Speaking at fundraiser for in Manhattan on Tuesday, Joe Biden played a little fast and loose with history. But knowing Biden, he was just making crap up as he went along.
The New York Daily News has the details:
“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”
The fact that every word Biden said is either oversimplified, misleading or incorrect tends to weaken his argument about the importance of government intervention. But this is, after all, Joe Biden, so let’s not let the truth interfere with a good story.
Fact is, the transcontinental railroad wasn’t built because of government vision. The term “government vision” is an oxymoron. The concept of a transcontinental railroad had been proposed and pushed by private citizens and private companies for decades. It’s a little known fact of history that Abraham Lincoln represented several major railroads and those with interests in the railroads long before he ever ran for office. It’s been suggested that he was owned – lock, stock and barrel – by he railroads. He continued to represent their interests as long as he was in office.
Sorry, Joe, but the railroads were paid $16,000 for every mile, not every 40 miles. In fact, they were paid $16,000 per mile over relatively flat grade, $32,000 per mile across the Great Plains, and $48,000 per mile in the mountains. But that’s just the beginning. They were also given what today would amount to trillions of dollars of free land in alternating ten square miles parcels adjacent to the track they laid. Instead of calling them government “incentives,” it might be more appropriate to refer to them as government rip-offs. One is tempted to say that the numbers Biden quotes about the costs of constructing the railroad are almost as inaccurate as every other number this administration quotes.
Biden also neglects to mention that the transcontinental railroad project was marred by the most egregious corruption in the nation’s history. Credit Mobilier, a scam run by the Union Pacific railroad, was the greatest scandal of the 19th Century. It made today’s $700 toilet seats and $1200 monkey wrenches pale in comparison.
Was the railroad really built during the Civil War as Biden claimed? Hardly. It was approved during the war, but only after the extraordinary manpower and financial demands of the Civil War wound down that there were enough of each so that construction could begin to advance more rapidly.
Want specifics? Here you go.
The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865. The Central Pacific, building east from Sacramento, had only completed 54 miles of track by November 29, 1865. In July, 1865, as Stephen Ambrose says in “Nothing Like It In the World,” “Stanford invited the Speaker and his party to travel with him to the CP’s end of the track, then at mile 50” (out of a total mileage of 742 miles of track the CP eventually built between Sacramento, California and Golden Spike, Utah).
The west bound railroad, being built by Union Pacific, showed a remarkably similar lack of progress during the war. Again, according to Ambrose, “The 1864 Pacific Railroad Act required the UP to complete the first hundred miles of track by June 27, 1966. Durant had talked confidently of building that amount in 1865, but he didn’t come close. In September 1865, he confessed that the UP would be lucky to complete sixty miles by the end of the year, but he didn’t come close to that, either. By December 31, the UP had laid forty miles of track.” (Out of a total of 1086 miles from Omaha to Golden Spike, Utah.)
Because of the rush to build as many miles of track as possible in order to qualify for the government’s generous grants of land and cash, both sections of the track were marred by remarkably shoddy workmanship. Speed (inspired by greed) was much more important to the builders than quality. Vast portions of the track eventually had to be rebuilt.
Biden also neglected to note that the Union Pacific went bankrupt three years after the railroad was completed.
What can we learn from all this?
Like most government projects, the vision comes from the private sector. Like most government projects, costs eventually run out of control. And like most government projects, corruption is endemic.
But mostly we learn that Joe Biden doesn’t know history any better than he knows economics.
Source: New York Daily News
