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Image and Reality: The Railway Corporate-State Metaphor

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  • Ward, James A.

Abstract

Of the innumerable types of business enterprise that flourished in nineteenth-century America, none was more important than the railroads. For the first time in the national experience they provided relatively cheap, dependable transportation into the heartland and created a national market that prompted the growth of so many other aspects of national endeavor. As railroad leaders built what became America's first big business, they also developed a new self-image and with it a vocabulary drawn from their conception of competition as war. It is this new self-image and the lexicon that went with it that form the subject of this article by James A. Ward.

Suggested Citation

  • Ward, James A., 1981. "Image and Reality: The Railway Corporate-State Metaphor," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(4), pages 491-516, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:55:y:1981:i:04:p:491-516_04
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