Photograph of a nineteenth-century locomotive / From Immigration, Railroads, and the West / Harvard University Library
Edited by Dr. Robert Schwartz
E. Nevius Rodman Professor of History
Mount Holyoke College
The Evolving Relationship between Nature and Industry as Documented in Art
By Jennifer Carson, Elysia Lindfield, and Megan Vandehey
There are multiple ways of interpreting and analyzing the paintings of the Industrial Revolution. Through the examination of four paintings from this time period the evolution of the relationship between nature and industry will be demonstrated. There was a shift that took place in which nature changed from working in harmony with industry to industry completely obliterating nature. Within each image there are several aspects that exemplify this changing relationship: the portrayal of people, the representation of the smoke, the presence or lack there of nature, and the depiction of the train.
Coexistence of Nature and Industry
The Stockton & Darlington Railway, 1825 (1900). Opened on 27 September, 1825, the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) was the world’s first public railway. It was built to link the collieries in West Durham and Darlington with the docks on River Tees at Stockton, Durham. At the opening of the railway, large crowds saw chief engineer George Stephenson at the controls of ‘Locomotion’, the locomotive built by Robert Stephenson & Co, as it pulled 36 wagons to the Stockton Terminus. / Darlington Railway Centre and Museum, Darlington, Durham County, England
This is from circa 1830’s England. The artist is unknown, but it can be assumed that he/she was a person who looked favorably upon the growth of industry. Therefore, as demonstrated in this image, there is harmony found in the coexistence of nature and industry. Neither nature nor industry dominates the canvas, although the train is in the foreground. The train is slightly dominant since it is the focal point of the picture, but both are seen as equal and complimenting parts.
It is clear that the advent of the industry is looked upon with awe as the majority of people are focused inward towards the train. It presents a new and fascinating form of entertainment, and for the elite it is an extremely fashionable way to spend the afternoon. They are smiling, happy and pleased to be participating members in the support of man’s innovations. Their witnessing man’s seemingly limitless abilities would definitely bring a feeling of awe and an element of prestige. Even those of the old way of life, a life based on a dependence on and inter-relatedness with nature, have taken time to pause and admire the train. The carriage driver in the background has turned his head to examine the train and even his horse has pricked up his ears and turned to gaze upon it. Both are clearly impressed and admiring of the new invention and oblivious to the role that it plays in determining their fate.
Through examining the portrayal of smoke and dirt, or lack there of, it is obvious that this is a time when industry was still associated with the purity and cleanliness of nature. There is nothing in the picture besides the small puff of smoke that would draw attention to the polluting aspects of the train that will be discussed in later images. The small puff of smoke that is portrayed is just that, small. The artist having ended the picture before the smoke could start to billow and pollute. As a result, the train appears to be a clean object that presents no obstruction to the peaceful and harmonious ways of nature. The purity is further exemplified by the people in the picture. They are dressed in their best attire and not soiled by either the dirt or grime of the train. The women are in white, which we know would not be white for long if they were next to one of the early trains, and the men are very neat and tidy with silk hats so clean that they shine and reflect the sun.
An analysis of the train further supports the conclusions made about the time period of the picture, a time period when nature and industry had not yet been distanced and separated. The model of train in the image closely resembles “the Rocket” built by Stephenson in 1829. “The Rocket” was the first of the steam powered trains and marked the beginning of the growth of industry. This explains why the people are still in awe of the train, why it is still a novelty item restricted to mainly the upper class. It also explains why the proportions between the people and the train are fairly equal, the people not being dwarfed by the train and vice versa. The proportions can be explained because industry has not yet overpowered nature, industry is still relatively small and controllable.
This image was painted before the dissenting voices of de Tocqueville and Dickens surfaced. No one had come forward to talk of the dirt, filth and destruction attributed to industry. Therefore, the image most closely resembles the feelings put forth by Charleton and Ure. The influence of Charlton can be seen in the integration of urban and rural, the portrayal of the city folk enjoying the peace and beauty of the rural life. Ure can be seen in positive implications of industry as a nonpolluting and non intrusive. With Ure in mind the image can be seen as a promotion of the growth of industry, there are no negative side effects shown, and what people really valued, nature, is still a part of life:
Steam engines furnish the means not only of their support but of their multiplication. They create a vast demand for fuel; and while they lend their powerful arms to drain the pits and to raise the coals, they call into employment multitudes of miners, engineers, shipbuilders, and sailors, and cause the construction of canals and railways: and while they enable these rich fields of industry to be cultivated to the utmost, they leave thousands of fine arable fields free for the production of food to man, which must have been otherwise allotted to the food of horses. Steam engines moreover, by the cheapness and steadiness of their action, fabricate cheap goods, and procure in their exchange a liberal supply of the necessaries and comforts of life, produced in foreign lands.[1]
As time passed, there was a transformation of attitudes towards the train. The train was no longer seen as a novelty item exclusively for the upper class, but it became a form of transportation that could be utilized by all members of society. Passenger trains became more accessible to the middle and lower classes and the ‘new toy’ image of the 1830’s was replaced in the 1870’s by the image of a fast-moving powerful beast.
Transition to Prominence of Industry
Gare Saint-Lazare, by Claude Monet, 1877 / The Art Institute of Chicago
In the Gare Saint-Lazare painting of 1877, Claude Monet depicted a scene that embraced growing industry and revealed the imposing impact that modernization made on the surrounding environment and natural world. Since the painting depicts the city, there are no obvious signs of nature. Rather, the city becomes a cage, constructed out of materials like glass and metal, materials of the modern world that were strong enough to house the massive machine.
Industry becomes romantic and beautiful. The train exhales smoke not like a smoke stack polluting the air, but rather like a natural organism creating clouds on earth. The smoke and steam flow out, creating a beautiful surrounding for the train and the people within the scene. These blue, white and gray clouds are not hazardous or dirty but, remind us of beautiful clouds in the sky. The clouds of smoke also seem to pop off the canvas. They become three-dimensional adding an almost tactile quality to the work, which creates the same sensation you have when you are flying in a plane and feel as if you could almost reach out and grab a cloud.
A small part of nature still exists in this modern world of industry and reminds us that it is not overrun by ugly machines and destructive industry. A harmony between the natural world and the industrial world still exists in the mind of Monet, as industry, and more specifically the train, takes on the beautiful qualities of the natural world. It is interesting to note that although Monet started painting city scenes early on in his career, he rejected industry and the modern world and went on to only paint scenes of nature painting out the industrial aspects if they were part of the scene that he was painting.
Another important aspect of the painting is the depiction of people in relation to the train. This train serves as a passenger train and not as an industrial train. It carries people from the city of Paris to the surrounding suburbs, and does not carry goods like coal and iron ore. The train is massive and imposing, dwarfing the people and making them merely small blobs of colored paint. The people are anonymous and faceless, whereas the train is concrete and endowed with character. The small figures are similar to slaves working for their master, as the power of the machine grows and becomes more powerful than mankind. Man must work to maintain and keep up with his own creation.
The painting pulses with a sense of adrenaline. It depicts a moment in time that will change and be replaced by a new scene, a brief pause in the constant movement of life. Monet wanted to immerse us within the canvas and make us feel at one with the train, the way a traveler awaiting it’s arrival would feel towards it. He wants to capture the intensity of the feelings and emotions of that time, the force and excitement people feel towards growing industry. George Rivière describes it best in his article for the magazine titled L’impressioniste.
In one of the biggest paintings the Gare Saint-Lazare, the train has just pulled in and the engine is going to leave again. Like an impatient and temporal beast exhilarated rather than tired by the long haul it has just performed, it shakes its mane of smoke, which bumps against the glass roof of the great hall. Around the monster, men swarm on the tracks like pygmies at the feet of a giant. Engines at rest wait on the other side, sound asleep. One can hear the cries of the workers, the sharp whistles of the machines calling far and wide, their cry of alarm, the incessant sound of iron work and the formidable panting of steam[2].
When we observed the first two images our definition of nature included the following things: the ground, hills, trees, clouds and the sky itself. Compared to the first two paintings, in Image 3 and Image 4 there are fewer natural elements present and those which are present appear to be altered by man’s influence. In Monet’s painting, even though the trains are monstrous in size, the smoke of the steam engines resembles clouds and, thus, connects it to nature. The final two figures are in opposition to this impression as they show a disassociation between nature and industry.
Dependence on and Domination of Industry
British Museum, London
This image is dominated by some of the products of the industrial age. The trains sit in the foreground, unavoidable to the viewers’ eyes while the background is filled with the tenements and factories of the city. Unlike the first two images, in this selection, nature is no longer in coexistence with the railway system since nature has been obliterated by the destructive hands of man. The only element of nature which remains is the excavated hillside, altered by man in order to accommodate the augmentation of the trains. As Tocqueville observed, “The soil has been taken away, scratched and torn up in a thousand places…The land is given over to industries use.”[3] Clearly the trains are the most attention grabbing element of the picture. The train engines and cars are painted with a great deal of detail relative to the first two images which we viewed. The lines of the tracks are clearly defined as are the individual components of each car, particularly the wheels of the engines. The use of contrasting light and dark are also employed to add dimension to the trains and accent the desolate landscape. Though there is differentiation between shades of gray this painting lacks color and life; the sky does not display the same brightness as the Monet, but instead is a dull grayish hue.
