The Great Railroad Revolution (42 page)

In Britain the standardization that mainly affected the Great Western, the principal east-west railroad, had largely been completed by 1852, but in the United States it took a long time to overcome the opposition of what Holbrook calls “traditionalists” and “obscurantists.” The humble principal of a ladies' college in Saratoga Springs, New York, Professor C. F. Dowd, first urged the adoption of time zones in 1869 and prompted the creation of a group of railroads to lobby for the change. The plan was refined by William Frederick Allen, the former engineer of the Camden & Amboy who is immortalized for his efforts in a small tablet in Washington's Union Station, with the suggestion of four time zones, based on the longitudes of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Memphis (Tennessee), Denver (Colorado), and Fresno (California). The plan was adopted at a convention in October 1883 and, with remarkable haste given how long the chaotic situation on the railroads over the issue of time had been allowed to continue, was scheduled to be introduced on the eighteenth of the following month at noon. There were still dissenters who balked at the notion that the railroad rather than the sun was now the determinant of time. In Bangor, Maine, Mayor Dogberry vetoed a city ordinance to adopt eastern standard time,
suggesting, “It is unconstitutional, being an attempt to change the immutable laws of God Almighty and hard on the working man by changing day into night.”
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The local sextons were even banned from ringing the church bells at the new times.

Despite the fear of God's wrath, the day passed off smoothly. It was not an easy task, but sensibly, rather than risk changing over in the middle of the night, the appointed time was noon. Trains were ordered to stop while the clocks were adjusted, and there were no accidents, though there were inevitable delays and many people missed their trains, even the attorney general, who had opposed the adoption of railroad time by government departments but found himself late for a train as a result.
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There were no riots, despite the fury of the fundamentalists, but there were convoluted details to sort out, such as whether an insurance policy, which expired at noon, would pay out during the extra time gained when the clocks were put back. Few Americans today know that it is because of the needs of the railroads that they have four time zones. As Holbrook explains, little mention of it is made in the history books, and “most Americans seem to be of the general but rather fuzzy idea that the time zones were invented by either Benjamin Franklin or George Washington.”
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If there was a minority sentimental about the loss of local time, there were many more who mourned the loss of a whole way of life, interrupted both literally and metaphorically by the arrival of the fierce and steaming iron horse. Radical change on this scale inevitably engendered downsides. The railroads were creating a different America, and, inevitably, there was a sense of lost community, as “towns where all the members of the community knew one another” were transformed into places with “any number of strangers and crowds, whose numbers became one important measure of the economic vitality of the town.”
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In other words, the railroad created the very notion of a bustling town thronging with people going about their business. Scenes of crowds that perhaps, at most, had been seen on one market day a week or month now became a daily occurrence. The railroads contributed to the creation of ever-bigger towns, which attracted ever-larger crowds and ultimately, the mass society that can be seen as the product of the railroad's ability to allow ever more efficient and rapid travel.

If having a station was a bit of a gamble, since it might stimulate an outflow rather than an influx of facilities, not having one was generally far
worse. Towns left out of the rail network were in danger of contracting or even withering and dying. To counter this effect, some states passed laws requiring railroad companies to provide stations for all communities through which they passed. In 1872, Massachusetts enacted a law requiring the railroad to provide a service of cheap trains, morning and evening, if more than two hundred people signed a petition. Rather like American airports today, vying with each other to facilitate flights from discount carriers such as JetBlue or Allegiant Air, town councils would negotiate with railroads to obtain a station, offering inducements such as tax relief or cheap bonds. As trains speeded up, however, services made fewer stops, and more and more communities faced an uphill struggle to establish or merely maintain their train stations. On occasion, people power was used to improve facilities. In Tennessee, the railroads were required to provide every town of three hundred or more inhabitants with a waiting room for the use of passengers. For their part, the railroads were not always amenable to serving small communities. They wanted to serve the profitable mass market as much as possible, siting their stations in the biggest towns or where there was the greatest movement of freight. Small towns with few inhabitants, mostly poor, were not their priority, because the maintenance of such stations would be a financial burden, as would the need to stop trains there. Most radically, sometimes whole towns simply picked up and moved to be on the railroad. Cleora in Colorado, for example, was bypassed by the Denver & Rio Grande, which laid out a nearby town, called South Arkansas (later Salida). The inhabitants of Cleora realized that this newcomer would wreck their town and consequently simply resettled to be nearer the railroad.

