British Investment in American Railways, 1834–1898 by Dorothy R. Adler (review)

78 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE human effort the so-called march of progress has entailed. How long will it be before our new motorways are abandoned in their turn? L. T. C. Roi.t* British Investment in American Railways, ¡834-1898. By Dorothy R. Adler. Edited by Muriel E. Hidy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press for the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1970. Pp. xiv + 253. $11.50. When one considers the range of technologies in which 19th-century Britishers might have invested, as well as the outlets available at home and elsewhere within their vast empire, it is re­ markable that in the first decade of this century nearly a fifth of the United Kingdom’s extensive overseas portfolio investment consisted of the securities of railroads in the United States. From the vantage point of British investors and the London capital market, the late Dorothy Adler’s study investigates both the evolution of investment practices regarding American roads and the extent of British in­ volvement in their construction and operation. In offering an in­ ternational view of capital mobilization for American railways, the volume complements nicely the recent Boston Capitalists and Western Railroads by Johnson and Supple, to which it is similar in concept and execution. Mrs. Adler’s emphasis is on the varied reasons for British interest in American railways and on the methods by which investors pro­ tected their investments in distant assets. The former ranged from entrepreneurial ambitions to exploit undeveloped resources and to open up new markets, to purely rentier motives. In the earlier years a significant motivation for investment was to sell rails: British iron­ masters took securities as payment from American railway promo­ ters who were short of ready cash. Once made, investments were protected by methods ranging from British control and even man­ agement of American roads to the organization of shareholders’ watchdog committees in London. The latter usually operated directly or indirectly through British and American financial houses. Although concerned primarily with financial arrangements, Ad­ ler’s study touches at many points on the transfer of British tech­ nology and ideas that accompanied the flow of money capital into American railroads. Financial and management techniques, of course, migrated; convertible securities and accounting practices are examples. But the British also sent their own engineers to inspect *Mr. Rolt is vice-president of the Newcomen Society and editor of the Longmans Industrial Archaeology series. He is the author of many hooks on the history of British technology, including The Railivay Revolution: George and Robert Stephenson. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 79 properties in which they were interested, and British engineering firms undertook various types of construction, for example, tunnel­ ing, in which they had greater expertise than did Americans. Adler also uncovers some evidence that the bogie, or swiveling truck, which proved so useful on American roads, had an English origin. These topics are not much pursued. However, in bringing them into view, Adler, in the words of the editor of the volume, provides “a challenge to scholars. The exports of control, influence, techniques, and ideas are interesting by-products of capital flow” (p. ix). Richard Sylla* The Fashionable Stone. By Kenneth Hudson. Bath: Adams & Dart, 1971. Pp. viii + 120. £2.50. This book is much more than an account of the history of English limestones (especially of those called Portland and Bath), of the economics, and of the techniques of mining limestone in England. It is also a study of the effects of this stone—the fashionable stone —upon English society and architecture. As Professor Hudson (who is Senior Lecturer in Adult Studies at Bath University and founder of the journal of Industrial Archaeology) is quick to point out, certain limestones became prestigious for reasons of snobbery; for instance, colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, buildings in Bath, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and, more recently, the Grosvenor Hotel are built in Portland stone. This book is chiefly concerned with the oolitic limestones, so-called because they contain oolites, tiny structures resembling fish roe, which result when carbonate of lime builds up around a core of broken shell or grains of sand or mud. These limestones occur in a broad belt running diagonally across England...