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.
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