IRON EMPIRES
Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America
In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the Transcontinental Railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. America’s railways, once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by speculators, crooks, and visionaries. Empire builders like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and E. H. Harriman competed viciously. They transformed the nation’s geography. They sparked stock market frenzies, panics, and crashes. And they provoked strikes that upended the relationship between management and labor. The intense competition culminated in a ferocious two-man battle that shook the nation’s financial markets to their foundations and produced dramatic, lasting changes in the interplay of business and government. For four decades some of the most iconic figures of the Gilded Age drove the country into the twentieth century—and almost sent it off the rails.

Columnist and reporter Michael A. Hiltzik has written extensively for the Los Angeles Times. In 1999, he won a beat reporting Pulitzer Prize for co-writing a series of articles with Chuck Philips about corruption in the music industry.

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