Frontiers of progress and paradox: Building canals, railroads, and manhood in the American West

This study explores an untold history of American progress. Methodologically, it departs from previous scholarship by examining canals and railroads not as ends of progress but as moving spaces of conflict and contestation. Immigrant and native-born construction workers and elites and ordinary citizens contested the meaning of work, progress, manhood, and citizenship. Specifically, it traces the experiences of "unskilled" canal and railroad construction workers in the American West from 1830 to 1870. Examining Irish laborers on canals and railroads in the U.S. Midwest and Irish, Mormon, and Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad in the Mountain West and Far West, it unearths men who were buried under the triumph of progress.;Utah's Mormons endured a similar struggle but combated it differently. As the largest group of Anglo-American "unskilled" railroad builders, Mormons came closest to fulfilling the notion that internal improvements were the product of white men who worked hard to build the American dream. Yet, according to Americans, the Mormons' religious practices rendered them unmanly and uncivilized "others." As the tracks neared Utah, Mormons sought to overcome these prejudices and pledged their allegiance and toil to American progress. They worked not only for American citizenship, but to prove the ascendancy of their men, culture, and holy community.;The Central Pacific's Chinese workers were the most numerous group of railroad builders but the least visible. Their employment tested whether race would prove a barrier to achieving manhood on the railroad. Conquering the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains with iron rails, the Chinese rescued a struggling company and united a nation. As with the Irish and the Mormons, American opinion-makers reinterpreted this triumph and claimed it as their own.;In the canal era, Irish immigrants were valuable builders of American progress. However, in addition to dangerous and oppressive labor, they encountered prejudice that distanced them from the fruits of progress and from recognition as worthy men and citizens. Through hard work, camaraderie, alcohol, protest, and violence, the Irish contested their exclusion from the progress they wrought with their sweat and blood. They grafted new identities to old as they struggled to brand both manhood and progress.