington: John T. Towers, 1852). See also Thomas Rainey, Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Port (New York: Appleton, 1858). For other views of the subsidies, see Lindsay, Merchant Shipping, IV, 200–203; Hutchins, American Maritime Industries, 358–62; and Dunmore, Ship Subsidies, 96–103.

  17.   French E. Chadwick, Ocean Steamships (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), 120–22; John H. Morrison, History of American Steam Navigation (New York: W. F. Sametz, 1903), 420–23; and N.A., “A Few Suggestions Respecting the United States Steam Mail Service” (n.p., 1850), 9–17.

  18.   Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, 206.

  19.   Ibid., 202–14; George E. Hargest, History of Letter Post Communications Between the United States and Europe, 1845–1875 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971). See also Henry Cohen, Business and Politics in America from the Age of Jackson to the Civil War: The Career Biography of W. W. Corcoran (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971), 109–13.

  20.   Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, Appendix, 192. See also Lane, Vanderbilt, 143–44.

  21.   Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, 225–29; Lane, Vanderbilt, 143–48; Hutchins, American Maritime Industries, 367; Dunmore, Ship Subsidies, 92–103; Roy Nichols, Franklin Pierce (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), 377. For Seward’s comment, see Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, Appendix, 301.

  22.   Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 2nd session, 1156–57; New York Evening Post, March 3 and 5, 1855; Baltimore Sun, March 5, 1855; Mark W. Summers, The Plundering Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 105–106, 206.

  23.   Summers, The Plundering Generation, 106.

  24.   New York Tribune, March 8, 1855; Lane, Vanderbilt, 147–48, 150.

  25.   Stiles, First Tycoon, 257–65; Lane, Vanderbilt, 147–48. In a letter to the New York Tribune, March 8, 1855, Vanderbilt complained that the Collins subsidy was “paralyzing private enterprise, and in fact forbidding it access to the ocean.”

  26.   Lane, Vanderbilt, 148–51, 167; Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, 238–41.

  27.   Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st session, 2826, 2827, 2843. See also Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, 231–46; James D. McCabe Jr., Great Fortunes (Philadelphia: G. MacLean, 1871); and Meeker, Shipping Subsidies, 156.

  28.   Lane, Vanderbilt, 151–56; Meeker, Shipping Subsidies, 5–20.

  29.   Meeker, Shipping Subsidies, 10–11.

  30.   Ibid.; Henry Fry, The History of North Atlantic Steam Navigation (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896), 42–53, 77–78, 81; Hyde, Cunard, 27–34.

  31.   Robert Macfarlane, History of Propellers and Steam Navigation (New York: George P. Putnam, 1851); Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, 117–18, 138–42; Lane, Vanderbilt, 93–94.

  32.   Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, Appendix, 354–55; Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, 128–32, 138–42; Lane, Vanderbilt, 175–78.

  33.   Earnest A. Wiltsee, Gold Rush Steamers (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1938), 50–89; Lane, Vanderbilt, 85–107; Hutchins, American Maritime Industries, 359–60.

  34.   Hutchins, American Maritime Industries, 359–63.

  35.   Lane, Vanderbilt, 108–38; Wiltsee, Gold Rush Steamers, 112–51.

  36.   Lane, Vanderbilt, 123–24, 135; Stiles, First Tycoon, 272–91; William D. Scroggs, “William Walker,” DAB, XIX, 363–65.

  37.   Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st session, 2843–44.

  38.   Lane, Vanderbilt, 124, 136.

  39.   In 1855, with Vanderbilt paid off, the California lines raised the New York to San Francisco fare from $150 to $300. They also doubled the steerage fare from $75 to $150. Many passengers—real and potential—were angry, but one point needs to be made. This fare was only one-half of what it was before Vanderbilt arrived. The effect of Vanderbilt’s competition was to shrink the fare from $600 to $150; when he left, it was still only $300. For the California lines to have raised the fare any higher would have probably meant two things: first, a decline in the number of passengers wanting to go to California; second, the appearance of a new rival ready to cut fares and capture what traffic was left. Since the California lines had only one-fourth of their subsidy left, they could ill afford the arrival of another Vanderbilt, so they kept the fares moderately low. See Wiltsee, Gold Rush Steamers, 21–26, 55–56, 139–42, 149.

  40.   Meeker, Shipping Subsidies, 156.

  41.   Harry H. Pierce, Railroads of New York: A Study of Government Aid, 1826–1875 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), 14–16; George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), 128–31; Julius Rubin, Canal or Railroad? Imitation and Innovation in Response to the Erie Canal in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1961); Douglass C. North, Growth and Welfare in the American Past (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974). After the Civil War, Vanderbilt sold his steamships and began building the New York Central Railroad from New York to Chicago. Vanderbilt again had to battle political entrepreneurs (this time city councilmen and state legislators) in New York who demanded bribes from Vanderbilt before they would approve a right-of-way for his railroad. But Vanderbilt never took his eyes off the main task: building the best railroad and delivering goods at the lowest possible prices. He spearheaded America’s switch from iron to steel rails, standardized his railroad’s gauge, and experimented with the four-track system. He improved roadbeds and rolling stock and cut his cost in half in seven years—all the time maintaining an 8 percent dividend to stockholders.

CHAPTER 3: THE BOY GOVERNOR ENDORSES STATE SUBSIDIES

    1.   Willis F. Dunbar and George S. May, Michigan: A History of the Wolverine State (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980), 222; Lawton T. Hemans, Life and Times of Stevens Thomson Mason (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1920), 17, 55.

