Death Rode the Rails : American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965

Aldrich, Mark

ISBN 10: 0801882362 / ISBN 13: 9780801882364

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2006

About this Item

Book and wrapper have the slightest of shelf wear, and p/o sticker and stamp on fep. Please contact for images.

Seller Inventory # 032886

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Death Rode the Rails : American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801882362
• ISBN 13: 9780801882364
• Binding: Hard Back
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
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About this title

Synopsis

For most of the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, railroads dominated American transportation. They transformed life and captured the imagination. Yet by 1907 railroads had also become the largest cause of violent death in the country, that year claiming the lives of nearly twelve thousand passengers, workers, and others. In Death Rode the Rails Mark Aldrich explores the evolution of railroad safety in the United States by examining a variety of incidents: spectacular train wrecks, smaller accidents in shops and yards that devastated the lives of workers and their families, and the deaths of thousands of women and children killed while walking on or crossing the street-grade tracks.

The evolution of railroad safety, Aldrich argues, involved the interplay of market forces, science and technology, and legal and public pressures. He considers the railroad as a system in its entirety: operational realities, technical constraints, economic history, internal politics, and labor management. Aldrich shows that economics initially encouraged American carriers to build and operate cheap and dangerous lines. Only over time did the trade-off between safety and output―shaped by labor markets and public policy―motivate carriers to develop technological improvements that enhanced both productivity and safety.

A fascinating account of one of America's most important industries and its dangers, Death Rode the Rails will appeal to scholars of economics and the history of transportation, technology, labor, regulation, safety, and business, as well as to railroad enthusiasts.

About the Author

Mark Aldrich is the Marilyn Carlson Nelson Professor Emeritus of Economics at Smith College and the author of Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1829–1965;Back on Track: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1965–2015; and Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870–1939.