Sometimes, though, there was an obvious synergy between railroads and the local communities. Big events such as state agricultural fairs, or even the “World's Fairs” held in the second half of the nineteenth century in New Orleans, St. Louis, and Chicago, inevitably attracted large numbers of railroad travelers. Indeed, for most people it was almost impossible to attend these events without taking the train. Town authorities soon realized that creating fairground sites near a railroad station would make them much more likely to attract large numbers of visitors: in Ohio, for example, just before the war, “the state board of agriculture arranged to have the railroad tracks into Cincinnati stop quite close to the Ohio state fairgrounds.” Soon the railroad companies were providing special rates, or even additional
trains, for people attending these events. This newfound potential for association created by the railroad was felt first at the state or regional, rather than at the national, level. The limitations of the railroads before the Civil War meant that it was relatively easy to travel across a state, but rather difficult to go beyond its boundaries. This helped cement the unity of individual states, a notion that reached its apogee at the outbreak of the Civil War. After that, the railroads were able to claim, with some justification, that they were a unifying force on a national level: “The middle class traveled to the early political conventions held before the Civil War; to schools that drew students from all parts of the country; to professional gatherings in law, medicine, teaching and library work.”
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The emergent middle class, created in part by the railroad's ability to generate wealth, were inveterate travelers, able to pursue both business and leisure interests ever farther from home.

The railroads encouraged collective travel. Any group, whether it was a local Sunday school or an association of retailers, would negotiate a cheap rate with the railroad company, perhaps even chartering a whole train. Thanks to the railroads, national organizations, representing all kinds of interests such as particular trades, professions, campaigns, or even hobbies, could emerge. The range of groups seeking discounted tickets was remarkable and provides an insight into the new America in which organizations could now function at a regional or national level as a result of the availability of relatively cheap rail travel. The records of the American Association of Passenger Traffic Officers reveal applications for cheap fares from those attending an array of diverse organizations that give the flavor of life in nineteenth-century America, such as the Millers' International Convention held in Cincinnati, a national meeting of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, the Colored People's World Exposition, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
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Civil War veterans had numerous reunions for which they requested reductions on the normal ticket price, and although all these requests were accepted, for some unaccountable reason—perhaps racism against the predominantly Chinese owners—the application from the National Laundry Association was turned down. The effect on American society of this ability to travel the country cannot be overestimated: “Organizing nationally was the work of the age, and ticketing records show that railroads made possible the growth of organizations with a national
membership of people with middling means.”
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Even groups of shoppers, coming up to town for the day, had access to group discounts.

One major section of society was largely excluded from the sense of national cohesion created by the railroads: the poor could not join in the fun, as they could not afford the fares. However, although long-distance travel was beyond their means and the unemployed could never afford train fares, low-paid workers could occasionally indulge in the odd day trip when the railroads started to stimulate what eventually became the world's biggest industry: tourism. Even the poorly remunerated factory worker could afford to spend a day at the beach, a practice that started to become commonplace in the final two decades of the nineteenth century. Every major city established a nearby center for these day trips. For New Yorkers it was Coney Island for the beach and the fairground, reached by the Prospect & Coney Island Railroad, or in the other direction Brighton Beach, which was served by the Brighton Beach & Brooklyn Railroad. Either way, the fare was just thirty-five cents round-trip. For Philadelphians, there was a ride to Atlantic City in New Jersey for a dollar, while Bostonians, via a trip on the Boston & Maine and then a tramcar ride, could reach Revere Beach, described rather snootily in the 1893
Baedeker's
guide as “a popular holiday resort for Boston's lower classes.” A little farther away from Boston was Nantasket Beach, which on a sunny weekend day could attract fifty thousand visitors or more. In the Midwest, Chicagoans were spoiled with choices. They could either just saunter to the beaches of Lake Michigan, literally a few hundred meters from downtown, or hop on the local train service, which in a few minutes would take them to the larger beaches on the lakeshores of Indiana to the east. The richer residents might go farther north along the Illinois and Wisconsin shores of the lake or “inland to resorts such as Fox Lake, where private homes and hotels afforded accommodation for vacationers.”
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This was typical. Whereas those who toiled by hand usually had to be content with day trips, the middle classes could enjoy longer breaks, allowing them to travel farther. The more affluent professionals or businesspeople might even have a summer house, but it had to be easily accessible by the railroad. Towns that were pretty or pleasant enough to attract tourists began to compete for this custom, turning themselves into resorts that would advertise their amenities at stations.