This composition, devoid of both action and emotion, presents the stark realities of industrialization. As Andrew Ure said, “Skilled labor gets progressively superseded, and will, eventually, be replaced by mere onlookers of machines”.[4] Because this work lacks people it exemplifies the estrangement of man who becomes Ure’s “mere onlooker.” In the lower right hand corner of the image there are several engines and cars unattached from each other suggesting that they have remained idle. Both the clutter of these train cars and the fact that there is no smoke emanating from the other train brings to mind a train graveyard.
A variety of conclusions about the artist’s intentions could be drawn based on the details of the image. Most likely the artist’s purpose at the time of painting was not to point out the loss of nature brought on by the industrial revolution; however, today it provides a demonstration of how nature was sacrificed in order to provide the space necessary for new technologies. Though the dug out hillside is one element within the image, it does not command the viewers attention; instead it is the division between the tracks and the city. Perhaps someone observing this painting in the late nineteenth century would think little of the fact that the hill depicted in this image has been scraped or blasted away.
Domination of Industry and Disappearance of Nature
In areas where the ground is visible the land is covered with crisscrossing railroad tracks. In some areas the ground under the tracks is darkly shaded, indicating that it is dirty. Like Image 3 there are no trees or grassy slopes to be seen within this image. Also of importance for our analysis, in contrast to a light portion of the sky on the left side of the image much of the sky is shaded in dark gray. The dark shading lacks clearly defined boundaries indicating perhaps that it is not cloudy, but instead the product of the trails of smoke emitted from the numerous smoke stacks throughout the city. The image
is reminiscent of Dickens’ description of Coketown, it “was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever,” and left the town “shrouded in a haze of its own which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays.”[5] In addition to the polluted sky, running through the center of this painting is a brick wall and stone railing. The area to the left of the wall appears to be at a lower elevation than that to the right, suggesting that perhaps prior to the building of the wall a slope or hill had been present in this area.
More so than in any of the other images, Image 4 is cluttered with structures made up of clearly defined lines. Unlike the other paintings, the trains do not seem to dominate this image; instead they are one of a variety of man-made products of the industrial age which fill the canvas, including: the tracks; the poles and light posts; the wall; the factory; and the array of massive buildings in the background. Most likely trains were not the center of the artist’s focus, but instead what is depicted is his impression of a city. Clearly though not the center of the piece, judging by the number of tracks which run back toward the city the trains were a significant element of towns and cities.
Unlike Image 1, in this image there are no upper or middle class observers to be found, instead there are only a few people who appear to be part of a working class as they stand on or near the tracks. The people in this image, though they do not appear to be dwarfed as in Monet’s painting, are small compared with their surrounding environment. They are also dark and faceless, suggesting perhaps that their impressions of their surroundings are unimportant, or that they have no impressions of their environment, and are instead carrying out their daily routines.
With the advent of new technological advances like the invention of the train, there was a shift over time from glamorizing the train to the train becoming a mundane part of everyday life. As machinery became more common place nature became scarce. In the first painting we were presented with a scene that showed people standing in awe of the train and though they are welcoming it into their lives there is still a love of nature. In the Monet, we see the machine as an awesome beast to be obeyed and looked upon as an object of beauty. Then, as the machine becomes more common and accessible and is increasingly geared towards industrial purposes, the machine creates death, destruction and filth. As industry took hold nature was neglected and trampled upon as new tracks were laid for the next railroad line.
Notes
Andrew Ure, “The Blessings of the Factory System” from The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835, as cited in editor Alasdair Clayre’s Nature and Industrialization, Oxford University Press, 1977, p.71.
George Rivière from an article in L’impressioniste as cited in, Monet at Argenteuil, Paul Hayes Tucker, New Haven: Yale University Press, , 1982, p. 169.
Alexis De Tocqueville, “Manchester” from Journeys to England and Ireland, 1835, as cited in editor Alasdair Clayre’s Nature and Industrialization, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 117.
Andrew Ure, “The Blessings of the Factory System,” from The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835, as cited in editor Alasdair Clayre’s Nature and Industrialization, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 71.
Charles Dickens, “Coketown”, from Hard Times, 1854, as cited in editor Alasdair Clayre’s Nature and Industrialization, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 125.
The Magnificent Machine
By Emily Hatfield and Nicole Lavelle
Intuitively, we believe the portrayal of the machine in popular image-making during the Industrial Revolution became increasingly critical as time went on. With the building up of urban areas and unfurling of train tracks across the countryside, people’s lives were forever changed by the machine.
Probing more deeply into the conceptualization of the machine, we view the role of the machine from the perspective of distinct socioeconomic classes. The upper-class entrepreneur, the well-educated technician, the working class and the leisure class interpret the effects of machines on humanity differently. The upper-class entrepreneur understood the machine as a vehicle for increased productivity. Distilling the machines into scientific parts, the technician elevated the aims of industry into a purer art form. Appealing to a broader, more general understanding of the machine, the working class was enchanted by the whole– production as a miraculous process in itself. The leisure class, from their elitist perspective, beckoned the industrial age as a final stage in the evolution of mankind. From all viewpoints, the machine provided a focal point for social commentary and a symbol for the endless possibilities of the Industrial Revolution.
If we are convinced that written historical text is unbiased truth, images provide another doorway through which we access the past. The simplicity of a pencil drawing or the lavish stroke of oil reminds us that the past we see is a construction, an impression, a feeling. Whether the machine was imagined as a toy, or the picture of scientific clarity depended on the artist and the audience for whom the image was created.
Revolutionized by the advent of the steam engine, improvements in transportation attracted the attention of investment speculators . . . at first. Once the first railway line was built in England in 1830, a widened public interest was focused on the emerging narrative of the train (Perry, 335). From Manchester to Liverpool, the enchantment of progress drew England’s inhabitants to the religion of technology.{Graphic stripped}
In the image of the “carnival train,” the vaulted cathedral ceilings sit comfortably amongst the semi-pastoral, English township. The whimsical train spokes connote a carnival procession. The machine acts as a showcase of development in quiet harmony with traditional town life.
Carnival Train / Peggy Notabaert Nature Museum, Chicago
A wave of contentment washes over the viewer. From the smoke stack trails, not a filthy by-product of industry, but a chain of clouds. We realize something is missing– no steeple, no cross. A flag pushes up from the brow of the arch triumphantly. We are in a land where the center of civic life is no longer the church of Christ but the religion of the machine.
People disappear and even the train act as ornament. The artist illustrates a world where technology lives in consonance with country life. There is no working class pinned before the relentless speed of a locomotive. The “carnival train” is an optimistic scene created by a well-to-do hobby painter. From this picture of peaceful interaction of nature and technology, the elite class gains satisfaction in the splendid capabilities of mankind. As the philosophers Marx and Engels wrote:
“It is precisely the alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to change nature that his intelligence has increased” (Marx & Engels, 33).
Popular among the wealthy capitalists was the view that the machine, as a triumph of man’s intelligence, was a symbol of benign hope and rich achievement. And while providing all of this for mankind, it flourished within the natural and historical countryside.
The machine was truly the new religion of the leisure class. During their first flush of expansion, railway lines inspired positive reactions by both poets and artists. In John Dyer’s poem, The Fleece (published in 1757), development is portrayed with excitement:
New streets are marking in the neighb’ring fields,
And sacred domes of worship. Industry,
Which dignifies the artist, lifts the swain,
And the straw cottage to a palace turns,
Over the work presides…(Klingender, 11).
From the style of drawing, we make inferences about the intentions and perspective of the artist, but the whimsical portrayal of the machine may also be an indication of the time in which it was drawn. Most likely, it was a combination of “carnival train’s” place in chronology and the socioeconomic class of the artist that resulted in the religion of the machine.
With the rapid development of technology in the second half of the eighteenth century, a style of diagrammatic drawing emerged that purified the aesthetics of the machine to the level of scientific anatomy (Klingender, 61). Not only technicians, but the educated in general, followed the latest inventions with scientific scrutiny. These mechanical illustrations appealed to a distinguished audience; an audience with an immense confidence in the scientific method of investigation.
Old Antique Print Encyclopaedia Britannica Weaving Machinery Diagram
The “weaving machine” rises before us and we are at once impressed by its immense technical detail. The stark rendering is without any narrative. There is a complete absence of setting: we are enraptured with its anatomical form. In the great legacy of English botanical drawings the machine is classified as an organism with like scientific clarity.
