Railroads also helped to bring about standard time zones in the US. Before trains it wasn’t that important that people in one area of the country all use the same exact time - or to have set places where the time changed by 1 hour. Once trains started traveling from state to state it became important to set up the time zones we still have now. The lines have shifted a little since they were created but for the most part they are in the same places.
I wasn’t the OP, I was just trying to get the discussion back to the original topic.
Did I miss in this thread where anyone posted a link to Cecil’s column about railroad gauge and Roman chariot ruts?
Sorry, I should have done that in the OP. Though, to be fair, I wasn’t really asking about that. I was taking as given that the “Roman ruts” were bunk, and asking about switching between gauges, labor unrest, that whole angle.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. But it’s always good to remember what The Master has to say on any subject.
Jillgat: I posted the Snopes link but as the OP says, he wasn’t thinking about that.
Now, maybe Exapno Mapcase would be so good as to let us know whether, from his extensive reading on the subject, the question of the original post can be answered:
Did President Lincoln have to put down labor unrest related to standardization of railroad gauges? Did any such labor unrest occur after President Lincoln?
My guess is that this is a misreading of a real incident that took place on April 19, 1861.
This was a week or so after Fort Sumter and Lincoln had appealed to the states for 75,000 volunteers. He was worried because both Maryland and Virginia were slave states with a great many southern sympathizers. Without troops, Washington D.C. was an easy and obvious target.
The 6th and 8th Massachusetts Regiments had been hastily assembled and sent on their way. Now to quote from Sinews of War:
Things got much worse after that. Eventually a full-scale riot broke out and the panicking inexperienced soldiers shot into the crowd. Finally, the soldiers made it through with fixed bayonets. There were many total casualties on both sides.
Worse, from Lincoln’s point of view, troops could no longer be sent safely through Baltimore and alternate and very inconvenient by-routes had to be found. Maryland was eventually pacified, and not very nicely, by federal troops.
My delicate ear caught a hint of sarcasm in DSYoungEsq’s post. Or maybe not. So let me say this mildly: Yes, my reading is extensive. While the Internet is the greatest tool ever discovered for the quick look-up of facts, my feeling is that if you want knowledge you still need to read a book. If you want understanding, you need to read large bunches of books.
Oh, and before I’m accused of still not responding to the OP, let me just say that I don’t remember any specific labor incident stemming from standardization forcing unskilled workers out of their jobs. It sounds wrong to me: the army provided ample opportunity for unskilled workers, the north was generally going through a war boom and those who did enter the service left lots of open jobs in their wake, most standardization took place after the war, and the remark that it was early in Lincoln’s presidency makes the Maryland incident too much of a coincidence to ignore.
But it’s certainly not impossible that such a thing took place at some later time. Labor strife was rife throughout the century and whenever technological unemployment occurred people naturally took to the streets. I’d like to see an actual cite if anyone has one, but since nobody has come up with a better answer for the OP I think that it’s a half-remembered version of Maryland.
I’m afraid you are mistaken. Russia has wide gauge tracks (as has Finlad).
If Lincoln had anything to do with the standardization of railroad track gauges he did an incredibly poor job of it: My great grandfather worked on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad (a “narrow-gauge railroad”)as late as 1900. There couldn’t have been any standardization if there were both “narrow gauge” and “regular.”
Exapno Mapcase –
Thanks for the info. It’s possible that is the incident I’m half-remembering, though to be honest it doesn’t ring any bells. I could have sworn I heard about labor unrest surrounding sandardization – perhaps well after the Civil War, when the Army was no longer sopping up unskilled labor. The bit about “a violent strike put down by President X” may indeed be a fabrication on my part.
Or perhaps I am conflating reading about standardization with reading about conscription riots. That seems more plausible to me.
In any event, thanks to all for your helpful comments and input.
– Beruang