C. Herzog

“ Returning to the public life of society, we find two features in which there seems to be a connection between changes that are going on and the modern conditions of transportation, viz., the democratic tendencies of society, and the prevalence of materialism. The democratic tendency, which is peculiar to the times, does not limit itself to exhibition in state constitutions, but is penetrating the whole social life. ”

“ A change has also come over the course of family life, in which habit and tradition had established fixed customs, whereby the old ways are slowly dissolved and new forms take their place. The prescription of kin, in which the choice of a wife was formerly confined, is relaxed; the old Frankish courting by the parents for the son is out of fashion; the wedding-feast is arranged to suit the railroad-train on which the young couple will begin their journey; fresh blood and strange customs are pressing into the close circle of ancient relationship and stiff usage ”

“ Just as a community of interest has been produced in the world's trade by the operation of railroads and telegraphs, so it has been in industries. Every advance in technics shortly becomes known and common, while those who are backward in taking it up suffer during the transition. On the other hand, local crises are felt by related industries far from the place of their origin, till, in fact, the distance becomes so great that the market is protected against the effects of the shock by the cost of transportation. ”

“ As railways and steamers perform the hard, steady, physical work of trade, so the telegraph assists the mental work of its service. Of the more than a hundred million telegrams which the electric wires carry over the earth yearly, by far the greatest part concern affairs of trade. The telegraph is the medium of all important communications in wholesale trade, and speculation could hardly exist without it. A commercial solidarity covering the whole globe has been built upon it, and the present generation for the first time sees a world-trade. ”

“ Apace with the widening of the trade in goods, has production reached an unprecedented development, and this as regards quantity and variety and quality. If Industry knew what it was doing when in 1829 it offered a prize for a locomotive-engine available as a draught power, its knowledge has brought it rich fruits. With that invention it gained a basis for increased production, and made it possible to bring together the raw material and the power at points where human skill and the other favorable conditions for production were found. ”

“ Hence we see a streaming of working-men toward the centers of great industries, large towns growing up, labor become scarce in the agricultural districts, and the industrial organizations undergoing a revolution. The labor market has undergone the same kind of extension as the market for goods; and skilled labor has become more and more a thing of merchandise, the price of which is regulated by the larger conjunctures of business. ”

“ While it is true that wars have in these days become more bloody, it can also be said that they are shorter and, in a certain sense, more humane; the latter, not only in the fact that the victims of battle receive better care, but also that the peaceful population of the country visited by war are, by means of the improved facilities for communication, spared the burden of maintaining the invading army. ”

“ Many people know more of foreign countries than of their own neighborhoods, consequently their attachment for home is weakened. From indifference to disdain is only a step. On this ground are explained the disappearance of old customs, which gave fixedness to social life in the family and the commune, the dissatisfaction with the narrowness of the home, and a relaxation of regard for persons in authority and for older persons, whose experiences, gathered in the narrow home circle, are not allowed to compete with the assumed versatile and superior knowledge of traveled youth. ”

“ The majority of living people take them for granted, and have no further thought about them. Railroads and telegraphs have been so much a matter of course to them from their childhood up that they can hardly conceive that it was ever different. But he whose memory goes back more than a generation, or whoever has traveled in countries where mules or oxen are the only means of transportation, can realize the difference and appreciate the importance of the progress, and the relations that exist between numerous phenomena of life and those concerns. ”

“ There is hardly a condition or a professional society that does not feel the need of bringing its members together, and of holding at different but always agreeable places social unions. To these we may add exhibitions, in which fisheries and agriculture, the industries and the fine arts display and compare their efforts, with their culmination in periodical world's fairs. Without railroads this mobility and this releasing of men from their soil, which answer a deep longing f our nature, would be possible only within the narrowest limits. ”

“ Modern strategy, therefore, consists no little in having knowledge and skill enough to operate with the railroads as the most important factors of movements and the actions, in which, with modern arms, multitudes of men are of more effect than personal bravery, as never to strike except where and when he knows that his forces are superior. It is also an important consideration that provisions and ammunition and re-enforcements can be steadily supplied to the army by means of railroads, so as to keep it constantly effective, even in the enemy's country ”

“ People seldom went beyond the boundaries of the province, except on business, or on the occasion of important festivals, or of death. Now we can travel to the sea-coast or the mountains in the same time, and with hardly more expense than it then took to go the thirty miles, and we eagerly use the opportunity to change our scene, whether it be to improve the health a shade, for mental relaxation, for instruction, or for pleasure. ”

“ The ideas suggested by such commingling are very apt to be carried into other fields of intercourse.
With the democratizing of society is flowing a parallel current of a practical materialism, which is manifested in a predominance of material interests over ideal ones, in the recognition of egoism as a leading principle in trade, in the estimation of men's deeds, only according to their visible consequences, and in the rejection of all that transcends realism. This drift is not new in human civilization ”

“ The greater part of the cruelty and barbarity of former wars arose from the fact that the troops had to be supported by the land in which they were encamped, and the necessity of their taking care of themselves excluded all consideration for the people. War is still a direful scourge; but the arrangements for provisioning and foraging and the system of requisitions which railroads have made possible place the military administration in a condition to spare the country from exhaustive drafts, and to prevent excesses by the soldiers. ”

