Blog Discussion Thread: Growth in the Postbellum Economy

Abstract

            Railroads and coal production formed two of several key elements in the expansion of the postbellum economy. Rail construction reached hundreds of thousands of miles, while coal output climbed into the hundreds of millions of short tons. The central narrative is the transformation of industry—and of daily life—through the Second Industrial Revolution. But just as crucial is the interplay of industries that shaped that transformation. Accidents cost many lives, yet the United States achieved the highest standard of living among major nations.

From 1865 to 1900, the rapid expansion of the railroad network became quite possibly the single most consequential force driving American industrial growth. As passenger and freight service expanded, railroad trackage lengthened, and railroads and industry advanced together. Coal replaced wood in the late 1850s[1] and is the focus of the second postbellum topic. However, coal mining often takes place in isolated locations and under the ground. Noisy, smoky, yet quintessentially modern, steam trains often passed close enough to be a daily presence in the back yard, a familiarity that made railroads seem almost romantic in American life.

Extended Explanation of Chosen Research Methodology and Sources Plus Why They Are Appropriate to This Comparison

This study used common datasets for quantitative measurement of economic conditions, i.e. growth and transformation in the rail and coal industries. Some of the datasets consulted were produced by government agencies. The U.S. Census Bureau was the most straightforward to use, with information organized by individual years, allowing population to be associated with rail and coal. A favorite database turned out to be the COALPROD Database of the U.S. Geological Survey, its authority based upon some ten sterling primary sources. The Coal-Mine Fatalities records from the University of North Texas Libraries allowed the study to connect the hundreds of millions of short tons of coal produced with the human cost of extraction in often deadly conditions. The articles by Newton, Smith, and Turner highlight the strong foundations laid during 1861–65 for the postbellum American economy, a fact hardly noted in most sources.  Among the sources on railroad accidents, Francis’s work proved the most accessible, frequently unfolding like a diary of his professional life. In their article, Wilson and Spencer traced the entirety of railroad history, supplementing it with tables that furnished an authoritative account of the period drawn from primary sources. The Angus Maddison database, associated with the prestigious University of Groningen was extremely helpful in generating GDP information comparing the United States to other nations, allowing the criticisms of the era to be placed in international context, especially as it related to immigration. It also allowed the study to address Dr Roberts’ video on Standard of Living.          

Analytical Comparison of Rail and Coal

The US economy was hardly inactive from 1861 to 1865. The North had been deeply engaged in agricultural mechanization,[2] mineral extraction, manufacturing, and the expanding requirements of military and naval production. Northern railroads steadily expanded during the War of the Secession. Therefore, after 1865, the American economy did not resume growth. The economy smoothly pivoted from a wartime footing to a peacetime trajectory, turning the immense energies that had sustained the Union war effort and emancipation toward western expansion and southern redevelopment. Smith maintains that westward settlement, epitomized by the 1862 Homestead Act, continued through the Civil War.[3] Often forgotten is the fact that the South’s railway system had been “crippled” by raids as well as military conscription, with the “… total assets of all Confederate railroads equalling only one-third of that of 1861.”[4] Wide swaths of the nation stood ready for the railroads’ advent. According to the Chandler explanation of “empirical regularities”, the railroad as a firm, fell into the ‘transaction cost’ category, with a sidenote of ‘evolutionary’[5] According to Wilson’s JSTOR article, which reproduces a table derived from primary sources, the United States had 35,085 miles of ‘railroad operated’[6] in 1865. In 1903, there were 207,187[7] miles of railroad operated, a sixfold increase in a nation that had, by the 1890s, permanently overtaken the mighty British Empire as the world’s largest economy. Perhaps the real question to a compassionate historian, however, is the one posed by Doctor Roberts in his brilliant video regarding Standards of Living. Had human life improved? or, to quote Dr Roberts directly “There are all sorts of ways to measure improvements in standards of living.”[8] A negative aspect of the Postbellum Era was the rate of accidents to both passengers and workers on railroads. Notable in the Francis source is the list of spectacular collisions between trains and remarks about the number of people killed while walking on the rails. However, Francis notes the rates of death in rail accidents at 1 in 13 million for Massachusetts, equating it to a similar rate in England in the same period.[9] He remarks on the “undesirable reputation” in regard to railroad accidents while observing about the “incompleteness” [10] of the returns upon which such statistics were based in this era. Era observers noted that brakemen often lost fingers while coupling cars between moving trains, a peril that persisted until automatic couplers and Westinghouse air brakes were belatedly adopted. The expansion of railroads, their trackage, and ultimately five transcontinental systems formed only one strand within the wider story of this remarkable era.

