Transcontinental RR and Suez Canal
The American Transcontinental Railroad and the Suez Canal
What do these two seemingly unrelated transportation pipelines have in common?
They have several things in common: the time when they were built, the objective behind their construction, and their role in effectively enabling increased global trade. They were finished in the same year, 1869. The golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah linked the Atlantic to the Pacific overland on May 10, and the Suez Canal was completed in November. Although the Suez Canal connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean it still provided a shorter and cheaper shipping route to Europe and the east coast of America from China than the Pacific crossing and the railroad.
Since trade with Asia had been the great dream of the men promoting and “funding” (most of the real funding came from the U.S. government) the transcontinental railroad, it seemed that this new canal had defeated them. The railroad legislation that funded the railroads via federal land grants passed easily once the long standing dispute over internal improvements was effectively ended by the secession of the majority of its opponents due to the American Civil War. It is important to note, however, that a number of Democrats were already backing the project. “The Little Giant”, Stephen Douglas, was a Democrat from Illinois. He was one of the strongest proponents of the railroad, and pushed compromises on important sectional legislation in order to gain support for his railroad plan. This electioneering gave rise to the Kansas Nebraska dispute by overturning the Missouri Compromise in favor of “popular sovereignty” on the slavery issue. In short. Douglas’ determination to get his railroad legislation through is an important causal factor for sectional discord leading ultimately to the American Civil War. Douglas himself died of exhaustion and frustration from trying to get elected President and stave off the secession that would, rather ironically, insure the passage of the railroad legislation he had wanted so badly.
Although it is true that the bulk of the Asiatic trade envisioned by the backers of the transcontinental railroad idea never materialized, the minerals and other raw materials of the Great American West more than made up for the fact of the Suez Canal circumnavigating their Asian ambitions. The “golden spike“ was a great victory for American railroads, but their joy in linking the East Coast to the West would be short lived. The “age of the robber barons” was in full swing, but there was a public outcry and reaction in the mid-1870’s. The money and power of the railroad lobby was more than equal to this initial challenge, but politics were changing. The year 1887 would see the railroads become America’s first federally regulated business sector with the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).
The Transcontinental Railroad and the Suez Canal as transportation pipelines were both built with a longing eye towards the China trade. They both made the world effectively smaller in 1869, and they both enabled goods and passengers to reach locations formerly prohibitive in record times and at lower costs. Not only scarce raw materials and luxury goods now traversed the globe, but many mundane consumer goods also found their way into new markets. The age of the clipper ship was over, and the age of the cargo carrier was beginning. Taken together both of these large scale transportation projects can be clearly seen as harbingers of the global world of the 20th Century.
