Rama V and communities Emblematic here was the emergence of Chicago as a major rail hub in the nation’s midsection integrating rail and water transport Towns along railways prospered; those bypassed floundered The transcontinental railroad, linking the east and west coasts and built mainly by immigrant Irish and Chinese laborers under exceedingly hazardous conditions, was completed in 1869 Two decades later, another six major lines crossed the continent east to west, with termini in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles A parallel development unfolded in Canada, where a canal boom from the 1820s and 1830s was followed by a railroad boom from the 1850s Here, too, public subsidies, activist government, and abundant immigrant labor made railroad construction possible The transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, linking the eastern provinces to the Pacific port city of Vancouver, British Columbia, was completed in November 1885, with dozens of spur lines linking major cities and towns and crisscrossing the southern border with the United States in both the urban and agricultural East and prairie West The same happened in northern Mexico, where from the 1880s the burgeoning ranching and mining economies prompted a spate of railroad construction during the period of the Porfiriato By the early 1900s a dense network of railroads linked northern Mexico’s ranching and mining districts with the U.S Southwest and industrial centers of the East, South, and Midwest Like railroads elsewhere in Latin America, funneling into port cities from Peru to Argentina, northern Mexico’s were geared mainly to export production This was in contrast to the United States and Canada, where railways, in addition to funneling goods to seaports for export, played a key role in integrating internal markets and facilitating migration to the interior From the mid-1840s telegraph lines followed the rail lines, generating a revolution not only in transport, but in communications Another revolution occurred in timekeeping: today’s standard time zones, first implemented on November 18, 1883, by rail companies in the United States and Canada, resulted directly from the need to synchronize rail schedules Among the largest concentrations of private capital in the world in the late 19th century, U.S railroad companies also pioneered important new forms of business organization Most notable here was their pursuit of horizontal and vertical integration, in which a single company integrated “horizontally” by controlling firms 347 engaged in the same industry (in this case, other railroad companies), and “vertically” by controlling the subsidiary industries involved in the primary industry (in this case, coalfields, iron and steel factories, and even cotton fields and textile mills for passenger car seats and draperies) By the 1870s railroad monopolies and corruption had become the object of much popular wrath, most tangibly expressed in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, and later, in the Populist Movement of the 1890s Many Progressive Era reforms from the 1890s, especially anti-monopoly and antitrust legislation, found a primary target in the nation’s giant railroad monopolies For these and many other reasons, one would be hardpressed to exaggerate the centrality of railroads in the economic, political, social, and cultural history of North America See also Manifest Destiny Further reading: Grant, H Roger The Railroad: The Life Story of a Technology Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2005; Seavoy, Ronald E An Economic History of the United States: From 1607 to the Present New York: Routledge, 2006 Michael J Schroeder Rama V (1853–1910) Thai king Rama V, commonly known as Chulalongkorn, was one of the greatest Thai monarchs, noted for his foreign policy and modernization The fifth king of the Chakri dynasty was born to King Mongkut and Queen Debsirinda in 1853 Mongkut was an enlightened ruler who employed Anna Leonowens to be an English governess for his children; the story is told in the book Anna and the King of Siam, later adapted to the musical The King and I Chulalongkorn also studied in a Buddhist monastery for two years and succeeded to the throne on October 1, 1868 His reign began under the regency of Prime Minister Chao Praya Srisuriyawongse, as he was too young to rule He visited Penang, Singapore, Java, Burma, Calcutta, and India during this period and got firsthand knowledge of Western colonial administrations He also visited Europe twice, in 1897 and 1907 Mongkut and Chulalongkorn kept up with the times It was because of the endeavors of the fatherand-son duo that Thailand preserved its independence