Coal, burned in locomotives, steel furnaces, and household stoves grew alongside the spreading web of tracks that carried the nation into its unprecedented industrial future. Milici’s extremely comprehensive table on coal production, drawn from ten diverse sources, notes, once one has added up the results from the various strategic geographical basins, a national 1865 production figure of some 21,947,900 short tons. The same source provides a production figure of 200,947, 557 short tons in 1900,[11] a ninefold increase. Miller, in a secondary book source, backs these figures up graphically.[12] Coal mining cost many lives, the subject of the comprehensive “Coal-mine Fatalities in the United States, 1870-1914”. Montana coal mines, for instance, lost 5.37 miners per million tons of coal mined in the early 20^th century.[13] Reading the statistics, one might think the danger modest, yet the accompanying reports of asphyxiation, fire, cave‑ins, and explosions expose the grim reality of repeated loss of life. It would be intellectually stimulating to apply a regression model to coal and railroads, in light of David A. Freedman’s influential—if at times critical—essay “Statistical Models and Shoe Leather.” It appears evident that the development of railroads and the growth in coal production were mutually reinforcing. In an attempt at formal comparison, however, it might be noted by historians that US railroads built 172,102 miles of track while the US coal industry mined 178,271,657 short tons of coal. A mile of track, then, may be associated with the production of 1,036 short tons of coal. According to official U.S. census figures, the population grew by 35 million in the same period,[14] meaning that for every mile of track laid, 1.1 million citizens were added—whether by natural increase or immigration—alongside 1,036 short tons of coal. This was a feat accomplished at great human risk, as the expansion of railroads and coal mining demanded labor under perilous conditions, leaving a legacy of both growth and sacrifice.

Historians should be wary of lapsing into the frequent tendency to condemn the United States indiscriminately. The United States was a nation of growing economic capacity and considerable wealth. Angus Maddison’s long‑run reconstruction of U.S. national income shows American GDP in 1900 at roughly $1.87 trillion in 2011 international dollars.^[15] GDP per capita stood at $6,200—a figure that starkly outpaced the meager national incomes of other countries. For instance, Italy recorded a per‑capita GDP of $2,500. In 1900, Eastern European incomes stood at roughly $1,000 per capita, while India, Asia, and Africa remained below subsistence at $600. Such contrasts underscored the global economic hierarchy and highlighted the efforts of hard‑working, well-organized Americans, lending weight to the decision of millions to immigrate to the United States. The Maddison Project Database highlights the United States’ shift from agrarian colony to a nation on a path of sustained economic transformation.

Topic Choice

            The Research Question, from the Research Design Assignment is: “Boeing’s distinctive blend of innovation and entrepreneurial strategy allowed the company to endure and grow while many competing aviation firms failed.”  The focus on railroads and coal is integral to the research design, as commercial airlines, with their efficient time‑saving machines, became the decisive factor in the decline of passenger rail travel. Oil replaced coal as the world’s go-to energy source over the decades, with 1950 being a handy date for transition. This post-bellum focus allowed a thorough look at the world prior to air travel.

            The sources point to astonishing growth in operated railroad mileage, but the scale of this expansion comes into focus only when viewed against a parallel rise in coal production. What this study cannot encompass is the wider industrial transformation of the era: the surge of iron and steel,[16] the relentless harvesting and consumption of timber, the sudden boom in oil, the rise of meatpacking and national shipping networks, the expansion of grain milling, the spread of telegraph lines, and countless other forces that belong to the vast tapestry of the Second Industrial Revolution. Still, rail and coal mark natural starting points for the twentieth century, a period driven by ever more transformative technologies and darkened, in the end, by two destructive world wars.

Bibliography

Adams, Charles Francis, Jr. Notes on Railroad Accidents. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879. Digitized by Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive. Accessed May 28, 2026. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48693.

Chandler, Alfred D. “Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 6, no. 3 (1992): 79–100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2138304.

Fay, Albert H. Coal-Mine Fatalities in the United States, 1870 to 1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library. Accessed May 28, 2026.  (babel.hathitrust.org in Bing)

Freedman, David A. “Statistical Models and Shoe Leather.” Sociological Methodology 21 (1991): 291–313. https://www.jstor.org/stable/270939?seq=1

Miller, Bruce G.. Coal Energy Systems. Chantilly: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2004. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/reader.action?c=RVBVQg&docID=226769&ppg=38

Maddison, Angus. The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development, 2001.

