The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(07-18-2020, 03:37 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-18-2020, 03:08 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Yep, Minnesota wasn't the Wild West or at least that's what the James Gang thought before they were completely decimated by a bunch of well armed American citizens (rednecks) who lived in Northfield, Minnesota.

In the gilded age, there was a romantic view of the outlaws being the good guys, and the enemy was the Robber Barons and corporations who were bringing the old independent free life to an end.  Robbing Wells Fargo, a bank, or some rich railroad was a good thing?  Big rich corporate easterners go home?

Not everyone saw it that way, for example the people of Northfield.  Still, for a romantic reading a pulp piece far away, the perspective was understandable.

When the railroads were built, the railroads hired huge numbers of laborers for their construction. Those construction laborers were spending big parts of their pay close to where they worked (for obvious reasons), and the community near the construction site prospered as it never had (and probably never would) again.  The saloons, hotels, music halls, and cat houses were making money. Surely some of those laborers bought the local newspaper and put a little money into the collection plates of the local churches.  Once the construction was over, the laborers moved on and the railroad became a place at which to spend money but not make it. That's how a capital-rich operation works in an economy.  The railroads then took money from passengers and shippers... maybe a station agent lived locally but that was about it. So it was with putting up telegraph lines or a power-generation plant.  It's useful, but it doesn't generate large numbers of jobs. 

The railroads were distant money-grabbers, and their owners often operated on the principle of charging what the traffic would bear. It might have cost less to ship a load of cattle or wheat from Grand Island to Lincoln as from Denver to New York City. Oh-oh. It's hardly surprising that people thought the railroads "crooks".