This image functions, first and foremost, as a stringent documentation of the proportions and ingredients of the machine. The audience is fascinated not with the machine in its entirety but the labeled parts; the artist concentrates not on the utility of the whole but of the anatomy of the components.
Published in popular, technical journals of the time, this blueprint appealed to the scientists as well as wider academia. The quality of the drawing is measured by the artist’s ability to become invisible. This is a benevolent documentation of fact. But fact for whom? The individual worker is also dissolved. The apparent lack of social commentary is in fact an elitist perception of the use of machines.
Businessmen would have been excited with the increase in productivity that innovative machines made possible. A working-class portrayal of the machine may have been sensitive of the worker’s role in the industrial process. The technical artists entertained themselves with classifying the weaving machine as a new species, independent of a social context.
The “weaving machine” represents an early example of mechanical illustration. In its purest depiction, this image is an encyclopedia-brand portrayal of the machine. Klingender discusses the later forms of mechanical artistry:
For example, the upper half of such a plate may contain a general view of a tilt-forge with men at work, while the operative parts of the machinery and the tools used are shown separately below, just as in many contemporary botanical illustrations the stamen and petals are drawn separately from a general view of the plant (Klingender, 63).
At the time of the “weaving machine’s” inception, the educated technician still considered the beauty of the machine as integral in its isolation. The more evolved type of illustration included some sort of narrative, possibly from the increasing influence and input of various socioeconomic classes.
As the machine became appreciated purely as a scientific system, it was deified in political and economic theory as well. In Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy: Concepts of Nature and Utility, “…the political machine seem to move with more harmony and ease… We take pleasure in beholding the perfection of so beautiful and so grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of its motions” (Smith, 300). The beauty of the machine as a regular system of interacting parts was enhanced by theorists as well as mechanical illustrators.
Adam Smith also expressed a current of sentiment that regarded the machine as appreciable in its utility. {Graphic stripped}
“That the fitness of any system or machine to produce the end for which it was intended, bestows a certain propriety and beauty upon the whole, and renders the very thought and contemplation of it agreeable, is so very obvious, that nobody has overlooked it…” (Smith, 296).
Giclee print of the steam engine used in erecting Shop Penn’s Marine Factory, Greenwich
From the perspective of the rising middle-class entrepreneur, the Industrial Revolution reverberated with the opportunity of personal advancement on the wings of technical innovation.
Similar to the “weaving machine,” this giant image overwhelms us with the technicalities of the whole. From there our eyes our lead to the parts spilling before us. The repetition of the circular form organizes an apparent clutter into a purer geometry. Cold, hard reason dominates where emotion used to reign in the depiction’s of animate subjects. Light washes in from behind, making distinct shadows and emphasizing the clean metallic surfaces. During the Industrial Revolution there was a genuine fascination with the reproducibility of parts. The possibility that a pipe could be molded with such accuracy that it could be assembled in one’s own barn and produce that which it was made for. The aesthetics of the machine rise completely from its utility and increased productivity, rather than from some innate beauty of its pieces.
From their comfortable perch, these entrepreneurs admire the machine, just as a farmer comments on livestock. For newly-made businessmen the prospect of ownership was as exciting as the machine itself. In this wooden barn structure (indicated by the cantilevered roof) farmers-gone-businessmen discuss with pride the beauty of this beast. In contrast, John Dyer’s poem, The Fleece, concludes with a mesmerizing account of the machine as a mere tool for productivity.
A wheel, invisible, beneath the floor,
To every member of th’harmonious frame
Gives necessary motion. One, intent
O’erlooks the work: the carded wool, he says,
Is smoothly lapp’s around those cylinders,
Which, gently turning, yield it to yon cirque
Of upright spindles, which, with rapid whirl
Spin out, in long extent, an even twine…(Klingender, 21).
Dyer, as a poet, renders the wheel (the most basic component of a spinning machine) invisible, and is entranced with the product. In the image of the agricultural machine, the relationship between entrepreneur and his modern livestock concentrates not only on productivity, but the magnificence of the beast.
Our final image, the “blue machine”, appeals to a less critical, working-class audience. The emphasis is completely one of the machine in its productive capacity. The expansion of production revolutionized the cotton industry with an influx of innovations–between the years 1760 and 1785, Britain’s cotton industry showed the possibility of unprecedented growth rates, production expanding tenfold (Perry, 334).
The working class “blue machine” / Victoria & Albert Museum
The changes in technology had immense influences on the way the working-class made a living. The cities provided job opportunities and drew people from the countryside, changing much of the traditional modes of labor production. This image provides a favorable outlook on that transition. Though the workers do not command the modes of production, as they did in bedroom workshops, they enjoy a spacious workspace and friendly interaction with this new machine.
Although not seen in this copy, the image’s most striking aspect is the contrast between the gleaming blue of the machine amidsts its drab surroundings. The machine is dazzling in its baby blue– simple and buoyant. The cotton refiner does not frighten with over-technicality nor does it dissect the machine into anatomical parts. Most importantly, these workers are not cogs in the great machine of industry they have distinct identities and are content in their diligence.
By posing the characters mid-action the artists further attracts our attention to the cascade of cotton. Intentionally, we are not inspired by the space. De-emphasizing excitement from both the workers and the surrounding space, the machine draws us in with its miraculous capabilities. In this case, it is not the machine but the process which is emphasized. By appealing to the middle-class audience, the artist reduces the aesthetics of the machine to pure color.
The “blue machine” was greeted with the largest public reception, and therefore provides and attainable estimation of the dominant thoughts on the machine during the Industrial Revolution. In The Blessings of the Factory System, Andrew Ure expresses such excitement:
Such is the factory system, replete with prodigies in mechanics and political economy, which promises, in its future growth, to become the great minister of civilization to the terraqueous globe, enabling this country, as its heart, to diffuse along with its commerce, the life-blood of science and religion to myriads of people still lying ‘in the region and shadow of death
(Ure, 70).
Technology was touted as the panacea for all societal ills. An hope for unending development and fulfillment of mankind’s possibilities was implicit in the portrayal of machines during the Industrial Revolution. Whether the machine was conceptualized as animate livestock or merely as means to a productive end, industrialization changed radically not only the modes of production, but the place of humanity in an industrialized world.
References
Klingender, Francis D. Art and The Industrial Revolution. London: Noel Carrington, 1947.
Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels. ed. Howard L. Parsons. Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology. “Marx and Engels on Ecology.”
Perry, Marvin. Western Civilization: A Brief History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.
Smith, Adam. Moral Philosophy: Concepts of Nature and Utility. 1750s.
Ure, Andrew. The Philosophy of Manufactures: The Blessings of the Factory System. 1835.
The Death (and Rebirth) of Nature
By Sarah Jackson
The works of Carolyn Merchant and Keith Thomas pertain to the same subject matter and even to the same time period. Nevertheless, in comparing their interpretations of the evidence and the presentation of their arguments concerning the history of mankind’s relationship with nature in Tudor and Stuart England through the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, we find that they are quite different. Merchant presents us with a rather one-sided, retrospective attack on science as the root of all environmental evil, while Thomas offers a relatively neutral, prospective look at how the people of this time reacted to the changing views of nature and what, exactly, caused these views to change.
The theme running through Merchant’s book, The Death of Nature, is one of pessimism toward science. Her main argument is that the root of today’s environmental problems can be found in the early modern period, an era in which, Merchant says, nature was robbed by science of its right to life and spirit and became, effectively, a machine. According to Merchant, in the early 16th century with the rise of modern science and technology, mankind’s view of nature as a living being changed and nature became a machine to be dominated, dismantled and its secrets discovered, no matter what the cost.
Of the many examples Merchant uses to illustrate her point, none seems so warranted as that of Sir Francis Bacon, the father of modern science. We follow Bacon through Merchant’s book as one of the ringleaders of the movement to mechanize and de-spiritualize nature. “The Baconian method,” says Merchant, “advocated power over nature through manual manipulation, technology, and experiment” (216). She stresses time and again the brutality of Bacon’s attitude toward nature as a mere object. She assimilates Bacon’s ideas about science and nature into her argument saying, “The new man of science must not think that the ‘inquisition of nature is in any part interdicted or forbidden.’ Nature must be ‘bound into service’ and made a ‘slave,’ put ‘in constraint’ and ‘molded’ by the mechanical arts” (169).
This doctrine of nature as an inert, unfeeling machine that Bacon and his contemporaries advocate so adamantly seems to have changed forever the belief in organicism, or, that all living beings are an equal part of nature. “The natural magician [the organicist] saw himself as operating within the organic order of nature—he was a manipulator of parts within that system, bringing down the heavenly powers to the earthly shrine” (169). In Merchant’s opinion, the abandonment of this organic view of nature in favor of Bacon’s mechanical view led to the “death of the world soul and the removal of nature’s spirits” which “helped to support increasing environmental destruction by removing any scruples that might be associated with the view that nature was a living organism” (227). With this throwing off of the moral yoke, Bacon and his fellow man were free to do with nature what they would.
