The Early Business History of Four Massachusetts Railroads

This study is an exploration, on a limited scale, of the part played by businessmen in early railroad construction and operation. The business history of railroading is significant not only for that industry but also for the leadership that the railroads maintained among the large business units in the nineteenth century and the consequent influence on organization, management methods, and policies of big business. In this paper we are concerned only with a sample, the beginnings in the decades of the 'thirties and 'forties, in order (1) to see wherein our knowledge of early railroad history needs enlarging and (2) to demonstrate the type of information that can be gleaned from the manuscript minutes, reports, and correspondence of early railroads.