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Ross, D G (1970) The construction of the railroads of Central America, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Type: Thesis
- Keywords: competition; failure; concession; highway; railway; standards; traffic; wages; documentation; employment; export; government; imports; Costa Rica; Guatemala; Honduras
- ISBN/ISSN:
- URL: https://www.proquest.com/docview/302388357
- Abstract:
This study deals with the construction of the public railways of the five republics of Central America. It includes as well a treatment of industrial railroads and other railed lines, but without detail. After sketching the need for improved methods of transportation in Central America during the first half of the nineteenth century it describes the contractual relationships entered into, the problems and difficulties encountered, the various successes and failures in the construction of railroads in Central America, and, briefly, the results of construction. In addition to the personal experience of the author gained while residing in Central America for several years, the major sources used in the documentation of the study include company records, government documents, accounts written by contractors themselves and by their contemporaries, newspaper and journal accounts, and numerous secondary sources. The subject matter is discussed chronologically in chapters dealing separately with the various interoceanic railway projects, Pacific port railways, the Pan American Railway project, and secondary railroads. Central American railroads were constructed in three ways: by private entrepreneurs who received concessions from the governments of the countries involved for the construction and operation of railways, by railway contractors employed by the governments themselves, and by official permits granted to industrial enterprises. The concession method was the most common and produced most of the railroads that were completed, but all five republics experimented, not always successfully, with government construction. The third method, that of granting railway construction permits to industrial concerns, produced industrial railways and was used extensively only in Honduras. Early Central American railways were designed to link the populous interiors of the republics with seaports so as to facilitate exports, imports, and international travel. Two countries, Guatemala and Costa Rica, united separate Caribbean and Pacific port railways in their capitals to provide interoceanic railroads. A proposed longitudinal railroad, part of the Pan American Railway project for a railway extending from New York to Buenos Aires, was enthusiastically promoted by Central Americans, but only slightly more than half of its projected mileage was completed on the isthmus, most of it being built by a company organized by Minor Cooper Keith who had a hand in building a number of Central American railways. Railroads brought Central America numerous benefits, including the first economical, rapid, safe, and convenient means of transportation, through which they helped to unify the nations they served. They generated new prosperity in Central America, they added new revenue to governments, and, by giving the lower classes new opportunities and a mobility which they had never enjoyed before they changed society. They brought industry, especially the banana industry, and people to the previously useless and sparsely inhabited coastal lowlands. They created steady employment at relatively high wages for thousands of people. Railway companies or concerns operating railway-connected industries granted these people fringe benefits in the form of educational, health, and sanitation programs previously unknown, thus improving standards of living and serving as pace setters for laborers in other industries, industries which, incidentally, were also benefited by the new means of transportation. Although railroads benefited Central America, they themselves rarely prospered for any length of time. Moreover, those lines that at first showed a profit began to experience difficulties as time went on because of the competition of highway transport in the twentieth century. Most railway construction ceased by 1930, and after that date railways began to abandon branches and even main lines that did not carry sufficient traffic to warrant operation. Even in abandonment, however, railways continued to benefit Central America because their roadbeds were often converted into highways.