Keith Thomas, however, has a very different opinion of science and the role it played in the natural world in the early modern period. The concept of change is integral to his book, Man and the Natural World. While Merchant believes that science was the downfall of nature, Thomas seems to think that it actually breathed new life into the old organic view, which had been smothered by anthropocentric interpretations of the Bible and other theological beliefs. According to Thomas, earlier interpretations of the Old Testament declared that man held ultimate dominion over nature, particularly the “brute creatures” of the earth. But as time went on, new interpretations of the Bible and, perhaps most importantly, new scientific discoveries started to change the paradigm that mankind alone occupied the throne of the world.
In the early modern age, Thomas argues, new discoveries in science led to “the dethronement of man.” Scientists discovered that there were entire species that died out before man even came to the earth. In a single drop of water were found entire worlds of tiny microorganisms, completely indifferent to human activity (167). Findings such as these started to erode the idea that all things on earth were made for the express purpose of man. People’s views started changing. New interpretations of the Bible brought us from the view in Tudor England that “the creatures were not made for themselves, but for the use and service of man” (18), to the view in the late 17th century that “God loves the creatures that creep on the ground as well as the best saints” (166). What science seems to have done for the natural world, according to Thomas, is to bring mankind down from his self-appointed throne. So while Thomas never asserts that the organic view of nature made a full recovery, he does imply that, with new theological interpretations raising moral standards and with new scientific discovery, nature was, so to speak, given back some of its rights as a living organism.
While Thomas and Merchant argue different sides of the same coin, the two authors do agree on one thing: that, like the lyrics of a popular rock song, “video killed the radio star,” something new seems to have “killed” the organic view of nature in the early modern period. But while Merchant stops there, pessimistically asserting that we have not moved beyond the “death of nature,” Thomas believes that science, as opposed to being merely an enemy of nature, actually resuscitated it, saving it from the earlier, anthropocentric view of Tudor and Stuart England.
Motion and Means: Mapping Opposition to Railways in Victorian Britain
By Leigh Denault and Jennifer Landis
You see, Tom, … the world goes on at a smarter pace now than it did when I was young fellow … it’s this steam, you see. — Mr. Deane to Tom Tulliver in George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss. (p. 27, Newsome)
Introduction
Victorian Britain and the Birth of Steam
Change is one of the defining characteristics of the Victorian age. Almost every aspect of the older social milieu was turned on its head, while technology and industry became the new “Brazen Calfs, [sic]” (Carlyle, Hudson’s Statue, p. 1, Vaughon) of a worshipful middle-class that was itself remaking society in its image. Population growth profoundly changed the nature of British society, and the mechanization of industry created a demand for larger labor force. Factories and railways absorbed the bulk of this labor force, while many skilled workers, and particularly handloom weavers, were out of a job.
Figure 1: Able-bodied poor breaking stones for roads in Bethnal Green, Illustrated London News, 15 February 1868. (Perkins)
The very standards of time and size were called into question. British society hurdled headlong through the corridors of industrial change: people were astounded by the pervasive nature of that change, which seemed without precedence in history. As W. Cooke Taylor wrote in his 1842 Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing District of Lancashire: “The steam-engine had no precedent, the spinning-jenny is without ancestry, the mule and the power-loom entered under prepared heritage: they sprang into sudden existence like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter.” (p. 21, Newsome)
Even Tennyson penned a paean to change:
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward,
forward let us range,Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into
the younger day;Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. (Tennyson, p. 34, The Triumph of Time)
Figure 2: The first train into Grimsby – a Romantic view of the coming of the railway. (Perkins)
The very language of the poem recalls the grooved tracks that were spreading across Victorian Britain, reminding people that the times were changing.
Railways were a symbol of change and progress. They also seemed to epitomize popular resentments toward a changing world picture: the depersonalization of workers and passengers, the altering of an established social pattern, and of course, their tendency to mow down anything that what happened to get in their way, be it public opposition, family land, natural beauties, national history, or even unwary pedestrians on its tracks. But public outcry did have a direct impact on railway development, and the popular conception of the railway in Victorian society.
Progress of the Railways c.1837
Leading up to 1835, Britain had experimented with a few rails. These lines were built with the exclusive purpose of conveying commodities. Like the coal-road, the Stockton and Darlington, they ran primarily between industrial centers and areas of natural resources. Rails of this era were powered by stationary engines, horse labor, and sometimes by locomotives.
The Railway Fever of 1825-1826 proved the utility of railroads both for conveying passengers and goods. This period brought rails out of the experimental field and into the application of common enterprise. The railway fever was fueled by the anticipated success of rails as a dominant form of transportation for the future. George Stephenson, one of the foremost engineers developing steam engines,
…has been known to confess that his ideas and anticipations of the capabilities of this mode of transit, both as the speed and the effect which it would produce when generally adopted (as he foresaw it must ultimately), were such as he did not even dare to express, for fear of being produced insane. (Schwartz 2)
Figure 3: The Railway Office, Liverpool, c. 1830, was the first railway station in Britain. The above sketch is a view of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway drawn by T.T. Bury. (Perkins)
The Liverpool and Manchester line was a direct result of the Railway Fever. It was the first exclusively steam rail built for the dual purpose of carrying passengers and freight (256). The success of this line and the financial success of men like George Hudson encouraged businessmen to speculate on new lines. Jackman, a rail historian explains the mindset of investors in this time, “Men were induced to believe that they had only to embark in one of these schemes to ensure themselves a life of affluence and ease” (532). Rail schemes were developed for individual profit with little attention paid to the final outcome of construction. This excitement and financial investment in railways between 1835-1837 has been dubbed the first Railway Mania. Due to the surplus of bills, plans for potential railways, that were put before parliament many were never heard. The Railway Mania absorbed soo much of the domestic capital that between 1838 and 1844 very few lines were sanctioned (Jackman 571). There was a second Railway Mania between 1844 and 1846 that was characterized by another rush of speculation on projected lines. “The rage for shares continued and increased in intensity in 1845, until it infected all classes from peer to peasant and from private individual to government officials” (Jackman 584). Wordsworth’s infamous battle over the London and Northwestern’s Kendal and Windermere line was a product of the second Railway Mania.
Differing Views on Railways: A Cultural History
Proponents of the railways, arguments and ideas
Proponents of the Victorian railways came in many different voices; there were investors, engineers and architects. Most of them recognized the opportunities that the new rails had to offer. Shareholders like George Hudson who recognized opportunity, new enterprises and big money to be made. Engineers George Stephenson saw new machines to be built and old records to conquer. There was also a faction, begun by Thomas Grey, that believed that the railways would benefit Victorian society as a whole and raise the basic standard of living in the nation.
George Godwin’s Appeal to the Public
In his Appeal to the Public in 1837, George Godwin, an associate of the institute of British Architects, does an excellent job identifying and expounding upon the advantages of rails. He attempts to gain the support of the middle and upper classes by informing them of the ‘intrinsic goodness’ of railroads and addressing their concerns.
Many common people were frightened by the sight and implications of railroads (Simmons 15). One parish clerk, after seeing a locomotive for the first time, was quoted as saying, “That was a sight to have seen; but one I never care to see again! How much longer shall knowledge be allowed to go on increasing?” (Simmons 16). Godwin directly addresses the ignorance of the Victorian people and urges them to be open minded towards positive change. He draws a correlation between Gallileo and the introduction of the steam engine; he counsels the people not repeat ‘mistakes’ of the past (8). This particular manipulation may have been most useful in attacking members of the upper class who did not (yet!) have a vested interest in the rails. They were more likely to have a background in history or science and would be inflicted with the weight of this statement more than the uneducated working class.
Later in his appeal, Godwin manipulates the growing nationalism of the times by stating that each man can help better Britain by supporting rail development.
To retain our pre-eminent position, then as manufacturers for the world- a position which our improved machinery has principally enabled us to maintain so long…we would strongly and sincerely urge every individual of the society to lend his utmost aid in establishing and increasing their effectiveness; feeling assured that he would thereby assist, not merely to maintain the prosperity of the country, but greatly to increase it. (43)
Godwin lists the advantages of the railway in a systematic order. He claims that rails will reduce the cost of transporting goods and considering that, “In some instances the cost of conveyance forms a greater part of the price of an article”, many luxuries would no become more affordable and would be enjoyed by more people (19). This suggestion indicates that he is speaking now to the middle classes. In all likelihood, even if some goods costs are lessened the working class is still not going to be able to afford them. It is, therefore, the middle class who will benefit from this particular change.
