efficiency, and reduce costs to shippers and consumers. More broadly, it represented the abandonment of the older, local purposes which had first brought railways into existence, as a truly national network emerged. No longer semipublic bodies, railroads now functioned entirely as business enterprises, operated for maximum profit, bought and sold in the market, managed as business logic would dictate. That logic led inexorably to consolidation. The day of the giant corporation had arrived.
An important moment in American Industry...profit sits at the head of the table. Perhaps this is because American's do not like a strong Federal government.
