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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum
GLD 374.22-0.2%Nov 21 4:00 PM EST
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To: Arran Yuan who wrote (35101)5/24/2008 3:12:07 PM
From: elmatador  Read Replies (3) of 217932
 
Why a pandemic flu decimated 1/4 of a country's horses at the EXACT the same time there was a railroad construction boom?? I am puzzled here.

As a studious of wayo -oh! sorry! economic history- I am trying to fathom what were the causes of the Panic of 1873 in the US.

At the end of the Civil War, there was a boom in railroad construction, with 35,000 miles (56,000 km) of new track laid across the country between 1866 and 1873. The railroad industry, at the time the nation's largest employer outside of agriculture, involved large amounts of money and risk. A large infusion of cash from speculators caused abnormal growth in the industry.

Unintended consequences:

In 1873, the American economy entered a crisis. This followed a period of post Civil War economic expansion that arose from the Northern railroad boom and the outbreak of Equine Influenza in 1872 which killed a quarter of all horses in the United States

My analysis:
The British had invested too much capital in the US in railroads. A glut of railroading. How can you get more people to use the railroads.
Kill the competition.
How?

If you have an empire and know of countries that have cases of Equine Influenza you may ship in soem sick horses early Spring. Horses are decimated. Cargo goes to railroads.

But the plan worked too well.

a lesson for today: Equine flu is extinct. But you never know if a sick chicken can pop up somewhere...
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