Railroad history and development

Railroads

Any person looking for a better life needs to get on the next boat to the United States of America. There are great opportunities to build a nation from the ground up. The Civil War is long over now, and Reconstruction is in full swing. This means railroads, factories and cities. The factories and cities are tremendous sources of urban employment, and workers are finding no end of great opportunities in dozens of growing cities.

For those interested in the rural life, the United States has untold acres of land just waiting to be farmed. It's not like in Europe, where all the land is owned and the people working on the land earn just enough to survive. In America, every farmer owns his own land, and lots of it. Land is cheap, and any enterprising man and his family can start a new life with land, crops and ample markets in which to sell those crops.

The railroads are opening up tremendous opportunity for Americans, no matter where they come from. With railroads, your crops or the output of your factory can be shipped all over the country. There is even access to the Pacific Coast at San Francisco, so you can sell your goods globally if that is what you want to do. Railroads are one of the most important keys to economic prosperity, and America is enjoying a railroad construction boom.

Bigger is better. If the new industrialization has taught us anything, it is that you can have a bigger factory, and make more money. This goes for people just starting up, too, because in America anybody can come, start up a business, and have access to a large and rapidly growing market. With all this new land under development and a newfound peace within the nation, America is experiencing an economic boom. There are no famines in the United States, unlike all over Europe. There are jobs -- in America you can call your own shots, not just slave for some factory owner. The reality is that your prosperity lies at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and our steamships will get you there. We have monthly departures from Cork, Southampton and Genova. Our agents can arrange your transport from all over the nations of Europe including the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Italian Republic, Prussia and Bavaria. The United States welcomes everybody to build a great nation, and you can be part of this unprecedented economic expansion.

Part II. We learned that many of the pastimes with which we have become familiar arose during the Gilded Age. Spectator sports, public concerts and musical shows all emerged, presaging the arrival of movies by the beginning of the 20th century. While we often look back to these developments in their own context -- thinking about baseball in baseball terms, for example -- they all developed around the same time in response to the social and economic changes of that era.