American Railroad or Baseball Americas sport - Essay Example

Goods could be shipped across long distances at a fraction of the cost and messages could be sent across country in a fraction of the time. The purpose of the present research is to discover how the advent of the railroad affected the daily lives of Americans, particularly in the American west. While the general impression has always been that the railroads did little more than destroy those who came to work on them, this investigation attempts to prove that for all the harm it caused, the railroad also created many new opportunities for minority groups seeking new beginnings in the modern world.

By examining the words these individuals left behind and the effects that the railroad was having in a more general sense upon the landscape, economy and way of life of the average person, particularly within the less settled and less civilized lifestyles of the west, a better understanding can be obtained regarding the positive and negative aspects of the advent of the modern world upon these open and wild places, uniting a country and expanding Americans’ worldview while changing the nature of possibilities once available in this rugged land.

The railroad introduced significant changes to the previously wild and unknown western portions of the country. While there were already many individuals living out in the empty prairies, it remained a difficult and precarious lifestyle, frequently isolating individuals from families back east thanks to a slow and costly communications system and the difficulties and distances to be traveled. For this reason, change occurred relatively slowly within the western half of the nation except in those areas more easily accessible by boat.

As the railroads were built, however, change was forced upon the land. Industries changed as the landscape was divided up into manageable parcels, economies shifted as efficiency replaced older traditional methods of business and