The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
All gargantuan human achievements are inevitably beset by gargantuan problems, setbacks, and huge financial overruns. It cannot be otherwise. The building of the American transcontinental railroad and NASA’s success in sending the first manned mission to the moon are outstanding examples of this phenomenon. Coincidentally, they happened to transpire almost exactly one hundred years apart from one another.
Stephen Ambrose wrote a thoroughly engrossing account of the completion of the transcontinental railroad. It is entitled Nothing Like It in the World. The book is the impetus behind this essay.
Abraham Lincoln was the original champion of the railroad. Without him, the huge project would not have been finished when it did. Plans for the enormous undertaking were initiated soon after Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861, despite a civil war.
It was decided early on that two different entities would construct the new railroad, which was to run from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California. The Central Pacific would be built eastward from Sacramento, and the Union Pacific went westward from Omaha. Tens of thousands of workers and tens of millions of dollars were required to complete the task. When it began, no one could come close to estimating the actual amount of workers or money that would be needed. The estimates that were made were far too low.
The only way the herculean project could be conceived, inaugurated, and finished was grossly to underestimate the costs. Had anyone correctly guessed the total amount, the necessary funds never would have been approved by Congress.
Both railroad companies required huge assistance from the federal government. However, it was decided early on that the Central Pacific would generate income primarily by the sale of privately and publicly-backed bonds, while the Union Pacific would receive income primarily through the sale of public lands all along the route from Omaha to Salt Lake City. As soon as the tracks were laid on the eastern half of the project, thousands of acres were instantly sold, as farmers, ranchers, merchants, and entirely new towns immediately began establishing themselves on both sides of the tracks. In contemporary terms, the Central Pacific was more or less a for-profit corporation and the Union Pacific was originally a state-owned corporation.
Nevertheless, both companies engaged in hidden financial corruption to achieve their ends. The major figures took too much money for themselves and left too little for small investors and for the workers. Only the widespread public enthusiasm for the railroad enabled them to get away with so much graft.
Many hundreds of workers were killed during the six years the two companies were laying tracks. However, no record of deaths was kept, probably very intentionally. The CP employed thousands of Chinese who were then living in California, plus many others who were transported to San Francisco from China. The Chinese were more willing than white employees to risk life and limb to ignite the black powder or nitroglycerine to dig tunnels or construct a bed along the sides of mountains or to dig out the cascades of deep snow that fell in the Sierras.
Ambrose chronicles a litany of disasters and other challenges which plagued the effort, including Indian attacks, severe weather, fires, frequent derailments, landslides, and avalanches. When the two lines came together at Promontory Point northwest of Salt Lake City on May 10, 1869, it engendered the greatest national expression of achievement since the nation’s founding. There was, as a contemporary observer declared, “nothing like it in the world.” Only the Great Wall of China, built many hundreds of years earlier, could equal it as a massive nationally-sponsored endeavor.
Nevertheless, the completion of the transcontinental railroad effectively signaled the end of traditional American Indian culture. It also enabled the US Army to move quickly against Indian attacks anywhere in the West. The railroad allowed millions of Americans and Europeans cheap and fast transportation to migrate to the West, at the expense of the original inhabitants, who were displaced. That tragic injustice must never be forgotten.
On the other hand, the railroad enabled a rapid commercialization which helped make the United States an economic colossus in the twentieth century. Other railroad lines, especially the Southern Pacific, were soon built, and a network of tracks eventually crisscrossed the country in every direction, encouraging greatly increased commerce.
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In his inauguration in 1961, John F. Kennedy lifted up the challenge of putting men on the moon before the end of that decade. It is interesting to explore the similarities and differences between the completion of a cross-continental railroad in the 1860s and the American space program in the 1960s and following, in which America has become heavily invested.
Caveat: What follows is purely personal opinion, and my financial and other claims are suppositions on my part, and are not based on extensive or even minimal research.
