More at Slate.comBy Donald WorsterUpdated Monday, June 6, 2011, at 6:56 AM ET
The corporate raider Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 film Wall Street, distilled the essential philosophy of the Reagan era, when we were supposed to get back to basic principles: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works." Although almost every ethical philosopher or religious leader of the past came out against greed as an emotion that distorts judgment and corrupts society, the Gekko-Reagan creed has usually been an easy sell in America. Running against that tradition, Richard White, in his new book Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, doggedly persists in challenging the notion of greed as either rational or virtuous. He has a big job on his hands. No matter how many dot-com crashes or overleveraged credit debacles we go through, the core faith in greed as the engine of American greatness seems all but unshakable.
One legendary moment of greatness was the completion of the first transcontinental. There is a legend-making photo taken at Promontory Summit, Utah, May 1869, when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific joined tracks and reunited a war-divided people. After that came the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, the Atlantic [sic], Topeka, and Santa Fe, and other lines that brought a transportation revolution to the West. White debunks the legend, arguing that the achievement was shoddy and chaotic and benefited the nation very little. The money that built those lines did not come from the railroad men themselves—Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Henry Villard, James J. Hill, and Thomas Scott. Instead, they persuaded Congress to lay out enormous subsidies.
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