Rapid population growth in the Great Plains and the American West after the Civil War was the result not only of railroad expansion but of a collaboration among competing railroads to adopt a uniform width for track. This title shows how the consolidation of smaller railroads and the growth of capitalism worked to unify the railroad industry.

Founder and first president of the New York Central Railroad, Erastus Corning rose from humble origins he begin his working life at the age of thirteen as a clerk in a Troy, New York, hardware store to become one of the wealthiest men of his time. In this skillfully written biography, Irene D. Neu traces Corning's the arc of his life and career as a merchant, manufacturer, railroad promoter, land speculator, financier, and politician telling, at the same time, the story of American business in the mid-nineteenth century. Neu relates the significant events in Corning's life and addresses in...