THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF RAILROADS
BY CHARLES BARNARD
There are two ways in which the value of a life-time may
be measured. It can be measured by years or by events. A
man may live to be eighty years old and yet find at the end
that his life was hardly worth living. A Mozart may die
at thirty-five and measure his life by the birth of great compositions, each an event in the musical history of the world.
One woman may spend long quiet years upon a farm with only the few great days of every woman's life, birth, marriage, motherhood, and death. Another may, before she is
twenty, see all the great cities of Europe and America, meet
many notable people, write a book, or take part in artistic
life, and at twenty-five be older in experience than many
a rural housewife at seventy-five. Years do not count. A
man lives by events.
Nations and people have their lives, and the life of a nation
may also be counted by years or by experience. During the
so-called Dark Ages all the nations of Europe were practically at a complete stand-still. The earth, indeed, measured
the time into days, years, and centuries, yet there was no
progress, because nothing happened. More events in national lives came in the seventeenth century than in the five
hundred years that went before. More important events
have filled the ninety years of this century than in all the
Christian era. We live in eventful years today. We experience more in a year than our forefathers in all their lives.
To see how different life is today from life in the last century we have only to notice the difference in the simple matter of getting about. When Washington was president it
took four days to go from New York to Boston. A physician
in New York, having occasion, a few weeks ago, to visit a
patient in Boston, left his home at half past eight, had
twenty minutes by his patient's bed-side, and was in his office again at half past ten the same evening. A hundred
years ago every man lived near his business, the merchant
over his store, the mechanic close beside his shop. There
are today a hundred thousand people doing business in New
York who go from five to twenty miles to find supper and
bed. Then only the few traveled and a man saw only the
faces of his kindred and his neighbors. Today it is not
uncommon to find families having relatives in many states,
and yet seeing each other often.
If we consider the actual value of a life, we must see that
he lives best who does the most. Experience, not years, is
the measure of a life. Clearly we can experience more today than our fathers, because we are no longer tied to one
place. The railroad and steamboat have set us all free from
the bondage to place. Our word villain once meant not a
bad man, but merely one bound for life to one spot.
This freedom to move about quickly and cheaply has produced remarkable mental and even moral changes. Visiting
new places and seeing strange faces stimulate and quick-
en the mind. New sensations, new ideas, new experience,
stir new thoughts. New problems of life, manners, business, and morals arise. We are called upon to decide new
questions and to decide them quickly. The merchant of
fifty years ago received a long letter. He must duly consider
it, talk it over, consult his wife, or sleep on it. The merchant today decides in five minutes and sets in motion
whole trains loaded with freight while his grandfather would
be considering the propriety of hiring another horse. All
this means that we must think faster, decide more promptly,
and in every way accomplish more in a given time. Once the
town population lived in town, the rural people were far
from cities. Today a large part of the people in every city
have their homes in the country at a very great gain in
mental and moral health. The vices of the city wither away
in the suburban towns. On the other hand, the stupidity
and narrowness of country life is quickened by frequent contact with city life. The old adage that "a rolling stone
gathers no moss," has lost its meaning. "A rolling stone gets
a fine polish," and that's better than the moss of inaction.
This mental activity that has sprung from the modern freedom to move about, is not wholly an advantage. We experience more in a year and so far it is a gain, but experience
costs. The eye is wearied by a quick succession of changing views, the ear may be dulled by too much music. In
like manner the mind may be wearied by too many impressions and mental activity may quickly rise through excitement into insanity. Today we read almost without comment of business men suddenly dropping dead in the streEt
before half their days are told. The railroad has compelled
us all to live fast. The pace of the locomotive kills. Everywhere we see among our people an alarming increase of serious diseases. People become anxious, irritable, nervous, and
hurried. Something snaps, and the end comes quickly. As
an evidence that this intensity of experience is harmful, we
may notice the rapidly shortening hours of labor, the increase of holidays, the lengthening of vacations, and the disposition among city people to spend more and more time in
the country during the summer. All these are defenses
against the wear and tear of city life—why ?—because people and things can be moved so fast that all business moves
faster and faster and for such a killing pace we must have the
relief of more rest and longer vacations.
The railroad has in all these directions changed our social
and business life so that we lead wholly different lives from
all the men who have gone before. On the other hand,
it has been of very great mental benefit. It is said that insanity was at one time very common among farmers. The
dullness and stupidity of their lives drove them into mental
collapse. The railroad now brings the town to the farm, the
city paper comes to the rural fireside, and trips to town are
cheap and easy. The appalling monotony of country life is
quickened by the rush of the train through the quiet valleys,
and life seems more worth living, because more interesting.
Balancing one thing against another we must conclude that
there is a gain in all this. We must remember that only
two generations have had the railroad, while thousands of
generations got along very well without it. It takes time to
bring people to new experiences, to train them to the new
methods of doing business, to the changed conditions of social and domestic life. The wonder is not so much that so
many are injured by the speed of modern life, but that so
few fail to adjust themselves to these railroad times. Viewed
from the highest stand-point, life ii far more worth living
to-day than ever before, because we can experience more.
