Railways as Agents of the State: A Roundtable

This roundtable showcases the innovative work of five emerging scholars, each with different methodological perspectives, to the complex interrelationship between the railroads, their stakeholders, and the government. Ben Kletzer’s examination of railroads in Maoist China challenges conventional interpretations of the centralized authority of the Chinese Communist Party. Kimberly Kracman delineates the ability of the Interstate Commerce Commission to control railway management and institutionalize the claims of diverse stakeholders on the assets and profits of the large corporation. Uday Schultz demonstrates how Progressive reformers leveraged the regulatory apparatus to impose new definitions of business efficiency on railroad managers. Maddock Thomas shows how the post-World War I Plumb Plan proposed a radical reorganization of the railroads under a vision of “Industrial Democracy,” a political-economic system situated as distinct from either socialism or capitalism. Ben Spohn highlights the potential of oral history to explore the creation of Conrail – a process that established the role of the federal government as a rescuer of companies deemed “too big to fail.” The diversity of topics suggests the potential for railroad history to illuminate larger themes in the development of capitalism and competing economic systems, as well as the relationship between business and the state.