    2.   Two books have been written on Mason. They are Hemans, Mason; and Kent Sagendorph, Stevens Thomson Mason: Misunderstood Patriot (New York: Dutton, 1947).

    3.   For the material in this and the following paragraphs on Mason’s early life, see Hemans, Mason, 11–37; and Sagendorph, Mason, 15–73.

    4.   Hemans, Mason, 23–34; Sagendorph, Mason, 59–67, 76.

    5.   Sagendorph, Mason, 86–89; Willard C. Klunder, Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1996); Frank B. Woodford, Lewis Cass: The Last Jeffersonian (New York: Octagon Books, 1973).

    6.   Sagendorph, Mason, 121–22, 126–31; Woodford, Lewis Cass, 187–89.

    7.   Sagendorph, Mason, 135–40.

    8.   Ibid., 143–44.

    9.   Ibid., 147–48.

  10.   Ibid., 22, 45–46; Helen Hill, “George Mason,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), VI, 361–64.

  11.   Emily V. Mason, Governor Mason’s sister, has written a valuable account of the Mason administration. See Emily V. Mason, “Chapters from the Autobiography of an Octogenarian, 1830–50,” Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society 35 (1905): 248–58; Sagendorph, Mason, 155–62.

  12.   Mason, “Autobiography,” 250; Sagendorph, Mason, 162–68.

  13.   George N. Fuller, Messages of the Governors of Michigan (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1925), I, 121–290; Sagendorph, Mason, 191–95.

  14.   Sagendorph, Mason, 232–58; Fuller, Messages of the Governors, 158–69.

  15.   For a description of the Erie Canal, and its impact, see John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects of Economic Development in New York State During the Canal Period, 1792–1838 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962); Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire: DeWitt Clinton and the American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Ronald E. Shaw, Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790–1860 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990). An old but useful study is Alvin F. Harlow, Old Towpaths: The Story of the American Canal Era (New York: Appleton, 1926).

  16.   George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), 32–37; Madeline S. Waggoner, The Long Haul West: The Great Canal Era, 1817–1850 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958), 32, 100, 180–81, 271–72.

  17.   Ronald E. Shaw, Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792–1854 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966).

  18.   Shaw, Erie Water West, 39–40, 47.

  19.   James Madison, “Veto of Federal Public Works Bill,” March 3, 1817. Online at constitution.org/JM/18170303_veto.htm. For recent criticism of Madison, see Larson, Internal Improvement, 67–69.

  20.   Shaw, Erie Water West, 39, 45–48, 61, 77–79, 86–111. For a recent treatment, see Peter Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation (New York: Norton, 2005), 211–19.

  21.   Shaw, Erie Water West, 73, 136, 406.

  22.   Dunbar and May, Michigan, 189–90; Thomas M. Cooley, Michigan: A History of Governments (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885), 203; Sagendorph, Mason, 92; Frank Woodford, Yankees in Wonderland (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1951), 13–20; Ronald Shaw, “Michigan Influences upon the Formative Years of the Erie Canal,” Michigan History 37 (March 1953): 1–19. The impact of the Erie Canal is developed in the Pulitzer Prize–winning book by Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 116–24.

  23.   Julius Rubin, Canal or Railroad? Imitation and Innovation in the Response to the Erie Canal in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1961); Reginald C. McGrane, Foreign Bondholders and American State Debts (New York: Macmillan, 1935).

  24.   Hill, “George Mason,” 361–64.

  25.   Harold M. Dorr, The Michigan Constitutional Convention of 1835–36 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1940), 394, 479.

  26.   Fuller, Messages of the Governors, 169, 192.

  27.   Ibid., 194–95.

  28.   Ibid., 170; Robert J. Parks, Democracy’s Railroads: Public Enterprise in Jacksonian Michigan (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972), 71–72.

  29.   Cooley, Michigan, 280; Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 39–41, 84–87, 91.

  30.   Rubin, Canal or Railroad?, 6, 10–11. Professor Rubin was Burt’s mentor in graduate school, and Burt benefited from many conversations with Professor Rubin on the Erie Canal. See also an important book by Rubin’s mentor: Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 52–61. See also Larson, Internal Improvement, 80–82.

  31.   Rubin, Canal or Railroad?, 5–8, 38–41; Julius Rubin, “An Innovative Public Improvement: The Erie Canal,” in Carter Goodrich, ed., Canals and American Economic Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970); Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 120, 216–17, 220, 393–94.

  32.   Fuller, Messages of the Governors, 196–97; Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 84–86; Dunbar and May, Michigan, 271–77.

  33.   Mason, “Autobiography,” 255–56; Sagendorph, Mason, 293–94, 327, 339–40.

  34.   Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 186–208; McGrane, Foreign Bondholders, 143–67.

  35.   Dunbar and May, Michigan, 274; Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827–1861 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), 117; Gene Schabath, “Cross-State Canal Stayed Just a Dream,” Detroit News, April 24, 1995, B3.

  36.   Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 134–38; Schabath, “Cross-State Canal,” B3.

  37.   Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 85, 91–117; Larson, Internal Improvement, 219–20.

  38.   Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 225.

  39.   Ibid., 118–31, 224.

  40.   Ibid., 134, 138–39.

  41.   Fuller, Messages of the Governors, 284.

  42.   Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 219–33.

  43.   Ibid., 63–90, 120–22, 154–85; Fuller, Messages of the Governors, 194–95.

  44.   Parks, Democracy’s Railroads, 120–23, 128, 162–67.

  45.   Ibid., 92–94.

  46.   Ibid., 125, 224.

  47.   Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 21, 36, 51; Clifford Thies, “Infrastructure’s Forgotten Failures,” Free Market 10 (July 1994): 6; Sagendorph, Mason, 397, 404–13.

