Thank you, Wendy! High praise indeed.

While I’m typing, I’ll add two more thoughts that occurred to me since I posted:

First, in looking at the North American map I had Perplexity draw it’s striking as to how much of the continent is excluded, including just about all of the American southwest. Without motorized bulk transport, there would be neither need nor ability to build a Denver, a Phoenix, a Dallas. Whatever bulk or perishable goods those areas produced would never be able to get anywhere beyond the local farmers’ market. And that actually goes for Minneapolis and Chicago, too: while they’re each on major waterways, they grew from small towns to their position in the national economy by processing the raw materials they imported from the country for export via ship. Those raw materials – for those two cities grain and cattle, respectively – had to come in by the rail car load.

The second is a factoid I picked up Thursday night from Liaquat Ahamed’s 1873 (1) (bolding mine):

“The biggest beneficiaries of the bond market's expansion during the 1850s and '60s were the railroads. Until then, bonds had largely been issued by governments. Private companies in need of funds to invest either raised capital by issuing equity or paid for their investments out of their
profits. But even a modestly sized railway line anywhere in the world cost such a colossal amount, and took so long to build, that the capital required far exceeded the sums that an individual entrepreneur could muster.... A railway line stretching a few hundred miles could cost ...an amount that, at the time, barely a handful of the world's richest businessmen could raise from their own pockets.

It was the bond market's unique ability to aggregate and channel pools of middle-class savings that made large-scale investments in the railroads possible. Railroad bonds became the totem of the age... railroads accounted for the vast bulk of bonds issued in the 1850s and '60s— according to one estimate, some $10 billion out of the total of $20 billion in new debt...”

Half of the national bond market for a new industry, borrowed by the titans of the day, and causing a disruption in the market.

...followed by a crash, consolidation, and the permanent transformation of society by the new system.

It would be nice to think that we learned something. About the crash part, I mean.

--sutton
(1) amazon.com - Ref=tmm hrd swatch