During the Victorian era time became a commodity itself. Before railways there were not even timepieces that counted minutes. With the introduction of the Railway destinations became increasingly closer and time more valuable, or at least recognized as a limited resource. Godwin states that travel in general would take less time. This would be advantageous to day-trippers, as they would have more time at the chosen location to enjoy the sights. Also. due to the nature of rails, Godwin points out the advantage railways would have in quickly assembling a military force. This, again, appeals to the nationalistic appetite of the Victorian age.
Many coaching establishments were concerned that rails would displace their usefulness and put them out of work. Godwin address this issue by claiming that not only would the coaches not be out of work, but that, demand for coaches may even increase. He said that their trips would be shorter and more frequent to and from the railway stations.
Analogy, however, leads us to believe, that no reduction in the number of horses now maintained would take place: and, indeed, experience gives strength to the inference; for, between Manchester and Liverpool, although there is now no direct coach, the increased number of travelers has rendered so many more coaches necessary on the cross roads, and for short distances on the line, that more horses are employed there at this time than were so formerly. (40)
Opponents of the railway consistently said that rail lines break up and desecrate the countryside. On the same subject, Godwin sees the glass half full. Instead of ruining the natural landscape he claims that the buildings and rails will make use of that land and in addition “architecturally embellish” the country,
To say nothing of the means of decoration afforded by the viaducts, bridges, approaches, and depots appertaining to railways themselves…as we should in many cases, be able to use stone- the cost of transport being lessened, places now remote being brought together- instead of brick. (41)
Godwin does not respond directly to the opposition. He states simply that, the buildings to be built will be appealing in the quality of their material. He assumes that building are a part of progress, and as with the railroads, progress in ‘intrinsically good.’
As a primary source the Appeal to the Public is a gem. One would have expected that that support for the railway would have taken on a pompous voice. George Godwin sees himself as a guide to the people, something like a loving father, teaching his children right from wrong. He tries to explain their options and consequences and leaves the people to make a choice,
Let then, the English public now think seriously on the matter, and resolve whether the advance of civilization shall be made by them. (11)
George Stephenson: Engineer Extraordinaire
Many authors refer to George Stephenson’s engineering accomplishments. Despite frequent references there is little information available on the sort of person he was. He is known for his contributions to, and improving the steam engine.
George Stephenson (Perkins)
In 1829, the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway held a contest for engineers to see who could build the best over all locomotive for their new line. George Stephenson was awarded the hefty, L500 prize.
This achievement gave a decisive stamp to Mr. Stephenson’s reputation as a railway engineer; and he was subsequently employed in the construction of most of the principle lines of railway in the kingdom. (Schwartz 2)
As a proponent of railways Stephenson must not have been very politically active or there would be more information on him available. He and other engineers, however, by improving upon the railway made it more and more enticing to potential travelers and investors. The faster the railway could go the less feasible it was to take any other form of transportation. In 1753 a trip from London to Shrewsbury would take almost 3 and a half days by coach as compared to 12 hours and 40 min by train in 1835 (Simmons 310). Stephenson’s enthusiasm for the improvement of technology and the potentials he saw were not always received quickly. While before a Parliamentary committee Stephenson speaks of the gentleman’s reaction to his claim that a locomotive could reach a speed of 10 mph, “Someone inquired if I was a foreigner, an another hinted that I was mad” (Schwartz 2). This narrow perspective brings Godwin’s analogy to the persecution of Gallileo back to mind. It also indicates that engineers may have had to endure a form of self-censorship much like artists today. Indeed, Stephenson was quoted as saying, “…that his ideas and anticipations of the capabilities of this mode of transit, both as to the speed and the effect which it would produce when generally adopted (as he foresaw it must ultimately), were such as he did not even dare to express, for fear of being pronounced insane” (Schwartz 2).
Thomas Grey: A National Vision
Thomas Grey envisioned a national railway long before an amalgamation proved necessary. You could say ‘he had a dream’ that one-day rails would reach across all of Britain and everyone would benefit from a low cost and efficient form of transportation. In the early 1800’s,
He warned against subscribing to canal schemes, ‘for the time is fast approaching when rails must, from their manifest superiority in every respect, supersede the necessity both of canals and turnpike-roads, so far as the general commerce of the country is concerned.’ (Jackman 507-508)
Grey envisioned a locomotive utopia in which rails were taken on as a national project and controlled by a national board rather than capitalists. He wrote letters to the Ministers of State trying to persuade them of the great national importance of his ideas. In 1823, he petitioned both the Board of Agriculture and the Select Committee of the House of Commons (Jackmann 509).
In retrospect, Thomas Grey was a visionary. One has to wonder how the rail development in Britain would have been different if Grey’s scheme had been taken up while he was promoting it. The lines might possibly be more efficient earlier in their undertaking. “Whatever the reason may have been, Grey’s national railway project was not taken seriously, for nothing was done towards its accomplishment” (Jackman 508).
Opponents of the railways, arguments and ideas
As early as 1830, the Victorians realized that the railways were there to stay. Many recognized their advent as the most important development of the age. Yet exactly how, and where, this great new power was to be harnessed was the topic of a continuing debate. The first phase of opposition, which we will treat as extending roughly from 1825 to 1844, during which a large number of lines were sanctioned by Parliament, and the amalgamations of 1845, was marked by an almost universal aversion to the railways. Formerly objects of scorn or indifference, the railways were suddenly thrust into the public eye with the success of George Stephenson’s “Rocket.” Those who recognized the potential of the railway seemed overwhelmed by negative public response. To plead their case, railway proponents produced materials to argue their own point of view: one G. Godwin was moved to pen “An appeal to the public on the subject of railways” in 1837, and in 1849 R.M. Martin authored “Railways past, present, and prospective,” both positive endorsements that made an effort to sway public opinion.
Almost all railway construction during this period was contested in one form or another, as each line had to be sanctioned by Parliament. A system of railway hearings was established in the House of Lords, requiring companies to weigh the potential benefit and harm of their proposed schemes. Railway historian Frederick S. Williams writes: “A rumor that it was proposed to bring such a thing as a railroad within a dozen miles of a particular neighborhood was enough to elicit adverse petitions to Parliament, and public subscriptions were opened to give effect to the opposition.” (p. 23, Williams) There were however, few cases that brought the nation together in protest: most of the opposition was by nature local, consisting of persons who were not, in theory, opposed to the idea of rail transport, but who fought railway encroachments on their own territory. The most effective opposition movements took place largely during this period, as it was preemptive: by the second half of the century, railways had become a part of the landscape and the largest period of expansion was completed.
The second phase of opposition, from the 1850s to the 1880s, could be seen in part as a response to the railway manias and fears of railway monopolies, and in part as a reaction against perceived “railway vandalism.” Railways, once so strongly opposed, were now using their economic clout to push new lines through previously off-limits areas. The debates on railway vandalism centered largely around city centers (particularly central London) and national historic sites, spawning the character of the “sentimental gentleman” and societies for the preservation of antiquities.
Map ii in Appendix I, in combination with Table 1, (which follows below) shows incidences of English railway opposition that attracted public attention, and illustrates the correspondence between geographical location, population density, and success of opposition movements. In the early stages of opposition, smaller towns fought the intrusion of railways, while in the later period many small towns worked to attract railway speculation as a means of economic revitalization. Railway historian W.T. Jackson, writing in 1916, could scarcely believe that some towns “rejected the boon that was offered them, and opposed the railways so strongly that they would not allow the company to build their line within the city limits. Small towns, interestingly, seem to have had a greater autonomy in determining the placement of rail lines: lines such as the Liverpool and Manchester or the Liverpool and Birmingham, which were key trunk lines in connecting industrial resources with national markets, were built despite strong opposition on the part of local residents.