  48.   Shaw, Erie Water West, 313–34; Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 14–15, 61–62, 85.

  49.   Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 36; Thies, “Infrastructure’s Forgotten Failures,” 6; Shaw, Canals for a Nation, 45–46. See also www.nycanals.com/Black_River_Canal.

  50.   Shaw, Erie Water West, 330–60, 417.

  51.   Larson, Internal Improvement, 80–87, 220–21; Shaw, Canals for a Nation, 81; Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 43–45; Goodrich, Government Promotion, 61–75.

  52.   Rubin, Canal or Railroad?, 10, 15–47; Albion, Rise of New York Port.

  53.   Harry N. Scheiber, Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969), 306. See also Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 45–46; Shaw, Canals for a Nation, 208–10, 226–27.

  54.   Shaw, Canals for a Nation, 215–16; Thies, “Infrastructure’s Forgotten Failures,” 6; Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 47.

  55.   Shaw, Canals for a Nation, 211–12, 218.

  56.   Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 48; Shaw, Canals for a Nation, 216–18; Thies, “Infrastructure’s Forgotten Failures,” 6.

  57.   Fuller, Messages of the Governors, 284, 382–86, 512–13.

  58.   Ibid., 516.

  59.   Cooley, Michigan, 290.

  60.   Fuller, Messages of the Governors, II, 45.

  61.   Willis F. Dunbar, All Aboard! A History of Railroads in Michigan (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1969), 29–56.

  62.   Cooley, Michigan, 291–93.

  63.   Grand Rapids Enquirer, October 9, 1850. See also Dunbar and May, Michigan, 366; Milo M. Quaife and Sidney Glazer, Michigan: From Primitive Wilderness to Industrial Commonwealth (New York: Prentice Hall, 1948), 188.

  64.   Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell, A New View of Economic History (New York: Norton, 1994), 150–56; Roger Ransom, “Social Returns from Public Transport Investment: A Case Study of the Ohio Canal,” Journal of Political Economy 78 (September–October 1970): 1041–64. For a good discussion of these issues, see Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti, American Entrepreneur (New York: Amacom, 2010), 88–90.

CHAPTER 4: JAMES J. HILL VS. SUBSIDIZED RAILROADS

    1.   Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 23–62, 90; John A. Garraty, The American Nation: A History of the United States, 7th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 497.

    2.   Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: Norton, 2011), 1–8; James F. Stover, American Railroads (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 67; Henry Kirke White, History of the Union Pacific Railway (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1895).

    3.   Ambrose, Nothing Like It, 132; Maury Klein, Union Pacific: Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987).

    4.   Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1971), 37–38, 43–44.

    5.   J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails, and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929), 207. See also Stanley P. Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge: Soldier, Politician, Railroad Pioneer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967).

    6.   Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 200–203.

    7.   Perkins, Dodge, 231–33, 238. See also William F. Rae, Westward by Rail: The New Route to the East (London: Longmans, Green, 1871).

    8.   Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 139–42.

    9.   Perkins, Dodge, 205–206; Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 153.

  10.   Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 224, 337–40, 346.

  11.   Julius Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 1869–1893: A Study of Businessmen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962), 70–71.

  12.   For a full description of the Central Pacific, see Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the Building of the Central Pacific (New York: Knopf, 1938).

  13.   Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 137. For a fuller account of Villard’s career, see James B. Hedges, Henry Villard and the Railways of the Northwest (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1930).

  14.   White, Railroaded, 1.

  15.   Hedges, Villard, 112–211; Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 140, 185.

  16.   Mildred H. Comfort, James Jerome Hill, Railroad Pioneer (Minneapolis: T. S. Denison, 1973), 64–65.

  17.   Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 137.

  18.   Albro Martin, James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 16–45; Stewart Holbrook, James J. Hill: A Great Life in Brief (New York: Knopf, 1955), 9–23.

  19.   Stover, American Railroads, 76; Holbrook, Hill, 13–42.

  20.   Martin, Hill, 122–40, 161–71, passim; Holbrook, Hill, 44, 54–68.

  21.   Martin, Hill, 183; Robert Sobel, The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1974), 140; Howard L. Dickman, “James Jerome Hill and the Agricultural Development of the Northwest” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1977), 67–144.

  22.   Holbrook, Hill, 93; Martin, Hill, 366.

  23.   Martin, Hill, 381–83; Comfort, Hill, 67–70.

  24.   The source for this paragraph and the following five paragraphs can be found in Martin, Hill, 225, 233, 236, 239–43, 264–70, 298, 300, 307, 338, 346, 410–15, 442, 494.

  25.   Robert W. Fogel, The Union Pacific Railroad (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960), 99–100.

  26.   Ibid., 25. Carl Degler has a variant of this viewpoint. He says, “In the West, where settlement was sparse, railroad building required government assistance.” Later, he adds, “By the time the last of the four pioneer transcontinentals, James J. Hill’s Great Northern, was constructed in the 1890s, private capital was able and ready to do the job unassisted by government.” This argument suggests that the key variable is the timing of the building, not the subsidy itself. The main problem here is that Hill’s transcontinental across the sparse Northwest, especially with the Canadian Pacific above him and the Northern Pacific below him, was just as risky as the Union Pacific was. That’s why it was called “Hill’s Folly.” Also, Hill was building at roughly the same time as the Northern Pacific; but Hill succeeded, while the Northern Pacific failed. Finally, we need to remember that, in 1893, Hill flourished, while the Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, and the Santa Fe all went into receivership. This brings us back to the subsidy as the problem, not the timing of the gift. See Carl Degler, The Age of the Economic Revolution, 1876–1900 (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1977), 19–20.

