The Railroad Society

The Railroad Society

On May 10, 1869, the driving of the Golden Spike was the final event in the quest to open the western United States to travel and commerce. It was the culmination of the creation of a network of rail systems that would connect the country from coast to coast. The poster advertising the opening of the transcontinental railroad was a persuasive delight created to invite the public to the joys of rail travel: “Great Event!”—“ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC”—“GRAND OPENING”—“OMAHA THROUGH TO SAN FRANCISCO IN LESS THAN FOUR DAYS”—“AVOIDING THE DANGERS OF THE SEA!”—“LUXURIOUS…” The poster is what the authors Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, from their book Remediation: Understanding New Media, define as a remediation: “one medium…represented in another medium. (45)” This poster remediates advertisements for Wild Bill Cody’s Wild West Shows, wanted posters of criminals, product advertisements, newspapers, land grant advertisements—to name a few. It is most notably a remediation of the American Flag because it is printed in the patriotic colors of red, white and blue. The poster creates a feeling of immediacy in that there are no photos or drawings to distract from the written words.

The railroad offered the dream that people, freight, mail, money, and livestock could all be transported across the country in half the time it would take by steamboat or canal—to say nothing of the time consumed in ocean travel. If these goods and services were seeing newly expanded markets in less time then it is easy to calculate that the speed and distance that information could travel had increased as well. The mail would be delivered much more efficiently and to many more locales. The transfer of monies would speed up and expand the growth of a capitalist society in these newly tended lands.

In an excerpt from Frank Webster’s book, Theories of the Information Society, Manuel Castell’s posits the theory of the “Network Society” in relation to the internet’s effect on the modern world. The railroad systems of the United States can be seen as a precursor to this idea. The railroad functioned in the same manner as the internet in that it was a hub of commerce and with Castell’s notion of “Timeless Time” (in the form of Skype or any other virtual video chat program) it had the ability to transport people—albeit in a three dimensional form rather than the internet’s two dimensional form. Castell relates that the internet created “…the coalescence of capitalism and the ‘information revolution’(102)”—which can also be said to have been true of the railroad. The ability to participate in the network of railroads was certainly dependent on one’s ability to pay. ‘Pullmans’ Palaces’ were the luxury sleeping quarters for those who could afford them and the dining cars fed the affluent. The railroad had the ability to capitalize the travel experience both internally and externally, thus increasing its ability to create profits.

Corporations could use the rail systems to respond to the expanding and changing needs of the burgeoning society: proximity to the network meant prosperity. Towns were expanded or built around rail hubs and extensions of the rail system were built to feed the needs of existing metropolises, such as those listed on the poster: Omaha, Denver, Santa Fe, and San Francisco.

The completion of the trans-continental railroad directly invites, as Jurgen Habermas informs, “the bourgeois public sphere…private people come together as a public…” to participate in the newly formed network of rails (27). Travel by railroad is a deliberate act by the customer. If travel or commerce in this manner were appealing and cost effective then the public good would be served while creating an environment for capitalism to flourish and expand. 

Public opinion is created in the public sphere and the construction of the transcontinental railroad was a popular idea. Stephen Ambrose, in his book Nothing Like It In The World, recalls that, “People wanted a transcontinental railroad…to bind the country together…More than the steamboat, more than anything else, the railroads were the harbinger of the future, and the future was the industrial revolution. (24-25)” The Civil War was fresh in the minds of all Americans but so too was the residual effect of the ability of a few men to mobilize the many workers—former soldiers and new immigrants—believing in their ability to move mountains and accomplish this seemingly impossible task. Public support was overwhelming—with the exception of the Native Americans and some landholders who were excluded from the process. The railroad was built with free labor not government pressgangs.

The desire for national connection, facilitated by the private sphere to benefit their interests as well as the interests and desires of the public sphere, was the driving force behind this vast network of rails.

 Works Cited

Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It in the World. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2000.

Print.

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media.

Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 1999. Print.

Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge,

Mass: MIT Press. 1991. Print.

Webster, Frank. Theories of the Information Society. New York: Routledge. 2002. Print.