 
in assembling the american industrial complex, railroads played a crucial 
role. 
the construction of the first transcontinental line was a major 
breakthrough; how it was built, moreover, is an epic indicative of the spirit 
in which america attacked industrialism. 
our surveying parties were expected to live upon the game of the country. 
each party entering a country occupied by hostile indians was generally 
furnished with a military escort of from ten men to a company under a 
competent officer. 
the duty of this escort was to protect the party when in camp. 
in the field the escort usually occupied prominent hills commanding the 
territory in which the work was to be done, so as to head off sudden attacks by 
the indians. 
notwithstanding this protection the parties were often attacked, their 
chief or some of their men killed or wounded, and their stock run off. 
the location part in our work on the union pacific was followed by the 
construction corps, grading generally a hundred miles at a time. 
that distance was graded in about thirty days on the plains, as a rule, 
but in the mountains we sometimes had to open our grading several hundred miles 
ahead of our track in order to complete the grading by the time the track 
should reach it. 
all the supplies for this work had to be hauled from the end of the track, 
and the wagon transportation was enormous. 
at one time we were using at least ten thousand animals, and most of the 
time from eight to ten thousand laborers. 
the bridge gangs always worked from five to twenty miles ahead of the 
track, and it was seldom that the track waited for a bridge. 
