American Railroads
高考分数线查询In the United States, railroads spearheaded the cond pha of the transportation revolution by overtaking the previous importance of canals. The mid-1800s saw a great expansion of American railroads. The major cities east of the Mississippi River were linked by a spiderweb of railroad tracks. Chicago's growth illustrates the impact of the rail links. In 1849 Chicago was a village of a few hundred people with virtually no rail rvice. By 1860 it had become a city of 100,000, rved by eleven railroads.Farmers to the north and west of Chicago no longer had to ship their grain, livestock, and dairy products down the Mississippi River to New Orleans; they could now ship their products directly east. Chicago supplanted New Orleans as the interior of America's main commercial hub.
The east-west rail lines stimulated the ttlement and agricultural development of the Midwest. By 1860 Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin had replaced Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York as the leading wheat-growing states. Enabling farmers to speed their products to
台帐the East, railroads incread the value of farmland and promoted additional ttlement. In turn, population growth in agricultural areas triggered industrial development in cities such as Chicago, Davenport (Iowa), and Minneapolis, for the new ttlers needed lumber for fences and hous and mills to grind wheat into flour.
澳大利亚绿卡
Railroads also propelled the growth of small towns along their routes. The Illinois Central Railroad, which had more track than any other railroad in 1855, made money not only from its traffic but also from real estate speculation. Purchasing land for stations along its path, the Illinois Central then laid out towns around the stations. The lection of Manteno, Illinois, as a stop of the Illinois Central, for example, transformed the site from a crossroads without a single hou in 1854 into a bustling town of nearly a thousand in 1860, replete with hotels, lumberyards, grain elevators, and gristmills. By the Civil War (1861-1865), few thought of the railroad-linked Midwest as a frontier region or viewed its inhabitants as pioneers.
难忘的一句话作文As the nation's first big business, the railroads transformed the conduct of business. Duri抹茶牛奶
ng the early 1830s, railroads, like canals, depended on financial aid from state governments. With the ont of economic depression in the late 1830s, however, state governments scrapped overly ambitious railroad projects. Convinced that railroads burdened them with high taxes and blasted hopes, voters turned against state aid, and in the early 1840s, veral states amended their constitutions to bar state funding for railroads and canals. The federal government took up some of the slack, but federal aid did not provide a major stimulus to railroads before 1860. Rather, part of the burden of finance pasd to city and county governments in agricultural areas that wanted to attract railroads. Such municipal governments, for example, often gave railroads rights-of-way, grants of land for stations, and public funds.
The dramatic expansion of the railroad network in the 1850s, however, strained the financing capacity of local governments and required a turn toward private investment, which had never been abnt from the picture. Well aware of the economic benefits of railroads, individuals living near them had long purchad railroad stock issued by governments and had directly bought stock in railroads, often paying by contributing their
labor to building the railroads. But the large railroads of the 1850s needed more capital than such small investors could generate. Gradually, the center of railroad financing shifted to New York City, and in fact, it was the railroad boom of the 1850s that helped make Wall Street in New York City the nation's greatest capital market. The stocks of all the leading railroads were traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during the 1850s. In addition, the growth of railroads turned New York City into the center of modern investment firms. The investment firms evaluated the stock of railroads in the smaller American cities and then found purchars for the stocks in New York City, Philadelphia, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. Controlling the flow of funds to railroads, the investment bankers began to exert influence over the railroads' internal affairs by supervising administrative reorganizations in times of trouble.
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春茶和秋茶的区别The Achievement of Brazilian Independence
In contrast to the political anarchy, economic dislocation, and military destruction in Spanish America, Brazil's drive toward independence from Portugal proceeded as a relati
vely bloodless transition between 1808 and 1822. The idea of Brazilian independence first aro in the late eighteenth century as a Brazilian reaction to the Portugue policy of tightening political and economic control over the colony in the interests of the mother country. The first significant conspiracy against Portugue rule was organized from 1788-1799 in the province of Minas Gerais, where rigid governmental control over the production and prices of gold and diamonds, as well as heavy taxes, caud much discontent. But this conspiracy never went beyond the stage of discussion and was easily discovered and crushed. Other conspiracies in the late eighteenth century as well as a brief revolt in 1817 reflected the influence of republican ideas over ctions of the elite and even the lower strata of urban society. All proved abortive or were soon crushed. Were it not for an accident of European history, the independence of Brazil might have been long delayed.