Maddison, Angus. The World Economy: Historical Statistics. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development, 2003.

Newton, A. W. “Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad: Transition from Wood to Coal Burning Locomotives.” The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, no. 91 (1954): 126–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43517756?seq=1

Roberts, Carey. “Common Scholarly Strategies-Measuring Economic Growth and Standards of Living”, Video, Liberty University, 2026.

Smith, Stacey L. “Beyond North and South Putting the West in the Civil War and Reconstruction.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (2016): 566-591. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/beyond-north-south-putting-west-civil-war/docview/1833114123/se-2.

Smits, J. P., P. J. Woltjer, and D. Ma. Historical National Accounts. Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen. Last modified November 18, 2024. https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/na/?lang=en.

Turner, Charles W. “The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad at War, 1861–1865.” The Historian 8, no. 2 (Spring 1946): 111–30.

University of North Texas Libraries. Coal-Mine Fatalities in the United States, 1870 to 1914. Digital Library. Denton, TX: University of North Texas. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12321/m1/246/?q=fatalities%20in%20coal%20mines%201865%20t%201900.

U.S. Census Bureau. Decennial Census of Population and Housing: 1870. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce. Accessed May 28, 2026. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1870.html#list-tab-693908974.

U.S. Census Bureau. Decennial Census of Population and Housing: 1900. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1900.html#list-tab-693908974.

U.S. Geological Survey. The COALPROD Database: Historical Production Data for the Major Coal‑Producing Regions of the Conterminous United States. By Robert C. Milici. Open‑File Report 97‑447A. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1997. https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/0447a/report.pdf.

Wilson, G. Lloyd, and Ellwood H. Spencer. “Growth of the Railroad Network in the United States.” Land Economics 26, no. 4 (1950): 337–45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3159703?seq=1

 

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[1] A. W. Newton, “Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad: Transition from Wood to Coal Burning Locomotives,” The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, no. 91 (October 1954): 126. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43517756?seq=1

[2] Because so many farm laborers were deployed to the front, farms faced acute labor shortages.

[3] Stacey L. Smith, “Beyond North and South: Putting the West in the Civil War and Reconstruction,” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (2016): 566.

[4] Charles W. Turner, “The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad at War, 1861–1865,” The Historian 8, no. 2 (Spring 1946): 111.

[5] Alfred D. Chandler, “Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 6, no. 3 (1992): 80, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2138304.

[6] ‘Railroad operated’ is a superior way to measure railroads’ present effectiveness, as opposed to raw ‘trackage’, which relates more to construction.

[7] G. Lloyd Wilson and Ellwood H. Spencer, “Growth of the Railroad Network in the United States,” Land Economics 26, no. 4 (1950): 337.

[8] Carey Roberts, “Common Scholarly Strategies – Measuring Economic Growth and Standards of Living,” video, Liberty University, 2026, 3:27 of 6:04 min.

[9] Charles Francis Adams Jr., Notes on Railroad Accidents (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879), 255, Project Gutenberg, accessed May 28, 2026, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48693/pg48693-images.html#Page_241

[10] Ibid., 257.

[11] U.S. Geological Survey, The COALPROD Database: Historical Production Data for the Major Coal‑Producing Regions of the Conterminous United States, comp. Robert C. Milici, Open‑File Report 97‑447A (Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1997), https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/0447a/report.pdf.

[12] Bruce G. Miller, Coal Energy Systems (Chantilly: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2004), 37. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/reader.action?c=RVBVQg&docID=226769&ppg=38

[13] University of North Texas Libraries, Coal-Mine Fatalities in the United States, 1870 to 1914 (Denton, TX: University of North Texas), 246, Digital Library, accessed May 28, 2026, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.li4j4y&seq=305 .

[14] U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census of Population and Housing: 1870 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce), accessed May 28, 2026, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1870.html#list-tab-693908974; and U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census of Population and Housing: 1900 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce), accessed May 28, 2026, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1900.html (census.gov in Bing).

[15] University of Groningen, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, “North America: Historical Development,” University of Groningen, https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/na/?lang=en.

[16] Inevitably associated with rails and the components of the locomotives themselves.

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