  27.   For a development of much of this argument, see Albro Martin, Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of American Railroads, 1897–1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971). See also Martin, Hill, 535–44.

  28.   Fogel, Union Pacific Railroad, 41.

  29.   Holbrook, Hill, 161–63; Sobel, Entrepreneurs, 138; James J. Hill, Highways of Progress (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1910), 156–69.

  30.   Holbrook, Hill, 162–63.

  31.   Ibid., 161; Sobel, Entrepreneurs, 135; Martin, Hill, 464–65. By the early 1900s, the UP began to compete seriously with the Great Northern. Toward the end of the Gilded Age, daring entrepreneurs bought the Union Pacific and paid off its federal debts. The UP, fully privatized, became one of the nation’s major railroads.

  32.   Martin, Hill, 298–99, 307, 347, 442, 462.

  33.   Hill, Highways of Progress, 156–184; Holbrook, Hill, 163; Martin, Hill, 540; Ari Arthur Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative (New York: Norton, 1976), 49–59.

CHAPTER 5: HERBERT DOW CHANGED THE WORLD

    1.   Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), II, 1104. See also Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932); and John Pafford, The Forgotten Conservative: Rediscovering Grover Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2013).

    2.   Ralph W. Hidy and Muriel E. Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 1882–1911 (New York: Harper, 1995), 130–54; Harold Livesay, Andrew Carnegie (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975).

    3.   Burton W. Folsom Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons (Herndon, Va.: Young America’s Foundation, 2010), 83–100.

    4.   Herbert Dow briefly describes his father’s influence in a letter he wrote in 1928, in the Post Street Archives (hereafter PSA), Midland, Michigan, doc. #87001. Burt has benefited from many conversations at the Post Street Archives with Ned Brandt, the company historian of Dow Chemical Company. A good secondary account is Don Whitehead, The Dow Story: The History of the Dow Chemical Company (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 19.

    5.   Whitehead, The Dow Story, 20. For an overview of the chemical industry, see Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005).

    6.   Murray Campbell and Harrison Hatton, Herbert H. Dow: Pioneer in Creative Chemistry (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951), 3.

    7.   Whitehead, The Dow Story, 21.

    8.   Ibid., 24; Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 15–19.

    9.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 28.

  10.   Whitehead, The Dow Story, 29.

  11.   Ibid., 31–32.

  12.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 41–42.

  13.   Ibid., 31–36.

  14.   For good summaries of the bleach war, see ibid., 55–60; and Whitehead, The Dow Story, 40, 53–54, 67. An excellent text is E. N. Brandt, Growth Company: Dow Chemical’s First Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997), 20–21, 42–45.

  15.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 58.

  16.   Ibid., 60.

  17.   For helpful accounts of the bromine war, see Brandt, Growth Company, 42–48; Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 72–78; and Whitehead, The Dow Story, 55–56, 59–61, 66, 69, 71.

  18.   Herbert Dow, “The Dow Chemical Company’s Experience with German Competitors,” PSA, doc. #200047. See also Dow’s description in an untitled paper, PSA, doc. #270065.

  19.   Dow’s account of the Jacobsohn episode is in Dow, “The Dow Chemical Company’s Experience with German Competitors,” 1–3.

  20.   “German Yellow Dog Fund,” from American Economist, February 4, 1921, PSA, doc. #210156.

  21.   Dow, “The Dow Chemical Company’s Experience with German Competitors.” See also “German Bromides,” PSA, doc. #080017; and Whitehead, The Dow Story, 59–61.

  22.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 76.

  23.   Ibid., 75.

  24.   Ibid., 76.

  25.   Dow gives a full account of the price-cutting war in “Statement of Mr. Herbert H. Dow, of the Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Michigan,” to the Federal Trade Commission, Detroit, July 22, 1915, 2–8. See also Whitehead, The Dow Story, 62.

  26.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 76–77; Brandt, Growth Company, 47.

  27.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 63–71; Whitehead, The Dow Story, 68.

  28.   Whitehead, The Dow Story, 58.

  29.   Ibid., 96.

  30.   Ibid., 76; Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 69.

  31.   Whitehead, The Dow Story, 20.

  32.   Two useful accounts of the dye business are Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 102–108; and Whitehead, The Dow Story, 81–82, 89.

  33.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 104.

  34.   Ibid. The textile producers also approached DuPont and other chemical companies with pleas for more experiments to make dyes.

  35.   Ibid., 106–107.

  36.   “Statement of Herbert Dow” to the Federal Trade Commission, 1.

  37.   Campbell and Hatton, Herbert Dow, 107–108.

  38.   Dow, “The Dow Chemical Company’s Experience with German Competitors,” 1.

  39.   The story of the iodine cartel is in Brandt, Growth Company, 152–53; and Whitefield, The Dow Story, 104–105, 131–33. Iodine had the potential to eliminate the knock in gasoline, but, with the success of ethylene dibromide, iodine was used primarily as a medicine.

CHAPTER 6: THE WRIGHT BROTHERS CONQUER THE AIR

    1.   Samuel P. Langley, “The ‘Flying Machine,’ ” McClure’s Magazine (June 1897), 658–60; Samuel P. Langley and Charles M. Manly, Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1911), Part 1, 106–109; J. Gordon Vaeth, Langley: Man of Science and Flight (New York: Ronald Press, 1966), 45; and Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 358–64.