Doing less work in a year, having more leisure, free to move
about and gain the splendid education of travel, we may
well congratulate ourselves that our lives have fallen on such
active days. Life is worth more today, because of the locomotive. It depends upon ourselves how much more it is
worth.
Every man must have three things before he can accomplish anything worth the doing. He must have a roof, have
raiment, and regular meals. The prices of food, clothes, and
shelter are thus the prime factors in every man's business.
Up to the early part of this century, houses were built of the
materials nearest to hand. Wooden houses in Norway and
Switzerland, stone houses in England, brick houses in clay
countries. Our fathers built almost wholly of wood because
this was a timber country. Woolen and linen were almost
the only materials for garments in Europe up to the sixteenth century, because there was no means of bringing silk
from China. Flax and sheep were raised on the farm and
the farm clothed the people in both town and country.
There was good bread and meat with vegetables and a little
fruit for those who could afford to pay for it. All these,
houses, clothes, and food, were the products of the land in
the immediate neighborhood and all were expensive. The
vast majority of the people previous to this century, did no
more than earn enough to meet these three wants, and only
the very few had much more.
The contrast between the last century and this is remark-
able. We build in brick, stone, marble, iron, or wood as we
wish, because these things can be transported to our build-
ing site from a distance. Marble is cheap in Vermont and
yet we find it common everywhere. Clay is abundant in
New Jersey and New York Cify is built of brick. Black wal-
nut is scattered over the Western states and yet it forms part
of the interior of every New England house, and the floors
of half the houses in the Northern states are covered with
Southern pine.
Homespun was the only wear in the Revolution. To-day
our store windows are museums of fabrics. Silk, cotton,
jute, alpaca, and wool come from our looms in every variety
of combination, because our manufacturers can draw from all
climates the best materials they offer. Transportation has
brought the clothing of every people to our counters and we
have our choice of the raiment once confined to single nations. The old Egyptian had his cotton, the Chinaman his
silks, the dweller in Arabia his woolen, and the early Irishman his linen. We have all and at a far less price and in
better quality.
The history of the world is chiefly the story of disasters.
The historians seemed to think that all that was worth recording had to do with the misery and suffering of the people
or the exploits of kings, which always meant wretchedness
for the people. Wars, plagues, and famines were frequent and
made the great events of history. The people were fed from
the soil on which they had lived and the failure of their crops
meant both famine and the diseases that spring from bad or
insufficient food. People starved in France while wheat rotted in the fields of Russia. England might be short of beef,
and cattle abundant in Germany. In the dense populations
of India and China, famines have been frequent down to this
very year because of the difficulty of moving food over a few
hundred miles. During the Revolution the colonies raised
all their own food. Today there is not enough Indian corn
raised in Massachusetts to give every man, woman, and
child one good corn cake once a year. The New England
states do not produce their own bread, beef, strawberries, or
salt and yet the people there seem pretty hearty, as if they
lived well and enjoyed all the goodly fruits of the earth. It
is said that in Connecticut one man by the labor of his hands
can earn enough in one week to pay for all the wheat he can
eat in one year, and that one day's labor will pay for transporting that wheat in the form of flour from Minneapolis to
New Haven. We live on a continent having a grand soil,
producing enough for five times our population and yet we
flock into the cities and sell our Eastern farms for less than
the cost of the buildings on them. The railroads have made
food so cheap that we have changed from a nation of producers to a nation half producers and half non-producers.
Famines cannot appear on this continent, they will probably
never reappear in any civilized country. It is difficult to
estimate what this means, difficult to count up the enormous
gain to humanity to be free forever from the fear of general
starvation. Plagues, too, have probably gone, never to return, because a failure of the crops in one part of the world
can be met by supplies from another part, and when all the
people are well fed, well clothed, and fully sheltered the universal health improves and the terrible epidemics of the past
disappear. These great gains we owe almost wholly to our
steamships and railroads.
Looking at the matter from a personal standpoint we see
that life is easier because these three basic wants are now so
easily supplied. While house rents may be higher than one
hundred years ago, we can get a great deal more for our
money. We can get a warmer and better house with more
conveniences and in a sanitary sense a safer house and in an
artistic sense a far more beautiful house than could be commonly secured by our grandfathers. There were indeed a
few beautiful colonial houses in the early days, but the
homes of the majority were uncomfortable, unsanitary, and
unlovely.
In the matter of food and clothes a man can get far more
for his money than ever his grandfather could and life is just
so much easier. The railroads have thus helped every man
by enabling him to get these things quickly and for little
money. The margin of profit is thus raised and a man can
save more time and more money than ever before. If for any
reason the railroads were closed and all transportation was
at a standstill, famine would appear in our streets and no
man could hope to do more than earn a bare living—and a
pretty poor living at that.
