in May 1869. Coast-to-coast passenger travel in 8 days now replaced wagon trains or sea voyages that took 6 to 10 months and cost much more. The road was built with mortgages from New York, Boston, and London, backed by land grants. There were no federal cash subsidies, But there was a loan to the Central Pacific that was eventually repaid at six percent interest. The federal government offered land-grants in a checkerboard pattern. The railroad sold every-other square, with the government opening its half to homesteaders. The government also loaned money—later repaid—at $16,000 per mile on level stretches, and $32,000 to $48,000 in mountainous terrain. Local and state governments also aided the financing. Most of the manual laborers on the Central Pacific were new arrivals from China. Kraus shows how these men lived and worked, and how they managed their money. He concludes that senior officials quickly realized the high degree of cleanliness and reliability of the Chinese. The Central Pacific employed over 12,000 Chinese workers, 90% of its manual workforce. Ong explores whether or not the Chinese railroad workers were exploited by the railroad, with whites in better positions. He finds the railroad set different wage rates for whites and Chinese and used the latter in the more menial and dangerous jobs, such as the handling and the pouring of nitroglycerin. However the railroad also provided camps and food the Chinese wanted and protected the Chinese workers from threats from whites. Building the railroad required six main activities: surveying the route, blasting a right of way, building tunnels and bridges, clearing and laying the roadbed, laying the ties and rails, and maintaining and supplying the crews with food and tools. The work was highly physical, using horse-drawn plows and scrapers, and manual picks, axes, sledgehammers, and handcarts. A few steam-driven machines, such as shovels, were used. The rails were iron (steel came a few years later), weighed and required five men to lift. For blasting, they used black powder. The Union Pacific construction crews, mostly Irish Americans, averaged about two miles (3 km) of new track per day. Six transcontinental railroads were built in the Gilded Age (plus two in Canada); they opened up the West to farmers and ranchers. From north to south they were the Northern Pacific, Milwaukee Road, and Great Northern along the Canada–US border; the Union Pacific/Central Pacific in the middle, and to the