Visual Source 17.2
The Railroad as a Symbol of the Industrial Era
The most prominent symbol of the Industrial Revolution was the railroad (see the painting). To industrial-age enthusiasts, it was a thing of wonder, power, and speed. Samuel Smiles, the nineteenth-century British advocate of self-help, thrift, and individualism, wrote rhapsodically of the railroad’s beneficent effects:
The iron rail proved a magicians’ road. The locomotive gave a new celerity to time. It virtually reduced England to a sixth of its size. It brought the country nearer to the town and the town to the country. . . . It energized punctuality, discipline, and attention; and proved a moral teacher by the influence of example.34
Visual Source 17.2, dating from the 1870s, shows a family in a railroad compartment, returning home from a vacation.
Question
What attitude toward the railroad in particular and the industrial age in general does this image suggest?
Question
Notice the view out the window. What do the telegraph lines and St. Paul’s Cathedral, a famous feature of the London landscape, contribute to the artist’s message?
Question
What marks this family as middle class? How would you compare this image with the painting of middle-class life? Do the two families derive from the same segments of the middle class? Do you think they could mix socially?
Question
What does the poem at the top of the image suggest about the place of “home” in industrial Britain? How does the image itself present the railway car as a home away from home?