Up to the year 1836 the records of the United States
Post Office Department do not mention any method of transporting the mails except stages, sulkies, post coaches, horseback, and steamboats. Even the steamboats were new and
the larger part of the mail bags were sent by horse along
such roads as we had, and they were bad at best. Today we
are impatient if the postman is a few minutes late with our
morning mail. Think what it might be to get a letter from
a distant friend, say in Portland, Maine, while we are in
Baltimore, a letter a week old and telling us to hasten to the
bedside of a dear friend, a mother, perhaps. The suspense
and uncertainty would be dreadful. It might be our friend
had fallen asleep by this time. Another week must pass before we could reach this bedside.
The distance between the two towns would seem immense,
our isolation from those we hold dear, complete. Yet, this
was the common experience previous to 1825 when steamboats begun in a little way to hasten the mails. They came
as early as 1811, but it took us ten years to build the first
fifty steamboats. Our fathers were a patient people. It
would seem to us almost insupportable to wait a week for a
letter that might mean life or death. Today the mail train
would take that same letter from Maryland to Maine in twenty-
four hours. How great the gain is simply beyond words
to tell, because when the heart waits, the moments seem like
hours and the hours are long days. In social life, in business,
even in our pleasures the fast mail train has doubled and
trebled the value of time. Letters are often the way marks
of experience and the railroad has widened all our lives by
bringing us new experiences, by placing us in more frequent
contact with other hearts and minds. Moreover, the newspaper correspondent brings us close to the experiences of
other and distant peoples. His vivid letters are laid on our
tables by fast mail and we see every day, even in the quiet
of the country, a picture of all the world. Thus our sympathies are widened and our outlook broadened till we see that
all the world are kin.
In 1830 we built in this country, the first twenty-three
miles of railroad. The new roads were an experiment.
Many objections were raised against them and capital was
too timid to venture into them. By 1835 we had built 1,098
miles of new track. The idea had taken hold on the popular
mind, and roads began to extend rapidly over the country.
Five years later, however, we had built only 2,818 miles,
showing that there was still some hesitation in the matter
of sinking money in the new roads. In 1845 we had 4,633
miles, and in 1850 we had 9,621 miles. The next ten years saw
a rapid advance, and in 1860 we had 30,635 miles. Through
the war and immediately after, the roads increased rapidly
and by 1870 we had 52,914 miles. In 1880 we increased our
roads to 93,349 miles, and five years later had 128,987 miles
of track. In this wonderful advance there were quite as
wonderful changes in the entire business of the country. Not
only were millions of money invested in the new roads, but
all arts, trades, manufactures, and commerce eagerly accepted the new methods of handling people and things and
advanced upon a new and wonderful progress, the end of
which we cannot even guess or measure.
New trades, new industries, new systems of doing business
appeared. Even retail stores sprang into a wholly new kind
of trade and in place of supplying neighborhoods, sought to
supply counties and states. The great express business
grew out of the railroads and in place of the traveling salesman, peddling goods over the country, the rural buyer orders by fast mail and selects by sample the goods she wants
delivered by express. Out of the railroad has sprung the
great fruit trade of today, and strawberries are plenty for
three months every year in all the Northern cities. The
kitchen gardener once doled out his lettuce to the neighbors.
Today Boston lettuce and Newport roses are sold fresh every
day in New York, and you can buy Boston brown bread
every afternoon on Broadway, fresh that morning from the
ovens at the Hub.
Up to December 1, 1887, we had built 149,912 miles of railroad, building that year no less than 13,080 miles. This
vast extent of road was valued at $9, 199,954,515. Of the
track laid up to that date 137,887 miles were in operation in
1887 and on this track was carried that year 228,225,513 passengers. "We al60 moved 552,074,752 tons of freight and
from both freight and passengers we received $931,385,154.
The cost of operating the roads was $600,249,478 and there was
left $331,135,676 as a profit to be divided among the people.
Of course, not all the roads paid a profit, for we have, no
doubt, built too many roads and built in some cases very
unwisely. Still, the fact remains that millions have been
invested that either directly as dividends or indirectly as
trade facilities have wonderfully enriched the people of this
country.
It is difficult to justly estimate the effect of this immense
interest on all other interests. It supplies a vast field of labor directly in the care and maintenance of the roads and in-
directly in creating other industries, rail-making, car-building, coal-mining, and countless small manufactures of
railroad supplies. With an eagerness that is marvelous, all
commercial interests accepted the railroad as a benefit that
could not be reckoned in money and that, while it changed
all the methods of doing business, must for a long time to
come steadily improve these very methods by making the
work quicker, easier, and safer. Thus we see all the world,
social, domestic, industrial, political, and commercial
changed in two generations from the old to the new, from
the stage coach to the locomotive, and all this almost with-
out jar or confusion, or serious commercial disaster. Whether
we have reached the end of the changes or not, whether we
have reached the limit of the speed or even usefulness of the
locomotive, remains to be seen. One thing, however, seems
to be clear : the great changes caused by the introduction of
the railroads have been accomplished in comparative ease
and safety and we are now securely adjusted to the changed
relations that sprang from the advent of the locomotive and
steamboat.
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