Table 1: Cases of Opposition to Railway Lines which Attracted Public Attention (see Map ii, Appendix I)
Name of Line | Company | Date | Reasons for Opposition | Outcome |
Buttermere and Braithwaite | Buttermere and Braithwaite | 1882 | Opposition against further incursions into the Lakes District. | Scheme fell through. |
Dalton and Barrow | Furness Railway | 1844 | The proposed line would pass directly through Furness Abbey, an antiquity famed for its beauty. | The line was rerouted to skirt the Abbey ruins, but was still considered by most a travesty. |
Dorchester | Wilts Somershire & Weymouth | 1845-1846 | Proposed lines threatened Maumbury Rings, which had successively been henge, ampitheatre, and Civil War fort. | In 1846 the railway company was forbidden to approach the Rings beyond a certain distance. The first antiquity to be saved from railway incursion as the result of protest by local people. |
Dover | South Eastern | early 1840s | Maidstone town in Kent, which the line would pass through, protested its construction. | The Dover line was rerouted. |
Kendall and Windermere | London & North Western | early 1840s | Wordsworth led opposition against “contamination” of the Lakes District | The line was postponed by the legal proceedings, but eventually was constructed along slightly altered plans. |
Leicester | Manchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire | 1890-1893 | Plans for London extension place large part of the castle and Roman Jewry Wall under limits of deviation, local opposition led by town’s Literary and Philosophical Society and the Leicestershire Architectural and Archaeological Society. | Opposition in Leicester sparked opposition in London, and when the line was constructed in 1893 the course was altered to leave castle and Jewry Wall intact. First occasion in which official and unofficial bodies came together to preserve an antiquity. |
Lewes | Brighton Lewes & Hastings Railway | 1844 | Railway would pass through the ruins of St. Pancras Priory at Lewes, the earliest Cluniac monastery in Britain. | The railway was approved, the line passed over the site of the high altar. |
Liverpool and Birmingham | Liverpool and Birmingham | 1833 | Strongly opposed by coach proprietors, post-masters, and wagon-masters. | Line was constructed despite opposition. |
Liverpool and Manchester | Liverpool and Manchester | 1830 | Line was constructed despite opposition. | |
London and Birmingham | London and Birmingham Railway | 1825 | People of Northampton protested the line, claiming, as it was a shoe-making town, that the wool of their sheep would be harmed by the smoke. | Caused line works to be moved to Wolverton. |
London and Bristol (Salisbury) | London and Bristol | 1883 | New trunk line would run across Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge. | Scheme failed – more because railway proponents did not make an adequate case for the railways than because of opposition. |
Norwich | Lynn & Fakenham and the Eastern & Midlands | 1882-1883 | Line proposed would break city wall on the north side, and would link with Great Eastern by running across Lower Close of cathedral. Also involved line across Mousehold Heath, open tract valued by people of Norwich. | Proposals were dropped due to strong opposition. |
Oxford Station | Great Western | early 1840s | Opposed by the University (Opposition of Oxford and Eton the most vehement the Great Western was to encounter) | Station forbidden at Oxford. |
Penrith | Penrith | early 1840s | Castle at Huntingdon and Clare destroyed by line. | Line was constructed despite opposition. |
Slough to Windsor | Great Western | early 1840s | Proposed extension of Great Western from Slough to Windsor contested. | Clause inserted in the Great Western Railway Act forbidding a station at Windsor |
Stockton and Darlington | Stockton and Darlington | 1825 | Landlord opposition. | Line was constructed despite opposition. |
Figure 4: Example of “romantic” style in railway architecture, c. 1846. (Perkins)
Railway “opposition,” tidy and homogenous as the term may sound, was not represented by a single, unified coalition, nor did it necessarily connote a similarity of argument among railway opponents. Opposition had at least two distinct phases, and the “old gridirons” had their enemies in all walks of life. To explore questions of how and why people spoke out against the railways, one must examine the social and political context of their times, and unravel distinct threads of arguments fought in the “dailies,” or within the borders of Punch cartoons, in cheaply-published pamphlet literature, and within the courts of Parliament.
From the vox populi: pamphlet literature, popular opinions, and court decisions
The first passenger railway, opening in 1825, was the Stockton-Darlington Railway, engineered by George Stephenson. Even this early project met with fierce landlord opposition. The second passenger line, the Manchester-Liverpool, opened in 1830. Tragedy overshadowed the triumph of Stephenson’s high-speed “Rocket” at this great event in railway history. When the Rocket stopped for water at Parkside, William Huskisson, MP for Liverpool, was killed when he stepped off the train and then panicked, running back onto the rails. Some took this misfortune as a portent against the “iron roads.”
Editorials and pamphlets began to appear, arguing against proposed lines. Following the death of Huskisson, people feared railway accidents, and the rising number of deaths at same-level crossings was cause for serious public alarm. Many railway accidents, such as the one involving Charles Dickens in 1865, became famous through retelling in The Illustrated London News, Punch, and the dailies, filling potential passengers with horror at the graphic descriptions of railway tragedies. And they were indeed horrible. Historian David Newsome describes Dicken’s brush with death:
Dickens himself experienced an appalling accident in 1865, traveling from Folkestone to London, when approaching the viaduct at Staplehurst at a speed of fifty miles an hour on a downward gradient. The train jumped the rails because two had been temporarily removed by workers on the line, the foreman having consulted the wrong timetable. All the first-class carriages except one plunged down into the river-bed below. The one that was spared, hanging perilously over the bridge, happened to be the one occupied by Dickens … ‘I never thought should be here again,’ he said when he returned to his home in Gad’s Hill Place. (pp. 31-32, Newsome)
The Household Narrative had a special segment on ‘Accidents and Disasters.’ In the first six months of 1852, 113 were killed and 264 injured, and in the first six months of 1853, 148 were killed and 191 injured in rail accidents.
There were less grisly reasons to fear railway incursion. People who owned property on land that had been designated as railway right-of-way – or land rumored to be so – worried that their houses would be destroyed, or at the very least rendered uninhabitable. A Quaker who called himself “Ebenezer” wrote a letter to the Leeds Intelligencer 13 January, 1831:
On the very line of this railway, I have built a comfortable house; it enjoys a pleasing view of the country. Now judge, my friend, of my mortification, whilst I am sitting comfortably at breakfast with my family, enjoying the purity of the summer air, in moment my dwelling, once consecrated to peace and retirement, is filled with dense smoke of foetid gas; my homely, though cleanly, table covered with dirt; and the features of my wife and family almost obscured by a polluted atmosphere. Nothing is heard but the clanking iron, the blasphemous song, or the appalling curses of the directors of these infernal machines. (p. 498, Jackson)
Landowner opposition was strong, particularly among the wealthier classes. They worried that the railways would “contaminate” the bucolic rural landscapes that had come to embody middle-class dreams of “arriving,” which had inspired artists and poets as the height of natural perfection, and had nurtured generations of middle and upper class British with visions of a “green and pleasant land” as a national ideal.
However, not all parties in the railway debate viewed the landlords as protectors of a rural tradition. “As a rule,” wrote historian W.T. Jackson, “the landlords thought much more of the peacefulness of their own estates and mansions than of the public good, and the mental picture of a railway with its tail of smoke curling across the countryside … was to them the symbol of all that was disagreeable, vulgarizing and mercenary.” (p. 497, Jackson) Of course, it was those very “vulgarizing and mercenary” people, who had invested heavily in railway expansion, who put forward egalitarian arguments about railway usage. And again, many of those “railway kings” who pointed to the upper-classes as draconian and insensitive to the needs of the poor strongly resisted instituting penny-a-mile fares and other third-class conveyance schemes. Neither side of the railway debates had a monopoly on the moral high ground, and almost everyone spoke with ulterior motives.
The predicament of the urban poor was far worse: often, railways demolished decrepit city tenements without making provisions for those they had evicted, sending the dispossessed families to squeeze into neighboring buildings. Many worried that the enormous cuttings and embankments rendered necessary by the weakness of early locomotive engines would subside, taking houses and people along with them.
Farmers were concerned about their crops and produce: no one knew the effects of railway development on, say, the average hen’s laying capacity, or a cow’s grazing habits. According to Jackson’s 1916 history of transportation in Britain, “A farmer in Northampton refused his assent to the proposed London and Birmingham Railway on the ground that the smoke would injure the fleeces of his sheep.” (p. 498, Jackson) Many of those who had worked along the canals, or on the highways, or in one of the hundreds of roadside inns that flourished in the heyday of coach travel, felt their livelihoods threatened by the new locomotives. That frightening Victorian behemoth, the “railway monopoly,” reared its ugly head. Speechifying politicians worried that the railway “was a monopoly the most secure, the most lasting, the most injurious that can be conceived to the public good.” (p. 34, Williams)
In 1843 in 1844, railway speculation became another serious problem. Up until this time, the railway said offered means for the investment of capital, but they also offered adequate security and profit to ensure healthy growth. Railways such as the London and Birmingham or the Liverpool and Manchester paid dividends at a rate of 10 percent per annum, the Stockton and Darlington paid 15 percent. (pp. 39-41, Williams) This sparked another railway mania, even more serious than the mania of 1835-1837. Fabulous wealth suddenly seemed to be within the reach of a great many people, and success stories were numerous enough to keep businessmen from all walks of life investing.
