Circulation

“ Passports, railway-service, post, telephone, currency—all these may fittingly be considered as aspects of one vital matter, namely, circulation. All living organic unity is dependent on circulation. As the health of the human body is dependent on an unobstructed circulation of the blood, of the lymph, of the air, so the health of a nation or a state or a group of states is dependent on the free circulation of peoples, goods, opinions, money, and what not. ”

“ If we conceive the state as a unified organism of the higher order, the development of its means of transit corresponds in many ways to that of the circulation of the blood in the vertebrate frame. The easy, rapid, and convenient transport of the means of life from the centre to the most distant parts of the land, and the corresponding development of the net-work of railways and steamboat routes, are to a certain extent direct tests of the degree of civilization. ”

“ By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour’s time you will be in a glow all over; ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours’ round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have mentioned, you may travel all day and gladly enter the last inn to warm your feet by a fire. Flatter yourself then no longer, that half an hour’s airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. ”

“ If we observe two men endeavouring to move a railway carriage upon the line, we shall notice that they do not at the first exert all their strength in one powerful, and what would probably prove exhaustive and futile, effort, but placing their backs against the carriage, they will push with a continuous and gradually increasing effort for several seconds, or even longer, when a slight movement will be perceived in the carriage, [149] and a slight additional exercise of force will set it in motion. ”

“ For if there is any motion in society, the Road, which is the symbol of motion, will indicate the fact. When there is activity, or enlargement, or a liberalizing spirit of any kind, then there is intercourse and travel, and these require roads. ”

“ The driving is eccentric, not to say bad, but there is the traffic—more than unsophisticated eyes have beheld for a certain number of years. It means business, it means money-making, it means crowded and hurrying life, and it gets into the blood and makes it move. ”

“ Carts and carriages of different kinds (standing within and near the door of a shed, close to the road) called to mind the stir and traffic of the world in a place which might have been destined for perpetual solitude—where the thunder of heaven, the rattling of avalanches, and the roaring of winds and torrents seemed to be the only turbulent sounds that had a right to take place of the calm and silence which surrounded us. ”

“ Their ramifications are like countless veins or arteries penetrating every nook and corner of the continent. Backward and forward through these arteries there passes and repasses an endless procession of commerce and travel. ”

“ In primitive societies the transport of goods is effected by men and women carrying them; in civilized societies by the aid of horses and camels, and wagons drawn by oxen; till finally these are insufficient, and railways are created, whose power of transport transcends the earlier methods, as the breathing of a mammal transcends the respiration of a mollusc. Breathing is the special function of an organ—the lungs (or more strictly, the thoracic apparatus) —as Railway Transport is a special social function. ”

“ As the carriage drove thro' the streets apace;
And we looked upon each other's face;
And the blood in our fingers intertwined
Ran like the thoughts of a single mind,
As the swift emotions went and came
Thro' the veins of each united frame.
So thro' the long long streets we past
Of the million-peopled City vast ”

“ MOBILITY AS THE PULSE OF THE COMMUNITY Movement, per se, is not an evidence of change or of growth. In fact, movement may be a fixed and unchanging order of motion, designed to control a constant situation, as in routine movement. Movement that is significant for growth implies a change of movement in response to a new stimulus or situation. Change of movement of this type is called mobility. Movement of the nature of routine finds its typical expression in work. Change of movement, or mobility, is characteristically expressed in adventure. ”

“ The ways are thronged, carriage-way and pavement; multitudes are hurrying to and fro, each on his own errand, or are loitering about from listlessness, or from want of work, or have come forth into the public concourse, to see and to be seen, for amusement or for display, or on the excuse of business. ”

“ To be back in the roar of traffic, to feel the terrific pressure of those miles of converging masonry, gave us, after weeks of free air and unbounded landscape, a sense of congestion that made the crowded streets seem lowering and dangerous ”

“ The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street, And then before men were aware, A city's crowded thoroughfare, And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis. And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o'er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. ”

“ Movement was the keynote of the picture—stealthy, not-yet-quite-confident pack-movement on the one hand, concentrated here and there in blood-red eddies, and, on the other hand, swift, desperate marches in the open. ”

“ Dashing through the net-work of wheels, in the thickest traffic of crowded thoroughfares, jumping on and off moving cars and carriages, pushing his way with untiring zeal, he shows a reckless daring and a dauntless energy which are unmatched among any other people. ”

“ He now likes his answers to be in human terms. He takes readily to such conceptions as congestion as the cause for subways and elevated trains; the desire for speed as the cause of change in transportation; the dependence of man on other living things,—all of which I have made the bases of stories. To the children the material in “The Subway Car,” “Speed,” “Silly Will,” is familiar; the relationships in which it appears are new. ”

“ Shall we mount up Upon the platform, or press through the crowd, That we may nothing lose of the procession? ETIENNE. It is not to be thought of. All the streets Are thronged with horsemen and with carriages. ”

“ Our gentle readers, we apprehend, have but little regarded the Mobility in passing through our public thoroughfares. When employed in taking the air, they move in a loftier line than that of the pavement, and, occupied with the momentous cares of the Senate, the Opera, and the Ball, are too deeply absorbed in meditation to cast their eyes below. ”

“ When you are passing in a carriage, at night, through the street of a city lighted up by gas-lamps in the streets, and lights irregularly dispersed in the windows, or passing in a ferry-boat, from one such city to another, at a short distance from it, you observe that the lights which you are leaving appear to draw closer and closer together, while those toward which you are approaching widen out, and seem to separate from each other. ”