“ The ease with which large quantities of goods can be carried from countries where they have accumulated in excess under favoring conditions, to regions where this production is not equally favored, is fraught with disadvantages to the local producers by depreciating the prices of their goods when the circumstances are already hard for them. The depressing competition of American and Indian wheat in the European markets, which the home farmers lament with so much reason, is a striking example of this. ”

“ Now the railroad carries one from the port of arrival, in as many days as months were formerly required, to the extreme West; and, finding himself there, he is no longer lost in the wilderness, with nothing but his own efforts to depend upon; but he has a railroad passing at no very great distance, to keep him in constant communication with civilization. To these great impulses may be added the increased facilities for coming and going within their own country. Formerly the poor man was tied to his threshold by the impossibility of obtaining the means to get away. ”

“ Distance offers no obstacle to the father's informing himself concerning the circumstances of his daughter's suitor; and the careful mother can consent to let her child go to places which would formerly be considered out of the world, because she can correspond with her daily; and it only requires a journey of a few hours or days, which also promises a welcome variety to the monotonous life of the parental home, to bring the separated family together again. ”

“ The improvements which railroads and steamers have made possible in our buildings are also obvious, in the use of solid materials in regions far from the quarries. The coals with which we warm our houses and from which we derive our gas-lights, and the petroleum which burns in the lamps of the man of small means, articles which have become indispensable in modern life, but the use of which was formerly forbidden in all but the narrow regions of their productions, are now carried into the most remote mountain-valleys and across oceans, to wherever men live. ”

“ The newspapers circulating in all classes of society, the number of persons upon whom the formation of that vague force called public opinion depends has become multiplied many times, and in it many are included who have not the previous knowledge requisite to the formation of an intelligent opinion, or capacity to form a real opinion of their own. ”

“ But we frequently meet polite and interesting traveling-companions, whose intercourse gives us pleasure. Moreover, railroad-traveling brings persons of different degrees of cultivation together, and is fitted to smooth the forms of intercourse, and to have, on the whole, a refining influence, provided cultivated persons set good examples.
I am uncertain whether heart-connections leading to marriage are often formed on railway-journeys. If we may trust the novelists and playwrights, this is the case. ”

“ The extension of trade may be considered as to space and as to variety of articles. In the former respect, all parts of the earth have been drawn within the circle of exchanges, even those which formerly lay quite outside of such connections, either because they were thinly inhabited or too difficult of access; and the trade resources within civilized lands have been greatly expanded as the improvement of transportation facilities has compensated for the difference between the former cost and the present advance. ”

“ On the other side, if modern facilities for moving about furnish opportunities for extending our ideas and knowledge, they also lead to superficiality in observation, which loses in depth and thoroughness what it gains in extent. We travel far in a day, but we see only by glances. Between the beginning of the journey and its appointed end the passenger generally stops only as long as the train, or, at very important stations, only over till the next train. ”

“ Yet that decade was the cradle of a new epoch, in which inventions first came into view, or were brought to practical completion, which have had a deeper and more permanent influence than any political event could have upon the shaping of human society. ”

“ The attendance at baths, the rise of summer resorts and air-cures, and furloughs for all classes of officers, have become regular institutions, while they were formerly indulged only in cases of sickness; and the excursions of school vacations, the pleasure-trains and the extra trains on holidays, long wedding tours, excursion parties to foreign lands, or around the world, are evidences of the taste for traveling that modern men feel, and of the ease with which it is gratified. ”

“ In another aspect, railroads and telegraphs have contributed to the increase of knowledge and the expansion of the ideas and conceptions of the people; indirectly by assisting in the circulation of journals that carry knowledge on all kinds of subjects through all the channels of their circulation, and directly by making it possible for people of moderate means, and inducing them, to travel and observe for themselves things and phenomena abroad. ”

“ In the case of cars of different classes, the only criterion of distinction is that of price; whoever pays the charge can travel in the corresponding class, whether it pleases his fellow-passengers or not, and he receives the same treatment as they. ”

“ The connection is most evident in transactions in goods of large consumption, and is manifested in the tendency to equalization in prices and in the rates of discount. The price of the staple articles of commerce is fixed in the market of the world. The price of wheat is determined every day by the telegraphic reports to Chicago of the day's transactions in the principal places on the globe where wheat is handled, and the price of cotton in a similar manner at New Orleans and Liverpool ”

“ In clothing, the moderation of price resulting from the cheapened transportation of the raw materials and the wider distribution of the fabrics come more into view than the introduction of new or hitherto unknown or inaccessible materials, of which jute is the only example we now recollect. ”

“ So dependent upon one another are all the factors of human life that we should expect to observe the effects of the agencies we have been considering upon all, and we do so observe them, most prominently, perhaps, besides the points on which we have remarked, upon the modern methods of war. ”

“ The significance of the facilitation of passenger transportation is derived principally from its effects on social conditions, civilization, and customs. One of the most important of these effects is illustrated in emigration, which has assumed grand dimensions under the operation of the new methods of communication. ”