ATDDTA (6) 177(railroads)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

        Joseph T :
        In lot 49  perhaps the railroads may be seen to 
        parallel the  alternate postal system. Once 
        competitive with other forms of  transport  as 
        Thurn and Taxis were with state mail, the rails 
        have become secondary to Interstates and Air 
        transport and become a kind  of preterite system 
        as Big Oil has become the colonizing and imperial  
        global force.

"In The Beginning", Big Oil did what it could to buy up Big Rail.

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        Historians often describe nineteenth-century 
        businessmen in two contradictory ways:

        "Captains of Industry"--some scholars describe 
        nineteenth-century industrialists as ingenious 
        and industrious capitalists who transformed the 
        American economy with their business acumen. 
        These "Captains" were the folk heroes of their 
        day; faces of men like Andrew Carnegie would 
        have graced the boxes of Gilded Age Wheaties© 
        rather than Olympic gold medal winners. These 
        men seemed to embody the American dream of 
        "Rags to Riches."

        "Robber Barons"--other historians have viewed 
        the Gilded Age industrialists as immoral, greedy, 
        and corrupt, and have mustered ample the
        evidence to support such a view. Bribery, illegal 
        business practices, and cruelty to workers were 
        not uncommon during this period, and many of 
        the most respected industrialists were also feared 
        and hated.
        The Erie Railroad Wars of the 1860s provide an 
        example of the unscrupulous and often illegal 
        business activities that transformed the nation 
        during the Gilded Age. The "Wars" involved four men:

        Daniel Drew
        Jay Gould
        Jim Fisk
        Cornelius Vanderbilt


http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture05.html

        In discussing Standard Oil, Geisst points out that 
        Standard received large rebates from the railroads. 
        From Geisst's perspective these rebates constitute 
        prima facie evidence that Standard was behaving 
        in an anticompetitive manner (see, for example, 
        pp. 37-38). Yet it is well-known that Standard Oil 
        received these rebates, at least in part, because 
        Standard, unlike most of its competitors, shipped 
        its oil via tank cars rather than barrels. (See 
        Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, The 
        American Petroleum Industry: The Age of 
        Illumination, 1859-1899, Evanston, IL, 1959, pp. 
        528-37.) There was a sound efficiency rationale 
        for giving Standard rebates for using tank cars -- 
        they were cheaper and safer for the railroads to 
        haul than barrels. The rebate programs may well 
        have had anti-competitive effects, but given their 
        historical significance, efficiency rationales deserve 
        at least some hearing.

http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/0280

        In one example of Standard's aggressive practices, 
        a rival oil association decided to build an oil pipeline, 
        hoping to overcome the virtual boycott imposed on 
        Standard's competitors. In response, the railroad 
        company (at Rockefeller's direction) denied the 
        consortium permission to run the pipeline across 
        railway land, forcing consortium staff to laboriously 
        decant the oil into barrels, carry them over the 
        railway crossing in carts, and then pump the oil 
        manually back into the pipeline on the other side. 
        When he learned of this tactic, Rockefeller then 
        instructed the railway company to park empty rail 
        cars across the line, thereby preventing the carts 
        from crossing his property.

http://www.answers.com/topic/standard-oil-co-of-new-jersey-v-united-states