    2.   Richard P. Hallion, The Wright Brothers: Heirs of Prometheus (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978), 8.

    3.   Cyrus Adler, I Have Considered These Days (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1945), 188. Cyrus Adler was a museum expert, and Langley hired him from Johns Hopkins University to be chief librarian at the Smithsonian. Adler and Alexander Graham Bell were probably Langley’s two best personal friends, and thus the almost sixty pages in Adler’s book that he devotes to discussing Langley are very useful. For a comment on Adler and Bell and their close relationship to Langley, see Vaeth, Langley, 63.

    4.   Vaeth, Langley, 19–20, 23, 45, 60; Donald L. Obendorf, “Samuel P. Langley: Solar Scientist, 1867–1891” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1969), 223–31.

    5.   Adler, I Have Considered These Days, 184, 199; Obendorf, “Samuel P. Langley,” 226–41.

    6.   Adler, I Have Considered These Days, 227; Obendorf, “Samuel P. Langley,” 232, 236.

    7.   Russell J. Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes: Military Aeronautics in the United States, 1863–1897” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1963), 178–79.

    8.   James Tobin, The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight (New York: Free Press, 2003), 28, 29. The Tobin book is a remarkable effort; we read it thoroughly and use it often.

    9.   Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes,” 105.

  10.   Ibid.; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 30.

  11.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 30; Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes,” 180.

  12.   Adler, I Have Considered These Days, 183.

  13.   Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes,” 161, 166. The BOF was created in 1888 “to make all needful and proper purchases [of] . . . guns . . . and other implements and engines of war.” The BOF became the go-to place for inventors and suppliers of military equipment for national defense. “The aim of the Board,” it stated in an 1898 report, is “to keep in touch with the best inventive talent of the country in all that pertains to war material, to encourage the development of every suggestion and device of value presented, and to use the funds at its disposal to secure for our service the best products of American genius.”

  14.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 34.

  15.   Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes,” 159–64, 171; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 34. From 1896 to 1906, the BOF examined about one hundred proposals to build flying machines—men were trying to do it in many countries around the globe. The BOF rejected all the proposals except for Langley’s, because only his, in their view, showed some kind of demonstrated promise of future success. Langley received his $50,000 subsidy in two installments—$25,000 immediately and the other $25,000 later.

  16.   Adler, I Have Considered These Days, 249–54; Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 133–74.

  17.   Fred C. Kelly, ed., Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, [1951], 2002), 15–16; Russell Freedman, The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane (New York: Holiday House, 1991), 17–20.

  18.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 41; Tom Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys (New York: Norton, 1989), 74–76.

  19.   Kelly, Miracle at Kitty Hawk, 212; Freedman, Wright Brothers, 2, 5; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 49.

  20.   Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 142–62; Freedman, Wright Brothers, 17–20.

  21.   Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 142–70; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 52.

  22.   Vaeth, Langley, 66–92; Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 126–32; Adler, I Have Considered These Days, 249–54; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 53.

  23.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 58; Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 126–27.

  24.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 67–77; Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 146–56, 229–32.

  25.   Adler, I Have Considered These Days, 249–63; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 165.

  26.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 71, 73–74.

  27.   Freedman, Wright Brothers, 3; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 90.

  28.   Crouch, Bishop’s Boys.

  29.   Ibid., 181–99; Kelly, Miracle at Kitty Hawk, 27.

  30.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 145–46.

  31.   Ibid., 221–22.

  32.   Freedman, Wright Brothers, 40.

  33.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 129–30; Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 229.

  34.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 155; Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 229; Fred Howard, Wilbur and Orville (New York: Knopf, 1987), 76.

  35.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 154.

  36.   Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 126; Vaeth, Langley, 69–74.

  37.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 38, 77–79; Vaeth, Langley, 72–76.

  38.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 142.

  39.   Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 261.

  40.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 173.

  41.   Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 265–66.

  42.   Washington Post, October 8, 1903, 8, and October 9, 1903, 2. See also Washington Star, October 8, 1903, 4.

  43.   Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 271.

  44.   Ibid., 272–73; Adler, I Have Considered These Days, 257. For critical newspaper accounts, see Washington Post, December 9, 1903, 2, and December 10, 1903, 6; Philadelphia Inquirer, December 9, 1903, 1; Washington Star, December 9, 1903, 4; Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1903, 6.

  45.   Boston Herald, December 10, 1903, 6; New York Times, October 9, 1903, 6.

  46.   “Failure of Langley’s Aeroplane,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 10, 1903, 6.

  47.   Howard, Wilbur and Orville, 106–107; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 158–59.

  48.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 160.

  49.   Kelly, Miracle at Kitty Hawk, 104.

  50.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 190.

  51.   Freedman, Wright Brothers, 74, 76; Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 267–70.

  52.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 201.

  53.   Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 282; Bruce, Bell, 436; Tobin, Wright Brothers, 198.

  54.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 200, 231.

  55.   Ibid., 202.

  56.   Ibid., 215–218, 234–5; Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 285, 297, 443.

  57.   Crouch, Bishop’s Boys, 293; Langley and Manly, Langley Memoir, 279; Vaeth, Langley, 95–96.

  58.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 261.

  59.   Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes,” 210–11.

