Public Railroad Construction and the Development of Private Enterprise in the South Before 1861

Milton S. Heath

The Journal of Economic History, 1950, vol. 10, issue S1, 40-53

Abstract: The paper is based upon research over a rather long period into the public activities in railroad construction in the southern states. Table I-A presents a quantitative summary of public contributions in cash, bonds, and other securities; government-endorsed bonds; remission of Federal import duties; and estimated realized values of Federal land grants prior to 1861. It represents an attempt to give a preliminary summary of the public effort. The estimates on public land grants are tentative, and other items are subject to further refinements through additional studies. It does not represent the total of the public effort, since no account is taken in this summary of the investment values of the many important public and quasi-public contributions in services, the uses of public streets and other properties, tax exemptions, and banking privileges. An adequate appraisal of these must await further research. The summary does reflect, however, some of the outstanding features of the public railroad-building effort, which will supply a useful background for the consideration of the main problem of this paper.

Date: 1950
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:10:y:1950:i:s1:p:40-53_06

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().