“ To do this, let us imagine a railway carriage, full of passengers, to be whirling along at a great speed, its occupants quietly at ease, because, although they are in rapid motion, they are all moving at the same rate and in the same direction. ”

“ Each day one feels that the pressure of commerce and traffic grew, grew insensibly monstrous, and first this man made a wharf and that erected a crane, and then this company set to work and then that, and so they jostled together to make this unassimilable enormity of traffic. ”

“ Fancy a driver travelling every day with high wooden fences on each side, fancy the amount of good timber needed to block the open view, fancy the agony of travelling by train, and then fancy the great silliness of doctors talking like that. ”

“ The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons, controls the Planet. Transportation is Civilisation, our motto runs. Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies. ”

“ And there are people who can look upon the eager children in the train, armed with their spades and buckets for playing in the health-giving southern sunshine, and deny the progressiveness of the Mechanical Age! ”

“ Touch brings me into contact with the traffic and manifold activity of the city. Besides the bustle and crowding of people and the nondescript grating and electric howling of street-cars, I am conscious of exhalations from many different kinds of shops; from automobiles, drays, horses, fruit stands, and many varieties of smoke. ”

“ To diminish friction, he paves the road with iron bars, and, mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, animals, and merchandise behind him, he darts through the country, from town to town, like an eagle or a swallow through the air. ”

“ The motors have done this for us at least, that as they have made the highways their own beyond dispute, walking will remain the mystic and private pleasure of the secret and humble few. For us the byways, the footpaths, and the pastures will be sanctified and sweet. ”

“ As soon as a sufficient number are collected, the drove is set in motion, receiving, right and left, as they advance, fresh numbers; whole communities, or solitary individuals, streaming in from all quarters, and taking their place, without distinction, in the general herd; and, as if conscious where their breakfast lay, without wasting a moment on idle investigation, all eagerly push on to the mountains. ”

“ Pass along the avenues of any city or town, in which you live—behold the trading shops—the manufacturies—see the operations of the various machinery—see the stage-coaches coming in, bringing the mails of intelligence—look at the railroads interlining every section, bearing upon them their mighty trains, flying with the velocity of the swallow, ushering in the hundreds of industrious, enterprising travellers. ”

“ Bare, brawny arms become visible and are withdrawn, men’s voices sound strange, there is a constant rumbling of cars, a regular clicking sound as the carriage stops and starts, incessant shouting by the boys ”

“ The path the iron worker daily treads at the edge of the sandy platform, that narrow path that lies between running streams of fire on the one hand and a sheer drop on the other, is but an emblem of the Road of Life along which he must walk. ”

“ Such are the effects of exercise on the locomotive system, to all the functions of animated beings, so long as they are exercised with moderation, equality, and at due intervals, working for their own preservation. ”

“ You see the conductor glance at his watch as he gives the engineer the starting-signal. You realize that the whole transportation system is merely an enormous piece of clockwork and that it, in turn, is a part of the vaster clockwork of modern civilization. ”

“ The promiscuous din of movement, voice, and traffic, even in the busiest city, has in it nothing sharp or accentuated; it forms a continuous whole, in which each individual variation is averaged and toned down. ”

“ The roar of traffic sounds unceasingly in her streets, the city limits press outward in all directions into the unoccupied territory near by, and the present prosperity and future magnitude of the place seem already assured. ”

“ To use the expression to which you have alluded, as being used by the coachmen, would a carriage run so true upon a road, the foundation of which was soft, as upon one of which the foundation was hard?—If the road be very good, and very well made, it will be so solid, and so hard, as to make no difference. ”

“ The people who stood in the streets looked on idly, like spectators of a curious show, as the long procession of carriages with their outriders moved on, to the sound only of the rumble of their own wheels. ”

“ The whole history of transport shows constant change and progress, the achievements of one generation or the "records" of one pioneer being only the starting-point of fresh advance or of still greater triumphs later on. ”

“ Imagine railway lines coming together about such a revolving table from all the earth, so that an engine could pass from this circular platform toward any quarter of the globe, the only condition being that the short track on the table correspond to the rails of the long track on which it was proposed for the engine to run, and you have an illustration, which in some degree helps us to understand the relation of man’s will to the laws of God. ”

“ The world moves by. Houses and men are on the wing, landscape and animals are in flight, yet all this motion in the external world is an illusion which I soon learn to correct. I and my railway coach are the moving bodies. Every time I look out of the window I correctly interpret the motion in this manner. ”

“ Till railroads shall be built through this country, the best mode of traveling, and the most healthful, is to walk, and ‘wade.’ As for speed in a journey of a few hundred miles, a man on foot will out-travel a bull, or even a good horse. Persons who travel in a ‘tipoia,’ amid the rattle of sleigh bells, and the shouts of their carriers, are not in a position to receive my statement, but I base it, not on a theory, but on facts from the field of action. ”

“ But when a carriage is drawn or impelled along a hard and level road, the motion which it receives from the first impulse would continue undiminished for a short time, if the road and the faces of the wheels were perfectly smooth, and no resistance of the air. ”

“ In considering the power of traction or impulsion necessary to move a body, whether on a canal or on a road. I must carefully distinguish that force which is requisite to put the body from a state of rest into a state of motion, from that which is requisite to sustain the motion when once imparted to it. ”