  60.   After the Langley fiasco, some in the War Department renounced flying machines completely and considered balloons as the weapon of the future. Balloons had been tested for aerial reconnaissance in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, and had failed. Spanish soldiers shot thirteen holes in one of the balloons, grounded it, and in doing so exposed the American battlefield position. In May 1906, however, after the Wright brothers’ rejection, the War Department’s Signal Corps bought a ninth balloon for its military arsenal from France for $1,425—an amount almost as large as the entire expense the Wright brothers incurred from start to finish during the four years they spent inventing the airplane. Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes,” 142, 148, 210–22, 254–56.

  61.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 301–306.

  62.   Ibid., 307–308.

  63.   Ibid., 314–16.

  64.   Ibid., 273, 361.

  65.   Seth Shulman, Unlocking the Sky: Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 71–72.

  66.   Tobin, Wright Brothers, 330. Charles Lindbergh, with his New York to Paris flight in 1927, won the Orteig Prize and became the greatest prize winner of them all. See A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998), 102–31; Joe Jackson, Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), 216, 227–316; and Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 134–492.

CHAPTER 7: THE D.C. SUBSIDY MACHINE

    1.   A useful introduction to the RFC is James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1977).

    2.   Vern McKinley, Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts (Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 2011), 52–53.

    3.   Burton Folsom Jr., New Deal or Raw Deal? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008); Douglas Irwin, Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011).

    4.   Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1975), I, 135; II, 1095, 1104–1106, 1117. See also Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh, “Time for Another Harding?,” Weekly Standard, October 24, 2011.

    5.   New York Times, December 9, 1931, 1, 21; McKinley, Financing Failure, 51.

    6.   Bascom N. Timmons, Portrait of an American: Charles G. Dawes (New York: Henry Holt, 1953), 313.

    7.   James S. Olson, Saving Capitalism: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 43.

    8.   Charles W. Calomiris and Joseph R. Mason, “How to Restructure Failed Banking Systems: Lessons from the U.S. in the 1930s and Japan in the 1990s,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 9624 (April 2003).

    9.   Joseph R. Mason and Daniel A. Schiffman, “Too Big to Fail, Government Bailouts, and Managerial Incentives: The Case of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Assistance to the Railroad Industry during the Great Depression,” in Benton E. Gup, Too Big to Fail (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004), 61.

  10.   Murray Rothbard, America’s Great Depression (New York: Richardson & Snyder, 1972), 262–63.

  11.   Ibid., 262–64.

  12.   Olson, Herbert Hoover, 52–54, 58–60; Rothbard, Great Depression, 158, 262–63; Timmons, Charles G. Dawes, 319–24; Jesse Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1945), 265–66, 295–97.

  13.   Walter Trohan, Political Animals (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), 75.

  14.   Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars, 315–484.

  15.   Randall B. Woods, Fulbright: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 154–63; Robert J. Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1949–1953 (New York: Norton, 1983), 332–39; Jules Abels, Truman Scandals (Chicago: Regnery, 1956), 70–122.

  16.   New York Daily Mirror, March 3, 1951, 4; Baltimore Sun, February 3, 1951, 11; Andrew J. Dunar, The Truman Scandals and the Politics of Morality (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), 88; Thomas T. Fetters, The Lustron Home: A History of a Postwar Prefabricated Housing Experiment (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002), 110–13.

  17.   Boston Herald, July 21, 1950, 1; Boston Daily Globe, July 21, 1950, 1, 9.

  18.   Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1951. The Washington Post quotation is in the Los Angeles Times article.

  19.   Abels, Truman Scandals, 64–68, 110–18.

  20.   St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 10, 1951, 4A; Dunar, Truman Scandals, 89, 181.

  21.   Wall Street Journal, February 6, 1951, 8; New York Times, May 1, 1951, 22.

  22.   New York Times, May 1, 1951, 22; Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1951, 4; Boston Herald, July 20, 1950, 24; Wall Street Journal, February 6, 1951, 8.

  23.   New York Times, March 28, 1951, 22.

  24.   Chicago Sun-Times, March 30, 1951, 22.

  25.   New York Daily Mirror, March 7, 1951, 22; Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 1951, 14.

  26.   Jonathan J. Bean, Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies Toward Small Business, 1936–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 136–37; McKinley, Financing Failure, 62–63.

  27.   Bean, Beyond the Broker State, 158.

  28.   Ibid., 147.

  29.   Ibid., 139, 162–63.

  30.   Vern McKinley, Financing Failure, 62. Also helpful is Olson, Herbert Hoover, 62–75.

  31.   Edward A. Williams, Federal Aid for Relief (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 48–52.

  32.   Ibid., 48, 56. For a more detailed description of the effects of federal relief, see Folsom, New Deal or Raw Deal?, 80–83.

  33.   Williams, Federal Aid for Relief, 58–86; Josephine C. Brown, Public Relief, 1929–1939 (New York: Octagon, [1940], 1971), 145–298. A helpful study of the origins of welfare is Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

  34.   Joseph B. Ely, The American Dream (Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1944), 148; Williams, Federal Aid for Relief, 177, 217.

  35.   William H. Becker and William M. McClenahan Jr., The Market, the State, and the Export-Import Bank of the United States, 1934–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

  36.   Frederick C. Adams, Economic Diplomacy: The Export-Import Bank and American Foreign Policy, 1934–1939 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1976), 136–39; Irwin, Peddling Protectionism.

  37.   Adams, Export-Import Bank, 136–39, 209–11.

  38.   Ibid., 198–204; Dana G. Munro, The United States and the Caribbean Republics, 1921–1933 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974).

  39.   Adams, Export-Import Bank, 201.

  40.   Henry Morgenthau Diary, May 9, 1939, Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library. For a copy of Morgenthau’s entry on May 9, 1939, see “Morgenthau Quote” at BurtFolsom.com.