For the seriously rich, as ever, it was a different ball game, although even they were dependent on having a nearby railroad connection. The real mark of distinction, however, was to have one's own station, or, better still, one's own railroad. After the Civil War, escaping the summer heat of the bustling cities of the East became imperative, and the Adirondacks, in the northeastern corner of New York State, developed into the favored destination of the rich. This was an unspoiled area of mountains, lakes, and forests that was first reached by railroad tracks soon after the end of the Civil War. The line was gradually extended, and soon the hunting parties, who had had to “rough it” in tents and shacks, had large country houses at their disposal. These “cabins,” as their owners modestly called them, were actually enormous log houses, usually sited next to a lake, with a boathouse and outhouses for guests. Thomas Durant, of the Union Pacific, was instrumental in pushing railroads farther into the mountains, as was, later, William Seward Webb, who married Cornelius Vanderbilt's granddaughter Eliza. To ensure that his elite customers were not disturbed by hoi polloi on the various railroads like the Fulton Chain and the Raquette Lake, which he controlled, Webb provided a “private service to the owners of homes along the route and barred the public from riding the trains.”
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A list of passengers on the railroad reads like a roll call of the new American aristocracy of the time, including J. P. Morgan, Vanderbilt, and various banking families, such as the Guggenheims. Amazingly, Oliver Jensen, in a book published as recently as 1975, recalled traveling on just such a branch line in the Adirondacks, the romantic-sounding Grasse River Railroad. It was a haphazard experience. According to Jensen, “It posted no signs and listed no telephone number.” Instead, he simply turned up, “hoping to ride behind their steam engine in an ancient coach with black leather seats and beautiful, if cracked, woodwork.” The “astonishingly large crew” of three men in lumber jackets took him the fifteen miles from Childwold to Cranberry Lake, where it left off a mail pouch and a few express packages, which, as Jensen points out, provided what was effectively a government subsidy to the tiny line. Then, after a short pause, the train “heaved and bumped home, passengers being permitted to throw a few switches, look at the beaver dam, and inspect a long and decaying Wagner palace parlor car” in a siding.
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Similar areas of countryside were opened up by the railroads in this period. In Florida, a line that was designed principally to serve the tourist
market must rank as the most ambitious American railroad ever built. This was the Florida East Coast Railroad built by Henry Flagler, not so much a railroad entrepreneur as an obsessive who was ready to throw his fortune at his dream of making the farthest point on Florida's coast into an opulent and exclusive resort. Flagler, who had seen how the French Riviera had quickly been transformed from a series of sleepy fishing villages into a tourist honeypot thanks to a railroad running along the coast, decided to do the same for Florida. The state had been something of a railroad desert, having seen only a few short, unconnected lines built since the Civil War. Worse, various gauges had been used, and the tracks, therefore, could not be connected. Flagler, who had made his fortune as John D. Rockefeller's partner in creating Standard Oil, first came to the state in the late 1880s and saw its potential as a tourist haven because of its climate. He ignored the fact that this very climate was, in fact, a source of disease and poverty and was one reason the state was so sparsely populated. Flagler bought up one of the largest railroads, the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax, and began to create a continuous line along the eastern side of the state to serve a series of resorts that he developed on the coast. First he built the massive 540-room Ponce de León Hotel in St. Augustine, followed by the Royal Poinciana at Palm Beach, which was twice as big. The railroad was gradually extended down to Miami to serve two more vast hotels,
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with the help of convict labor leased from the state at a monthly rate of $2.50 per man, plus food and lodging, a fraction of the cost of the $2.00 a day that was the going rate for free labor. Flagler's line reached Miami in April 1896, and he then began to scope out the crazy ambition of reaching Key West, a dot 128 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean connected to the mainland by a string of rocky islands broken by stretches of sea. Virtually none of the route was on land where tracklaying was easy. The line, which became known as “the railroad that goes to sea,” involved crossing no less than forty-two miles of ocean, including one seven-mile section, and the construction of seventeen miles of viaducts and bridges and twenty miles of embankments on filled causeway. Flagler's pockets, though, were almost bottomless, thanks to his oil money. He needed a great deal of it. On three occasions, severe hurricanes, each worse than the previous one, wrecked completed sections of track. In the third, a particularly violent storm, 134 men, many of them in a boat, were killed. In the aftermath of the disaster, many others, fearing for their lives, walked off
the job, but still Flagler plowed on, offering better wages and providing the workers with storm-proof dormitories. Even so, the conditions for the railroad workers were appalling. Mosquitoes were a constant menace, accompanied, for part of the year, by even harder-biting sand flies. And there were still numerous fatal accidents, given the dangerous working conditions.