and Other Modes of Transportation
Until the 1890's, the railroad was the basis of America's economy (Cashman 12). When the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies joined their tracks at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, the event signalled that America had been bound by rails, and it marked a new era in transportation. The railroads became America's largest industry, a merger of business and technology (Schlereth 22). As a tangible symbol of Manifest Destiny, they opened up huge tracts of new territory for settlers and caused towns to spring up overnight. They gave cities commercial sway over the countryside by allowing farmers to sell produce to urban areas that did not grow their own, and they brought consumer items to the countryside by means of catalogue shipments. It was partly because of the railroad that Aaron Montgomery Ward and Richard Sears -- in whom the well-known department stores have their names and origins -- experienced so much success in sales from their catalogues (Summers 80-81). According to Mark Wahlgren Summers, the railroads stand as a symbol of the drive and enterprise of the time (76). The late nineteenth century put a premium on movement -- standing still was, to Americans of the time, equal to stagnation (Schlereth 12).Yet at the same time, the railroad business was a hard and dangerous one. Though they were efficient forms of transportation, they were also frequent causes of injury or death. In the last years of Mark Twain's life, railroads killed or injured more than 200,000 people, many of them children (Schlereth 23). Railroad workers endured grueling physical labor and low pay, forcing them to strike many times in the last decades of the nineteenth century. During one of the most famous strikes, in 1877, President Hayes remarked of the power the railroads had over the American economy, "Shall the railroads govern the country, or shall the people govern the railroads? . . . This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." (quoted in Summers 89).
Mark Twain's times were characterized by innovations in more local forms of transportation as well. In 1887, Richmond, Virginia, installed the first trolley lines in the nation, and the streetcars' low fares encouraged outlying residents to do business and seek entertainment inside the city (Schlereth 24). The advent of streetcars reorganized the city: its center became a business district, ringed by factories, which were in turn surrounded by slums. Because streetcars offered easy access to the city's center, those who could afford it moved to the outskirts, leaving low-income housing inside the city limits (Summers 7). Streetcars became so popular that, in some cities, they were notoriously crowded. Mark Twain commented on the New York City trolley system himself: "The overcrowding [in the streetcars] has impelled men to adopt the rule of hanging on to a seat when they get it. Occasionally I have seen a man give his place to a lady, but the act betrayed that he was from the provinces" (Mark Twain's New York -- A Birthday Walking Tour).
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