3 - The Barnes Review

Views of America
ALL FORMS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, it seems, carry their negative
side. The nation’s need for railroads led the livelihoods of millions
to become dependent upon them. Railroad companies quickly become
the mega-corporations of their time. Their sheer size and vital role in
intra-American trade provided the railroad companies with a sense of
invincibility. Poor conditions and pay for workers, as well as violent
responses to strikers, helped spur the original American populist
movement. In this 1873 cartoon at right, the “railroading” of the
American public over high travel and trade prices is given new meaning.
The man with the pitchfork represents the populist Grange movement
of the mid to late 19th century warning the American public
about the “bribery and extortion” of railroads.
THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT THAT RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY facilitated
the development of a strong sense of national unity among
Americans, even Americans who were now becoming geographically
quite distant from one another. The existence of a technology that
could ferry people and goods over long distances quickly also served
to diminish regional differences. At left, a poster issued by the New
York and Boston Railroad tells prospective passengers that only
this railway can take them out west while also giving them a view
of Niagara Falls.
AS THE UNITED STATES EXPANDED in the 19th century, and the economy began to become more diversified, new means for both trading
and travel quickly became necessary. Roads, previous to the development of railway technology, generally speaking, were rough and often
haphazard, and certainly did not provide for the convenience demanded for a regular trading pattern between the developing west and
the established east. Here, three early train cars are depicted. The locomotive, Tom Thumb, pulls two clearly upper-class cars.