  41.   David Lawrence, Who Were the Eleven Million? (New York: Appleton-Century, 1937).

  42.   James Patterson, The New Deal and the States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 82–83; Lyle W. Dorsett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the City Bosses (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977), 102, 104.

  43.   Adams, Export-Import Bank, 208–209.

  44.   Becker and McClenahan, Export-Import Bank, 169.

  45.   Timothy P. Carney, The Big Ripoff (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2006), 75–77.

  46.   Carney, Big Ripoff, 78–79; Timothy P. Carney, “Boeing and Obama Sitting in a Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Washington Examiner, November 30, 2012.

  47.   Timothy P. Carney, “Boeing Lives by Big Government, Dies by Big Government,” Washington Examiner, March 19, 2012.

  48.   Carney, Big Ripoff, 79.

  49.   Ibid., 89–90.

  50.   Robert J. Serling, Legend and Legacy: The Story of Boeing and Its People (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 2–7.

  51.   Ibid., 10–12, 16, 24–25, 31; Harold Mansfield, Vision: A Saga of the Sky (New York: Madison, 1986), 22–78; John B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968), 52–57.

  52.   Eugene Rodgers, Flying High: The Story of Boeing and the Rise of the Jetliner Industry (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996), 51–71, 146–206; Serling, Legacy, 25–26, 29–37, 50–69, 85–92.

  53.   Rodgers, Flying High, 146–206; Serling, Legacy, 85–92; Jim Cramer interview with Jim McNerney, June 26, 2013.

CHAPTER 8: UNCLE SAM INVENTS THE ENERGY CRISIS

    1.   Two excellent introductions to energy in general and the oil industry in particular are Daniel Yergin, The Prize (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); and Robert L. Bradley Jr., Oil, Gas, and Government (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995). The Scranton story is in Burton W. Folsom Jr., Urban Capitalists (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

    2.   Ralph W. Hidy and Muriel E. Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 1882–1911 (New York: Harper, 1955); Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998). The best biography of Rockefeller is still Allan Nevins, Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953).

    3.   Richard H. K. Vietor, Energy Policy in America Since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 4–12, 22–23; E. Anthony Copp, Regulating Competition in Oil: Government Intervention in the U.S. Refining Industry, 1948–1975 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1976).

    4.   Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859–1899 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959), 82–194.

    5.   Nevins, Rockefeller, I, 666.

    6.   Yergin, The Prize, 541, 544, 568.

    7.   Allen J. Matusow, Nixon’s Economy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 244. For the spike in crude oil prices from $3.89 per barrel in 1973 to $31.77 in 1981, see www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=F000000 3&f=A.

    8.   Matusow, Nixon’s Economy, 245.

    9.   Ibid., 247.

  10.   Ibid., 249–50.

  11.   Vietor, Energy Policy, 64–90, 146–62; Copp, Regulating Competition, 159–62; Matusow, Nixon’s Economy, 242–43.

  12.   John Robert Greene, Gerald R. Ford (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 71–81; Burton I. Kaufman, James Earl Carter, Jr. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 32–33, 67, 137–38, 169–70, 177.

  13.   New York Times, April 19, 1977, and July 16, 1979. The Carter speech, given on April 18, 1977, was a major televised address, and is readily available online.

  14.   New York Times, April 19, 1977; Kaufman, Carter, 138; Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter Tanous, The End of Prosperity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 73–79.

  15.   Laffer, Moore, and Tanous, End of Prosperity, 82, 112.

  16.   Ibid., 78.

  17.   Ibid., 79. On Reagan’s success, Brian Domitrovic stresses Reagan’s actions with tax rate cuts and with the Fed as well as his lifting of price controls on energy. See Domitrovic, “Want Gasoline Prices to Decline? Do as Reagan Did,” Forbes.com, April 10, 2012.

  18.   The televised Carter speech of July 15, 1979, is in New York Times, July 16, 1979.

  19.   Burton W. Folsom Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons (Herndon, Va.: Young America’s Foundation, 2010), 83–100; Williamson and Daum, American Petroleum Industry.

  20.   Bill Kovarik, “Henry Ford, Charles Kettering and the Fuel of the Future,” Automotive History Review (Spring 1998): 7–27; James Day, “Ethanol: Indictment for Violation of the Laws of Physics and Economics,” Business Law Brief (Spring 2009): 22–25.

  21.   James Bovard, “Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study in Corporate Welfare,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, September 16, 1995.

  22.   Timothy P. Carney, The Big Ripoff (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2006), 224–41.

  23.   E. J. Kahn Jr., Supermarketer to the World: The Story of Dwayne Andreas (New York: Time Warner, 1991), 71–78.

  24.   Ibid.; Carney, Big Ripoff, 223–24.

  25.   Kahn, Supermarketer to the World, 38–39, 106.

  26.   Carney, Big Ripoff, 223–24.

  27.   Bovard, “Archer Daniels Midland,” 7.

  28.   Carney, Big Ripoff, 228–29.

  29.   Bovard, “Archer Daniels Midland,” 8.

  30.   Carney, Big Ripoff, 228, 240.

  31.   Bovard, “Archer Daniels Midland,” 4.

  32.   Ibid., 9.

  33.   Information on Poet is available online. See “What is POET?,” www.poet.com/inspiration/index.asp. We have benefited from discussions on the renewable mandates and on Poet with reporter Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner.

  34.   President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address was delivered on January 23, 2007, and is available at WashingtonPost.com.