The Manchester Guardian published in account that in the space of one week, 89 new ventures had been advertised in three newspapers. The combined capital required for the schemes was estimated to be more than £84 million. However, over the period of one month, 357 railway schemes were advertised in the same newspapers, their combined worth being estimated at £332 million. (p. 41, Williams) In 1844, Peel’s Bank Act was passed as an attempt to prevent banks from issuing credit past their gold reserves. However, the Bank Act was suspended at least three times during the mania. In 1855 and 1862, two Limited Liability Acts were passed, with slightly higher success. (pp. 78-79, Newsome) A popular song of the time summed up the hysteria:
Old men and young, the famish’d and the full,
The rich and poor, widow, and wife, and maid,
Master and certain – all, with one intent,
Rushed upon the paper scrip; their eager eyes
Flashing a fierce unconquerable greed –
Their hot palms itching – all their being fill’d
With one desire. (pp. 41-42, Williams)
Nor was speculation necessarily confined to the “Manias:” Gladstone himself lost a great deal of money the 1860s, and he was not the only such famous personage to feel the pinch. In 1868, Herbert Spencer published an essay on “Railway Morals and Railway Policy” in his collection Essays: Moral, Political, and Aesthetic. Spencer examined what he called the politics of the railways, and revealed the discrepancy between general public perception of railway financial activity, and the actuality of illegitimate and untenable practices. Spencer cites instances of “men of straw” holding shares amounting to 200,000, boards that kept books in cipher, subscription contracts made up with bought signatures, false registries and gaps in minute books. Spencer adds the public associated “railway iniquities” solely with bubble schemes, and continues:
Associating the ideas of wealth and respectability, and habitually using respectability of synonymous with morality, it seems to them incredible that many of the large capitalists administration to administer railway affairs should be guilty indirectly enriching themselves in the expense of their constituents. (p. 254, Spencer)
Court arguments centered around the same basic issues, and Parliament thrashed out the problems of blackened sheep fleeces, ruined fox-runs, and dispossessed tenants throughout the decade of the 1840s. Many of these arguments were ridiculed by transportation historians of the early twentieth century, and indeed by railway proponents of the day, but they deserve to be taken seriously. These myriad concerns reflect the pervasiveness of railway influence on daily life in Victorian Britain, and demonstrate fears, among all classes, about what the nature of that influence would be. Nearly everyone, from the urban pickpocket running amuck in the new stations, to the remote and powerful country gentleman, experienced the changes railways were making in Victorian society.
From the literati: Arnold, Carlyle, Punch, and Ruskin on Railways
Members of Victorian literati were among those most vocally against the railways. Matthew Arnold, in his work Culture and Anarchy, named the false God to his time “railroads and coal,” (p. 37, Newsome) while Carlyle no doubt had railway speculators in mind when he spoke of the century’s Mammon-worship: “Go at your pleasure, there assemble yourselves, and worship your bellyful, you absurd idolaters,” he rages in Hudson’s Statue. Carlyle took Hudson to task, naming him “railway king” and adding, “His worth, I take it, to English railroads, much more to English men, will turn out to be extremely inconsiderable; to be incalculable damage rather!” For them, the railway was yet another symbol of the country’s obsession with wealth, accumulation, and material values over moral and aesthetic concerns. There were a great many fortunes made by the iron roads, but, these writers remind us, there were also a great many things lost or destroyed, and among these was an older, and slower, way of life.
Punch, the great satirical journal of the nineteenth century, originally followed the positive media reception of new technologies. However, the cartoonists were quick to caricature the businessmen caught up in railway mania at the expense of public safety and well-being: “with regard to railway accidents it is ‘the pace that kills.’ This is particularly the case when companies go it too fast in the pursuit of profit.” (p. 1, Vaughon) By the 1860s Punch was waging war against railway vandalism, and was in fact among the first to use the term “vandalism” in connection with the railways. In 1863, a Punch article recommended St. Paul’s Cathedral as a potential station, asking “What else will it be fit for when every railway runs right into London?” (p. 167, Simmons, The Victorian Railway)
Ruskin was among those firmly against railways, particularly the railway’s “vandalism” of personal homes and national treasures alike. Some of Ruskin’s more famous lines were written against railway incursions and the frenetic pace of contemporary life: “A fool always wants to shorten space and time, a wise man wants to lengthen both,” (p. 31, Newsome) and “It does a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow: for his glory is not all going, but in being.” (p. 31, Newsome)
On a trip to Venice in the 1840s, Ruskin was horrified to discover that the railway had arrived, and treated this is a new act of vandalism in the decaying, ancient city. He mourned the railway’s encroachment on the Rhine, and the loss of the scenes that Turner had painted between Constance and Basle. Ruskin was also involved in Wordsworth’s battle to keep the Lakes District free of railway “contamination,” (see Punch caricature below).
Figure 4: Cartoon published in Punch 5 February 1876: caricature of Ruskin and his support of a protest organized by the St. George’s Guild against a proposed extension of the railway in the Lake District. (pp. 156-57, Abse)
In describing the Lamp of beauty in his work The Seven Lamps, Ruskin presented his own time as completely bereft of aesthetic value. He felt that beauty in architecture stemmed from an imitation of natural form “because it is not of the power of man to conceive beauty without her aid.” (p. 96, Abse) He also believed that to ornament commercial buildings “vulgarized the forms and diminished their worth,” (p. 96, Abse) especially railway stations, which people were always rushing to escape.
Wherever you can rest, there decorate, where rest is forgiven, so is beauty. You must not mix ornament with business any more than you mix play… Work first, and then gaze… Will a single traveler be willing to pay an increased fare on the South Western, because the columns of the terminus are covered with patterns from Ninevah? – He will only care less for the Ninevite ivories in the British Museum… Railroad architecture has, or would have, the dignity of its own if it were left to its work. You would not put rings on the fingers of a smith at his anvil.” (p. 96, Abse)
Railway vandalism of British sites spurred the formation of societies for the preservation of antiquities. The most famous case of railway vandalism involved the ruins of Furness Abbey, a Cistercian monastery hidden away in the Vale of Nightshade. As the ruins were situated on land owned by the Earl of Burlington, a railway promoter, there was little opportunity for public outcry at the time, but the event was remembered as one of the greatest acts of railway vandalism against a historical site dear to public memory. As railway historian Jack Simmons wrote, “When Ruskin was offered the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1874 he declined it, in protest against what he considered four public atrocities committed in his lifetime, one in Britain and three in Italy. The passage of the railway by Furness Abbey was the British one.” (pp. 161-163, Simmons, The Victorian Railway)
Apart from aesthetic and historical concerns, Ruskin was also strongly opposed to railway speculation. During the slump from 1847-1848 he was vindicated his opinions when his future father-in-law, Mr. Gray, was nearly ruined. He felt that, in order to insure the regulation of the economy, the railways should be owned publicly. Ruskin also advocated quadruple rails as a safety measure, thereby separating passenger and freight traffic. As one of his biographers, Joan Abse, put it: “He may have hated the railways as they destroyed the countryside and a former way of life, but he thought at least they should be run for the benefit of the community.” (pp. 218-19, Abse)
Opposition from the literati represented different interests and voiced separate concerns than, for example, that of the Northampton farmer, but both stemmed from the same basic fear of change. Medievalists like Ruskin and Carlyle mourned the passing of an older way of life, and the destruction of its outward remnants. However, perhaps the strongest voice against the railways is the great Romantic, Wordsworth himself, whose losing battle to preserve the Lakes District consumed his last years. Today, tourists flock to Windermere, now approachable by train, but as late as 1914, no “iron roads” marred the heartland of Wordsworth’s beloved Lakes.
Case Study: No Ground Secure: Wordsworth and Opposition to the Kendall and Windermere Railway
Wordsworth’s views on nature and on industrialization
Wordsworth, an elderly man by the 1840s and the Ambleside debates, could be seen as representative of a Romantic sensibility better ascribed to an older era. He regarded nature as an animated force, as inspiration and as an integral part of his identity. Nor was his view necessarily contrary to general public opinion: Wordsworth captured an aspect of “Englishness” that his fellow countrymen identified with. Gladstone, when asked to choose his favorite line of poetry, placed Wordsworth’s “Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn” beside Milton for the crown. The accompanying verses from “The World is Too Much with Us” reflect Wordsworth’s feelings of growing isolation against the tide of changing times: “Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
As early as 1814, Wordsworth was speaking out against the waste and inhumanity of “these profaner rites,” the processes of industry. In “Outrage Done to Nature,” Wordsworth makes his stance toward industrialization clear:
Meanwhile, at social Industry’s command,
How quick, how vast an increase. From the germ
Of some poor hamlet, rapidly produced
Here a huge town, continuous and compact,
Hiding the face of earth for leagues-and there,
Where a habitation stood before,
Abodes of men irregularly massed
Like trees in forests,-spread through spacious tracts,
O’er which the smoke of unremitting fires
Hangs permanent, and plentiful as wreaths
Of vapour glittering in the morning sun.
And, wheresoe’er the traveler turns his steps,
He sees the barren wilderness erased,
Or disappearing; … (p. 2, Schwartz)
His image of rural English life overtaken by a Dantean underworld of smoke and flame was a powerful one that was summoned by many poets and writers afterward to describe the painful changes of industrialization. The unnaturalness of the increase was also a point of concern for Wordsworth, who believed in the smaller scale of life that had been a part of the Romantic ideal of English country life.
