One of the statists arguments in favor of government controls is the notion that American railroads were built mainly through the financial help of the government and would have been impossible without it. Actually, government help to the railroads amounted to 10% of the cost of all the railroads in the country, and the consequences of this help have been disastrous to the railroads.
I quote from The Story of the American Railroads by Stewart H. Holbrook:
In a little more than two decades, three transcontinental railroads were built with government help. All three wound up in bankruptcy courts. And thus, when James Jerome Hill said he was going to build a line from the Great Lakes to the Puget Sound, without government cash or land grants, even his close friends thought him mad. But his Great Northern arrived at Puget Sound without a penny of federal help, nor did it fail. It was an achievement to shame the much-touted construction of the Erie Canal.
Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise – Ayn Rand (1959)