CHAPTER 9: UNCLE SAM HEALS THE PLANET

    1.   New York Times, June 5, 2008, and January 21, 2009.

    2.   Al Gore’s documentary on global warming is An Inconvenient Truth: http://www.takepart.com/an-inconvenient-truth/film.

    3.   Timothy P. Carney, Obamanomics (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2009), 108.

    4.   Ibid., 113.

    5.   Bjorn Lomborg, “The Climate-Industrial Complex,” Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2009.

    6.   E. G. Austin, “Political Realities: The End of Ethanol Subsidies,” Economist, January 2, 2012.

    7.   Nicolas Loris, “Coburn Moves to Eliminate Ethanol Subsidies,” Foundry, April 5, 2011; Darren Goode and Robin Bravender, “Senators: Ethanol Deal Possible,” Politico, July 6, 2011; “Dr. Coburn’s Statement on Ethanol Vote,” press release, www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2011/6/dr-coburn-s-statement-on-ethanol-vote.

    8.   Laura Litvan, “Bid to Repeal Ethanol Mandate Seen Diluted by EPA Change,” Bloomberg, August 8, 2013; Kathie Obradovich, “Pawlenty’s Straight Talk Not a Huge Risk,” Des Moines Register, May 23, 2011; Austin, “Political Realities.”

    9.   Scott Faber and Alex Rindler, “Reform the Ethanol Mandate,” Politico, July 29, 2013; “Perverse Effects,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2013. The quotation in the text is the wording of the Wall Street Journal.

  10.   For an introduction to fracking, see www.what-is-fracking.com.

  11.   Russell Gold, “The Man Who Pioneered the Shale-Gas Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2012, www.online.wsj.com/article/SB100014224052970203630604578075063683097342.html.

  12.   Ibid.; Christopher Helman, “Father of the Fracking Boom Dies—George Mitchell Urged Greater Regulation of Drilling,” Forbes.com, July 27, 2013. See also Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, “A Boom in Shale Gas? Credit the Feds,” Washington Post, December 16, 2011. The Gas Research Institute was later absorbed into the Gas Technology Institute.

  13.   An excellent documentary is Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, FrackNation. For a critique of fracking, see Walter M. Brasch, Fracking Pennsylvania (Carmichael, Calif.: Greeley & Stone, 2013).

  14.   Helman, “George Mitchell”; Katie Tubb, “Thank You, George Mitchell, for Fracking,” Foundry, July 31, 2013.

  15.   Jennifer Steinhauer, “Democrats Joining G.O.P. on Pipeline,” New York Times, April 19, 2012; Juliet Eilperin, “Is Keystone Pipeline Losing Democratic Support?,” Washington Post, May 24, 2013; Joseph Weber, “Obama Comments on Keystone Spark Ire, More Concern about Project’s Future,” Fox News, July 29, 2013, www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/29/obama-comments-on-keystone-sparks-ire-more-concern-about-project’s-future.

  16.   C. J. Ciaramella, “Bankrupt Solar Company with Fed Backing Has Cozy Ties to Obama Admin,” Daily Caller, September 1, 2011.

  17.   Ibid.; Matthew Daly, “George Kaiser, Obama Donor, Discussed Solyndra Loan with White House, Emails Show,” Huffington Post, November 9, 2011.

  18.   Ciaramella, “Bankrupt Solar Company.”

  19.   Carol D. Leonnig and Joe Stephens, “White House Got Heads Up on Solyndra’s Pending Layoff Announcements,” Washington Post, January 13, 2012.

  20.   Carol D. Leonnig, “Obama-Backed Car Battery Company Files for Bankruptcy Protection,” Washington Post, January 26, 2012; Leonnig, “Battery Firm Backed by Federal Stimulus Money Files for Bankruptcy,” Washington Post, October 17, 2012.

  21.   Timothy Carney, “Lobbying Blitz to Save Tax Credits for Wind Energy,” Washington Examiner, December 28, 2012.

  22.   Carney, Obamanomics, 193–215.

  23.   Timothy P. Carney, “Green Stimulus Profiteer Comes under IRS Scrutiny,” Washington Examiner, October 12, 2012; “Inspirations with Elon Musk,” at www.oninnovation.com/videos/detail.aspx?video=1259&title=Inspirations; Todd Halvorson, “Elon Musk Unveiled,” at www.spacex.com/media.php?page=36.

  24.   Carney, “Green Stimulus Profiteer.”

  25.   Timothy P. Carney, “Sen. Max Baucus, Master of Revolving Door, Heads for the Exit,” Washington Examiner, April 24, 2013.

  26.   Ibid.; Carney, “Max Baucus Rewards Ex-Staffers with Tax Breaks for Their Clients,” Washington Examiner, January 4, 2013.

  27.   Carney, “Sen. Max Baucus”; Carney, “Max Baucus Rewards.”

  28.   Wall Street Journal, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming,” October 11, 2013.

CONCLUSION

    1.   Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 23.

    2.   Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 329.

    3.   Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1951.

    4.   We develop this argument in Larry Schweikart Jr. and Burton W. Folsom Jr., “Obama’s False History of Public Investment,” Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2013.

    5.   The president lamented in 2011, “So how can we now sit back and let China build the best railroads? And let Europe build the best highways? And have Singapore build a nicer airport?” President Obama’s assumption is that industries will step in once government-initiated infrastructure is in place. There is no historical example that we know of where the sequence worked like that.

    6.   Burton Folsom Jr. and Anita Folsom, FDR Goes to War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 146–53.

    7.   Jonah Goldberg, “The Goldberg File,” October 17, 2013.