IRON WHEELS AND BROKEN MEN: The Railroad Barons and the Plunder of the West

by Richard O'Connor ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 12, 1973

Muckraking historians have long since made us aware that the winning and settling and pacification of The West was not a pretty business and O'Connor's book, which explores the panoramic unfolding ""from the underview of the victimized,"" doesn't really add much dirt to what we already know. For O'Connor, the arch villain of the piece is the railroad -- its advent signaled the destruction of Indian tribes, the despoliation of the land, the defrauding of the poor white settler and the vicious exploitation of the Irish and Chinese laborers whose lives were crushed by the iron monster as surely as those of the Sioux. O'Connor lays the responsibility for the Indian-White massacres which scarred the history of the West directly at the feet of the wheeling and dealing railroad companies: with never a thought of the human cost they lured thousands of Eastern rednecks, runaways, failed farmers and newly arrived immigrants out to the territories of the American aborigines whose Stone Age culture they couldn't begin to understand. Conflict and tragedy was inevitable and by 1890 Populism on the one hand and Wounded Knee on the other testified to ""the convergence of Indian and white despair"" as the two groups of losers took it out on each other. From newspapers, letters and speeches of the time, O'Connor has excerpted all the most hysterical and fraudulent claims of the railroad entrepreneurs and their crass cynicism, greed and self-delusion stands out in bold relief. It's a story that bears retelling.

Pub Date: June 12, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION