| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

William G. Thomas. Lawyering for the Railroad: Business, Law, and Power in the New South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1999. Pp. xx, 318. Cloth $47.50, paper $24.95.

William G. Thomas has blazed a new trail in the study of American legal and railroad history by examining the relationship between railroads and their lawyers in the South. He describes how companies from the end of federal Reconstruction to the era of World War I adapted their legal activities as they moved from shortlines or intraregional carriers to being truly regional and even interregional operations. Initially, the upstart railroads engaged local lawyers to assist in acquiring rights of way, other real estate, and the overall process of line construction. Then, as carriers began service, their executives arranged to have local legal representatives manage matters that ranged from personal injury cases to anti-whistle ordinances. In the process, companies developed more bureaucratic and hierarchical legal departments, especially during the process of "system building" that swept Dixie toward the end of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth century. The volume of legal business steadily grew, necessitating an army of lawyers, some of whom received annual salaries and others, usually county seat attorneys, kept on retainers. Activities focused heavily on personal injury litigation and state and federal regulatory measures and policies. . . .

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