Age of Railroads

1. What problems did employees of the railroad companies face?
Some problems that employees of the railroad companies faced were attacks from the Native Americans as they were laying out the tracks on "treacherous terrain". Another problem these employees endured is disease and also some accidents that happened while working. This lead to the statistic of 2000 deaths and 20,000 injured.
2. What was it like to live as a Pullman employee in the town of Pullman?
Living as a Pullman employee in the town of Pullman was actually not too bad. The town of Pullman was basically made up of housing for all the workers of the Pullman company. According to the text, the houses were "clean, well-contructed brick houses and apartment building with at least one window in every room" The town also included basically everything a normal town would consist of, including the doctor's office, shops, etc. One of the downsides of living in this town though, is that it was a very strict town. For example, there was no consumption of alcohol allowed. There was good reason for the strictly enforced rules though, the better the employees health and well-being is, the better workers they would be for the company, so the town had to be tightly maintained. However, when pay cuts happened, but the price of rent stayed the way it was before pay cuts, there was a strike in 1894.
3. Who was involved in Crédit Mobilier, and what was the purpose of this company?
The people involved in the Credit Mobilier were stockholders in the Union Pacific Railroad who decided that they would make a contract that let workers "lay down track at two or three times the actual cost" and the money that was profited was donated to representatives in congress. The purpose of this company was simply to sway representatives with the profit they took in from the stockholders, which would've given the Republican party a benefit.
4. In what ways did the railroad companies use their power to hurt farmers?
The railroad companies used their power to hurt farmers by doing a few different things. One of these things was not using the government land grants properly, by selling them to other businessed instead of the settlers which is where they were supposed to go in the first place. Something else the railroad companies did to hurt the farmers is that they charged different customers different prices, usually not in a very fair manor either. For example, a short trip would cost more then a longer trip on the train.
5. Why didn’t the decision in the Munn v. Illinois case succeed in checking the power of the railroads? This case didn't succeed in checking the power of the railroads because, even though the decision in this case was to keep the Granger laws, and also gave the right to the goverment to "regulate private industry to serve the public intrest" later on the supreme court made another ruling. This ruling stated that states could not regulate rates on railroad traffic that was going or coming from another state. This fails to check the power of the railroads because it basically put them back where they started.
6. Why didn’t the Interstate Commerce Act immediately limit the power of the railroads?
The ICA didn't immediately limit the power of the railroads because they "had difficulty regulating railroad rates because of a long legal process and resistance from the railroads" which basically means that there was a long process to go through in order to limit the power of the railroads and also that the railroads didn't want their pwer to be limited, so they were fighting back.