In the 1860s, human life was socially considered much less valuable than in later times. Life expectancy was much lower than now. Therefore those who led the effort to build the railroad were far less concerned over the innumerable lives lost in the process than were the leaders of the space program over the loss of amazingly few lives. Perceived in another way, NASA would not have received another dollar from the federal government if hundreds of lives had been lost in the first few years of the astronauts’ adventures.
After the Civil War, there was strong impulse among most Americans for their nation to become a world power. The transcontinental railroad was the first major step toward achieving that goal. It paved the way for the settlement of the West and for the bright economic future of the nation. The NASA space program was a widely-applauded means for America to reassert itself as the primary world power, which is why so much money was appropriated by a willing Congress to advance the exploration of space.
Relatively speaking, which cost the taxpayers more: the conquest of the West via the railroad, or the conquest of space via putting men on the moon and the many other NASA projects? Probably it is impossible to determine the relative costs of the two huge national efforts, but I would guess the CP-UP railroad cost the taxpayers far fewer relative dollars than the space program. Further, I would surmise that well beyond the pounding of the golden spike on May 10, 1869, and Neil Armstrong taking “one small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind” on July 20, 1969, Americans in the latter part of the 19th century were far more gratified for the tangible long-term results of the railroad than were Americans in the latter years of the 20th century satisfied with the long-term results of the moon walk.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Completed railroads are the equivalent of the former, while the mostly unseen successes of the space program are unimaginable to most ordinary people, and thus represent two – or ten or twenty - birds in the bush. In other words, a much higher percentage of Americans were likely greatly pleased with the railroad when it was finished than were or are pleased with ongoing space exploration. It is easier for most people to grasp the success of visible advancements than to conceptualize the benefits of sending rockets into space.
Until the coronavirus is thoroughly defeated, Congress may have increased the national debt by 20 to 30%. Not even the most visionary of economists can comprehend the potentially disastrous results of such an increase, let alone legions of mere mortals.
Therefore, in the future when annual federal budgets are adopted, NASA will probably receive a rapidly shrinking piece of the fiscal pie. Brainpower has been the motivating force behind the space program, but brawnpower was the energy behind the construction of the world’s first transcontinental railroad. “The people” prefer the tangible progress of visible symbols to the intangible possibilities of invisible, and very expensive, astronautical progress.
The completion of the Panama Canal elicited much louder long-term acclaim than did the moon landings or the rocket-induced investigations of Mars or Jupiter. The Terra Firma of the American West and the Isthmus of Panama provoked far more satisfaction than does the Terra Incognita of space.
The employees of NASA are essentially civil servants who work for the government. Those who built the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were workers who were hired for a massive capitalistic enterprise. Relatively speaking, NASA employees are much better paid than were the railroad builders. Nonetheless it is harder for most people to appreciate what the space-employees have done and are doing than it was for Americans in the 1860s to appreciate what the ground-grunts did in spanning the continent. A mental bird in the hand is worth two, or more, potential birds in the bush.
I was a few months past my thirtieth birthday when Neil Armstrong stepped down the ladder to the surface of the moon. I will never forget the thrill I had in watching it happen, live and in living black-and-white. It never occurred to me at that time that it was almost exactly a century before that America had accomplished an equally gigantic feat.
Stephen Ambrose did not publish Nothing Like It in the World until 2000. Because of many weeks of spare time due to COVID-19, I read it only in 2020. As I devoured each action-filled page, it gradually struck me that two gigantic projects in American history transpired a century apart in 1869 and in 1969.
Because of the comparison I made, I conclude that no Congress in coming decades is likely to provide the funding for more extensive and expensive space exploration. If it is to happen, it will be Elon Musk, Spacex, and other such entrepreneurs and start-ups who will carry on stupendous voyages into the black void of space. That is the American way.
In the meantime, all of us should eagerly applaud the astonishing achievements of 1869 and 1969. - May 7, 2020
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.