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Reviews
JAY COOKE'S GAMBLE: THE NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD, THE SIOUX, AND THE PANIC OF 1873
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by M. John Lubetkin
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| University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2006. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 398 pages. $29.95 cloth. |
| In recent years, many late-nineteenth-century American business leaders — controversial figures once derided as Robber Barons — have been rehabilitated by biographers intent on finding positive qualities concealed behind the facade of venality. M. John Lubetkin attempts, and to a considerable extent succeeds, to do the same for Jay Cooke, the financier of governments and railroads. The author concedes, though in delicate terms, that his subject's career featured "numerous ethical ambiguities" (p. 14). The banker managed to become "a millionaire many times over" while raising funds for the North during the Civil War (p. 11). The Northern Pacific, Cooke's great postwar contribution to history, was "riddled with graft" (p. 53). More than balancing these undeniable facts, however, the Union was saved and, under Cooke's tutelage, a project of enormous significance to the West was driven nearly to the point of completion before falling temporary victim to the Panic of 1873. Besides, "the only 'proof'?" of N.P. dishonesty, Lubetkin insists, "lies in strange contracts, purchasing that defied common sense, shoddy construction, and so forth" (p. 53). |
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Jay Cooke's Gamble is really the story of two major Northern Pacific–related gambles. The first involves a fundamental clash with contemporary thinking regarding the building of rail lines. In the late 1860s, few customers and little trade were to be found between the N.P. jumping-off point in Minnesota and the distant terminus planned for the Pacific Coast. The Northern Pacific, writes the author, "appeared to violate an underlying economic tenet of railroad construction: to connect existing communities or large regions" (p. xv). Unimpressed by Cooke's optimism about the Northern Pacific, many investors appeared to be primarily interested in mulcting the project for the profit of loosely related ventures. |
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Lubetkin soon shifts attention to the second gamble, the focal point of his book and the prime reason for its value to historians. Crossing the Dakotas into eastern Montana, the N.P. could hardly avoid trespassing upon Indian country to the detriment of peaceful relations with the Plains tribes. Sitting Bull, for example, "fully realiz[ed] that the road would destroy" the "traditional way of life" west of the Missouri River (p. 80). Surveying expeditions, sent out between 1871 and 1873 to locate an exact right-of-way, were of necessity accompanied by U.S. Army contingents. Railroad employees were harried by Indians on a periodic basis. Several small-scale skirmishes took place, the final one in the summer of 1873, with George Armstrong Custer in command of the government troops. |
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Presenting a great deal of interesting detail on these expeditions and encounters, the author reaches a highly debatable conclusion. Native resistance to the railroad "in the end," he writes, "brought everything down" by ruining the confidence of investors, precipitating the bankruptcy of the N.P., and generating the Panic of 1873 (p. 290). The surveys, however, were, in fact, completed. The fighting, even with Custer on the scene, produced only limited casualties. Indeed, railroad workers seemed to be in far more danger from the behavior of the many alcoholic army officers assigned to the project than from Indian raiders. The assignment of the military, sober or not, suggested a commitment on the part of the government to see the railroad through to completion. Other factors, some briefly mentioned by the author prior to dismissal, surely were at least of equal importance as the supposed Indian menace. Opposition from Canadian interests, for example, presumably worked against the raising of British capital. |
4
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Though unconvincing in its principal argument, Jay Cooke's Gamble is both an informative read and a valuable contribution to western history. Lubetkin proffers new insights on a variety of venerable subjects: railroad construction, Indian relations, the role and style of Custer, and connections between developments in the West and the national economic collapse of 1873. Jay Cooke himself, to be sure, sits on the depot sideline through long sections of the book. A true revisionist biography of this major figure in the development of American capitalism remains to be written. |
5
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| Robert E. Ficken
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| Issaquah, Washington |
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