B.I.G.
Part One: Big Business — When the Past Screams at the Future
May 3, 2026
I have always had a big enthusiasm for trains. So I was delighted, in the nerdy way only a train lover can be, to discover that one of the earliest American examples of “Big” industry language leads back to the railroads.
Long before we talked about Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Food, or Big Tech, historians were describing railroads as America’s first “big business.” Alfred Chandler’s 1965 book was titled The Railroads: The Nation’s First Big Business, and Harvard Business School’s Baker Library describes railroads as “The First Big Business.”
That discovery made me smile. Then it made me think. Railroads are easy to romanticize. I can hear the whistle, picture the tracks, and feel the excitement of something powerful enough to connect distant places. I like the melodic rhythm of riding on a train. I like the idea of people, mail, food, supplies, memories and possibilities moving across our nation.
There is something hopeful in that. But the railroad story is not as charming as my train-loving heart might want it to be.
Railroads were not simply big. They were transformative. They changed geography, commerce, labor, politics, and timekeeping by creating time zones, as well as settlement and everyday life. They required massive capital, complex management, government cooperation, public trust, and public suspicion.
They connected people. They also concentrated power.
With that power came a dark side. Humans have always been tempted to abuse power, and when money, prestige and influence gather in the same place, greed can become as intoxicating as the strongest whiskey.
Railroads helped build the United States, but they also helped teach the country why big business needed watching. Early railroads were tied to corruption, monopolies, political favors, public subsidies, private fortunes, dangerous working conditions, the exploitation of labor, environmental harm, and harm to communities that had little power to resist.
The Crédit Mobilier scandal, tied to the construction of the Union Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad, became one of the great symbols of post-Civil War corruption. It was one of the first shell companies in America. Railroads received enormous federal and state support, including land grants and loans. The controversy was not simply that the government helped build infrastructure; it was that private actors could turn public subsidies into private fortunes through inflated contracts, speculation, and political influence.
The technology that connected some people also helped destroy the way of life of others. The US transcontinental railroad accelerated westward expansion over lands taken from Native nations.
That expansion contributed to the destruction of buffalo (bison) populations essential to Indigenous communities. Thousands of bison were killed to feed the construction crews and the military guarding the construction. “Sport” hunting from train windows became a popular pastime, with bison shot and their carcasses left behind. Trains provided a means of shipping bison hides back to eastern markets. Bones were also shipped for use in the manufacturing of fertilizer, bone china, and glue. The tracks impeded the migration routes of the bison. The effects were so consequential that the bison were driven to near extinction.
The construction of the US transcontinental railroad also caused significant environmental harm. It contributed to deforestation, wildfires, land alteration, and changes to waterways. The railroad contributed to urbanization, industrialization, and the extraction of vast resources, all of which had environmental harms. That negative impact is still evident over 100 years later.
The transcontinental railroad depended heavily on exploited labor working in dangerous conditions, including Chinese immigrant workers for the Western leg and former enslaved people for the Eastern leg that crossed the Midwest. No clear records were kept of the actual number of workers who were either severely injured or died while constructing the US transcontinental railroad, but estimates for deaths of the largest population in that workforce estimate that thousands of Chinese immigrants perished while helping to build the railroad.
Big railway building projects in the US were not the only ones that were deadly and based wages on race. The same story is true for the building of the Canadian transcontinental railway, where it is estimated that three Chinese workers died for every mile of track laid. Like the US project, Chinese workers were paid about half as much as white workers. Gear and food were not provided for the Chinese workers, like they were for white workers.
Railroads used their market power in ways that harmed farmers, towns, shippers and communities. They were notorious for rate discrimination: charging different customers or communities different rates, giving rebates to favored shippers, and using monopoly power over routes.
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 created the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first federal regulatory agency, partly to address railroad rate abuses and discriminatory practices. It is one of America’s earliest examples of both industry and anti-industry pushing for regulation. It is also an early reminder that regulation is not always a simple story of industry on one side and public interest on the other. Industry, reformers, competitors, and people harmed by industry practices can all push for the same laws, sometimes for very different reasons
Railroads were not pure. They were powerful, politically connected, sometimes corrupt, and often harmful to people with less power. But the country still recognized that rail technology could move people and goods, connect communities, and drive progress. The answer was not to abandon railroads. The answer was to confront abuses, regulate power, and still use the technology.
“Big” can mean scale, reach, money, influence, bureaucracy, political muscle, and distance from ordinary people. But when we attach it to an industry, it rarely stays neutral. “Big” becomes a moral signal. It tells us something is powerful enough to watch closely, and sometimes powerful enough to distrust.
Sometimes that warning is earned. Sometimes it helps us see power more clearly. And sometimes it becomes so loud that it drowns out the differences we still need to see.
I can think of no example that demonstrates this more clearly than the war over nicotine.
I’ll explore that tomorrow in Part Two: Big Tobacco, Big Vape, Big Nicotine — and the People Erased by Big Language.
Until next time…
