How did railroads attract immigrants?

Railroad companies also redefined the cultural landscape of the nation by heavily promoting immigration, targeting specific ethnic groups that railroad officials considered desirable, such as northern Europeans, attracting them with employment opportunities, sale of cheap lands, and reduced transportation rates.



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As early as 1868 most western railroads established profitable land departments and bureaus of immigration, with offices in Europe, to sell land and promote foreign settlement in the western United States.

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The railroads created bureaus and sent agents to the East and to Europe to attract potential settlers on these lands. Portraying the West as a land of limitless opportunity, the bureaus offered long-term loans and free transportation to the West.

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BUT, our results also imply that the railroad was the cause of midwestern urbanization, accounting for more than half of the increase in the fraction of population living in urban areas during the 1850s.

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Together, the Burlington and Union Pacific Railroads had sold more than 7 million acres to private purchasers. Over 9.6 million acres was obtained free of charge under the Homestead Act. The railroads did not abandon settlers after they sold them the land.

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As new towns sprung up along the rail line, it changed where Americans lived, spurred westward expansion and made travel more affordable. But the project also devastated forests, displaced many Native American tribes and rapidly expanded Anglo-European influence across the country.

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The rails carried more than goods; they provided a conduit for ideas, a pathway for discourse. With the completion of its great railroad, America gave birth to a transcontinental culture. And the route further engendered another profound change in the American mind.

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In the middle of the nineteenth century, U.S. railroad companies were expanding at a breakneck pace, straining to span the continent as quickly--and cheaply--as they could. The work was brutally difficult, the pay was low, and workers were injured and killed at a very high rate.

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