He was strongly opposed to the principles of Utilitarianism as espoused by Benthamites, and believed that nature should be appreciated for its own sake, and not as a resource to be exploited for a vastly increasing and irreverent humanity. His references to factories and the tyranny of the bells, to child labor, indeed show his attitudes on “the darker side Of this great change.” (p. 3, Schwartz)
The expanding tourist industry also offended the reverence he felt was due to nature’s greatest beauties. The thought that the railways might come to Windermere and the Lakes District filled him with dread. The first line of his sonnet “On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway” demands “Is there no nook of English ground secure from rash assault?” (p. 1, Schwartz)
Figure 5: Bradshaw’s April 1910 Railway Guide, detailing the accommodations available in the Lakes District for tourists arriving by rail.
Wordsworth’s arguments against the Kendal and Windemere railway
In 1844, the proposed Kendal and Windermere rail line threatened to violate William Wordsworth’s precious lakes district. He responded with a literary campaign against the line. Wordsworth wrote poems and letters that were published in the Morning Post to gain the support of the public and specifically address the members of the Board of Trade and the House of Commons. In his letters, Wordsworth is “Clearly representing a minority, he speaks with both a sense of his argument’s limited popular authority, overriding sense of it’s rightness notwithstanding, and a desire to extend this authority as possible into the public sphere” (Mulvihill 311).
In his first letter to the Morning Post published on October 16, 1844, Wordsworth first claimed that there was no need for a rail in close proximity to the Lakes district. He stated that there were no manufacturers, quarries nor a substantial agriculture base to warrant the intrusion. After refuting the need, Wordsworth turned on the main argument for introducing rails into the district,
The projectors have induced many to favor their schemes by declaring that one of their main objects is to place the beauties of the Lake District within easier reach of these who cannot afford to pay for ordinary conveyances. (148)
Wordsworth understands that the corporate faction need only to prove the utility of a rail for it to be taken seriously, he writes “Utilitarianism, serving as a mask for cupidity and gambling speculations” (Mulvihill 312). Wordsworth responds to this proposal by humbly explaining that members of the working class would not have the capacity to appreciate the “beauty” and “character of seclusion and retirement” that the Lakes District had to offer. He states quite plainly that “a vivid perception of romantic scenery is neither inherent in mankind, nor a necessary consequence of a comprehensive education.” He concludes this letter by stating that bringing many travelers into the district would destroy the beauty they had come to enjoy. He says, “Let then the beauty be undisfigured and the retirement unviolated” ( Selincourt 156).
This first letter was not received well; William was quoted in a letter to a friend responding to the opposition, “They actually accuse me of desiring to interfere with the innocent enjoyments of the poor, by preventing this district becoming accessible to them by a railway” (Mulvihill 306). Wordsworth’s second letter to the Morning Post dated December 9, 1844, searches to explain his position regarding the working class more thoroughly and carefully. In the very first paragraph he stats,
The scope pf the main argument, it will be recollected, was to prove that the perception of what has acquired the name of picturesque and romantic scenery is so far from being intuitive, that it can be produced only by a slow and gradual process of culture.
Essentially he is expounding upon his original conception that an appreciation for nature is an acquired taste and it would be futile to bring the lower classes in because they would not have a developed context with which to compare the richness of the Lake District. Wordsworth dedicates the rest of the letter to listing other reasons why the proposed Kendal and Windermere rail would be bad. It seems though; that he makes these further statements to gain back the ‘face’ he may have lost with the people he offended with the first letter.
Wordsworth claims that with the influx of strangers the railway promises could potentially estrange the local poor and wreak moral havoc upon the Lake District, “There cannot be a doubt that the Sabbath day in the towns of Bowness and Ambleside, and other parts of the district, would be subject to much additional desecration” (Selincourt 155).
The Furness Abby issue gave Wordsworth hope; he wrote that the antiquity was able to be saved by finding an alternative around it. This led him to conclude that the Lakes district was just as worthy of saving,
Sacred as a relic of the devotion of our ancestors deserves to be kept, there are temples of Nature, temples built by the Almighty, which have still higher claim to be left un-violated. (Selincourt 162)
The railway will intrude upon this ‘temple’ as Wordsworth sees it. To back his claim that the rail itself will ruin the beauty of the district he draws upon an example of a road that was built on the eastern side of the Lake of Grasmere and of a passage in the Alps. Here he inserts 19 lines of an MS poem that revel in the beauty of a particular pass in the Alps as the poet saw it. Wordsworth then claims that he saw the same path thirty years later and due to the intrusion of a road it was no longer the pristine landscape it once was. Throughout both his letters Wordsworth inserts literary references. This was most likely due to the fact that they related to his line of work. However, he may also have know that many of the people who would read his letters would probably have admired his poetic career and so including this medium in his letters would help to sway them to his side of the opposition, if they are already pre-disposed to identify with poetics.
Wordsworth concludes this final letter with a disclaimer to protect anyone from claiming that his arguments were based on selfish initiatives.
I have now done with the subject. The time of my life at which I have arrived may, I trust, if nothing else will guard me from the imputation of having written from any selfish interests, or from fear of disturbance which a railway might cause to myself.
Again he returns to the issue of the working classes taking excursions to the Lake District. Reverting to a harsh tone he exclaims, “As for holiday pastimes, if a scene is to be chosen suitable to them for persons thronging from a distance, it may be found elsewhere at less cost of every kind” (Selincourt 166).
Although Wordsworth was not a politician of any sort he was able to gain much fame during his lifetime. He exploited this position during the battle against the Kendal and Windermere line. He was relatively tactful in his communications with the public and was probably successful at gaining support through his literary campaign.
Progress of Rail Lines in the Lakes District from 1845-1914
William Wordsworth was a leader in the effort to keep the lakes district pure and untouched by the filth that railways had to offer. His death in 1850 is coincidentally coordinated with the explosion of rail lines between 1854 and 1876 (see appendix, maps iv and v), the number of rails tripled from two to six. This development is not exceptional, when compared to the nation as a whole it is quite representative (see appendix, maps viii and ix). However, when considering the efforts applied to avoid such geographical intrusion less than a decade earlier, the growth rate is surprising. The Kendal and Windermere line in question was completed on April 21 in 1847. Perhaps this event was the climax of Wordsworth’s failing health. Interestingly enough, there were no lines built after 1876 (see appendix, map 1914) and the core of the Lake District remained untouched. Perhaps the actual lakes themselves posed a problem or maybe there were no more rails built out of respect for the poet laureate, lest he roll over in his grave.
Conclusion
The nature of the changes ushered in by railways
The nature of Victorian change could be seen as demographic, environmental, social, and industrial. The railway alone was a symbol large enough to encompass all of these profound cultural changes. William Johnston, a barrister who published an 1851 survey titled England As It Is, summed up his century’s final verdict on the railway:
the most important event of the last quarter of a century in English history … this dependence magnitude of the capital they have absorbed – the changes they have produced in the habits of society – the new aspect they have given, in some respects, to the affairs of government – the new feeling of power they have engendered – the triumphs and disappointments of which they have been the cause – above all, the new and excessive activities to which they have given rise – must lead all who reflect upon the subject to admit that the importance of the general result of these great undertakings can scarcely be exaggerated.” (p. 32, Newsome)
According to the 1916 Development of Transportation in Modern England, Edwardians looking back on Victorian rail development saw the benefits of the railways largely in terms of reduced cost and speed of travel. Some also considered the enhanced value of land adjacent to proposed railway lines as a beneficial aspect of railway incursion, and felt that the railways helped to constrict urban sprawl by centering urban development on certain fixed points. Some thought that railway development necessitated important improvements, while other believed the railways were destroying low-income housing blocks and national heritage alike. All were in agreement over the detrimental effects of the Railway Fever and the Railway Manias, during which lines were proposed for purely speculative concerns, or, as part of a bubble scheme. This had also led, many felt, to too many lines clustered along single routes. The railway finance mess, as described above by essayist Herbert Spencer, was also seen as a detriment to public welfare, and was indeed a major consideration in the scheme to nationalize the railways.
Legacy of opposition?
Without the railways, Britain’s industrial potential could not have been developed as fully. As a people-mover, the railways took part in social and demographic change on a scale never before seen. But what were the long-term effects of railway opposition? Maps vii-x in Appendix I provide an overview of British railway development 1845-1914, and provide some sense of scale: the railways expanded at an incredible rate, and it seems impossible that a few examples of popular concern should have a significant impact – particularly since, by 1916, general opinion had shifted to favor railways and the changes they helped to bring.
However, opposition was, as we have seen above, significant and enduring. Societies for the preservation of antiquities, as well as architectural and archeological societies, were founded to oppose railway “vandalism” and to catalogue finds uncovered by railway construction. Such societies may have led to the development of official bodies like the National Trust, which restore, protect, and manage historical properties in Britain. Townships and local groups banded together with official bodies to organize protests against proposed lines, thereby leaving a history of cooperation between official and unofficial public interest groups. Railway opposition left a legacy of coalition building, and an infrastructure for further public action, whose effects would reach far beyond the individual victories and defeats of those “sentimental gentlemen” of the Victorian age.
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