Rates of Return for Land-Grant Railroads: The Central Pacific System

1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 602-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd J. Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
Rates Of Return ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
American Economy ◽  
Distribution Of Income

Land was the resource that nineteenth-century America possessed in greatest abundance. A large part of the land was initially in the public domain and was transferred to private ownership in the course of the century. Land policy, therefore, had the potential for creating significant and long lasting effects on the American economy—on the rate of settlement of the West, the distribution of income, the rate of economic growth. A substantial body of literature, much of it severely critical, has developed concerning the economic effects of nineteenth-century American land policy. Unfortunately, the criticisms often rest primarily on tales of corruption and thievery, rather than on economic analysis. Certainly many of the stories are true, but they represent an insufficient basis for evaluating the economic effects of land policy. A detailed economic analysis of individual policies is required.

The Federal Posse Comitatus Doctrine: Slavery, Compulsion, and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gautham Rao
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Henry David Thoreau ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Antebellum America ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nineteenth Century America

In antebellum America, as in pre-industrial England, it was commonplace to witness civilians accompanying sheriffs and justices, scouring the countryside in search of scoundrels, scalawags, and other law-breakers. These civilians were the posse comitatus, or uncompensated, temporarily deputized citizens assisting law enforcement officers. At its core, the posse comitatus was a compulsory institution. Prior to the advent of centralized police forces, sheriffs and others compelled citizens to serve “in the name of the state” to execute arrests, level public nuisances, and keep the peace, “upon pain of fine and imprisonment.” Despite its coercive character, though, the posse was widely understood as one among many compulsory duties that protected the “public welfare.” Americans heeded the call to serve in local posses, explained jurist Edward Livingston, because of communal “ties of property, of family, of love of country and of liberty.” Such civic obligations, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, illustrated why Americans had such a pressing “interest in … arresting the guilty man.” At once coercive and communitarian, lamented Henry David Thoreau, the posse comitatus exemplified how those that “serve the state … with their bodies,” were “commonly esteemed good citizens.”

The Evolution of Commercial Credit Reporting Agencies in Nineteenth-Century America

1974 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Madison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Credit Reporting ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Industry ◽  
American Economy

Professor Madison examines the formative decades of an important new industry in the nineteenth-century American economy. Overcoming a wide range of problems and challenges, firms such as the Bradstreet and the Dun agencies became established enterprises by the end of the century primarily because they effectively met new needs in a changing business environment.

scholarly journals Tragic Victims of Mania a Potu (“Madness from Drink”): A Study of Literary Nineteenth-Century Female Drunkards

Text Matters ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 299-318
Author(s):  
Irina Rabinovich
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Climate ◽  
The Other ◽  
Medical Attention ◽  
High Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Female Writers ◽  
The One ◽  
Dangerous Behaviors

Temperance literature, though widely popular in America and Britain between 1830–80, lost its allure in the decades that followed. In spite of its didactic and moralistic nature, the public eagerly consumed temperance novels, thus reciprocating contemporaneous writers’ efforts to promote social ideals and mend social ills. The main aim of this paper is to redress the critical neglect that the temperance prose written by women about women has endured by looking at three literary works—two novellas and one confessional novelette—written by mid-nineteenth-century American female writers. These works serve as a prism through which the authors present generally “tabooed” afflictions such as inebriation among high-class women and society’s role in perpetuating such behaviors. The essay examines the conflicting forces underlying such representations and offers an inquiry into the restrictive and hostile social climate in mid-nineteenth-century America and the lack of medical attention given to alcohol addicts as the possible causes that might have prompted women’s dangerous behaviors, including inebriation. This paper also demonstrates the cautious approach that nineteenth-century female writers had to take when dealing with prevalent social ills, such as bigotry, hypocrisy and disdain directed at female drunkards. It shows how these writers, often sneered at or belittled by critics and editors, had to maneuver very carefully between the contending forces of openly critiquing social mores, on the one hand, and not being censored, on the other.

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