American government.

To Eastern opinion the Greenback movement had been barefaced
repudiation; the Granger movement seemed to be confiscation; for every
law provided a means by which public authority should fix the charge
imposed by the railroad upon its customer. Both movements need to be
studied in their local environment, which at least explains the Western
zeal in clamoring for the greenbacks, and shows that in the Granger
movement the West saw farther than it knew.

The Civil War period marks a new era in the history of American
railways. Prior to the panic of 1837, the few lines that were built were
local. Few could foresee that the railway would ever be more than an
adjunct to the turnpike and canal in bringing the city centers closer to
their environs. In the revival of industry after the panic of 1837, the
mileage increased progressively, and before the next panic checked
business in 1857 the tidewater region was well provided, and the
Alleghanies had been crossed by several trunk lines whose heads extended
to the Lakes and to the Mississippi. But in these years the change was
of degree rather than of kind. The lines were built to supplement
existing routes, like the Erie Canal, the Lakes, the Ohio River, or the
Mississippi. They connected communities already well developed and
prosperous, and in undertaking new enterprises promoters had figured
upon capturing the profits of existing trade.

In the new epoch of the sixties there were only new fields to conquer.
The great enterprises were forced to speculate upon the development of
the public domain and to find their profits in the business of
communities to which they themselves gave birth. Natural waterways and
roads extended little west of Chicago. The new fields were entered by
the railroads without prospect of any competition but that of other
railroads. The resulting communities, born and developed between 1857
and 1873, were peculiarly the creatures of, and dependent on, the
railway lines.

This inevitable dependence on railways colored the history of Wisconsin,
Iowa, and Minnesota, and, to a lesser degree, of all the West. While men
were yet prosperous and sanguine and without adequate railway service,
they offered high inducements to promoters of railways. Once the roads
were built and the communities began to pay for them and to maintain
them, the dependence was realized and anti-railway agitation began. The
fact that they were commonly built on m