A Railway Society

Abstract The railway revolution happened so quickly and touched Victorian life at so many points that the danger perhaps is of over-rather than underestimating its effects. The railways themselves were the product of a society which saw in the expansion of manufacture and commerce the secret of wealth and power, and in the application of science and mechanical invention the key to that expansion. Wealth and science made railways possible; the economic demands of British society made them, one might almost say, necessary. Much that happened in the nineteenth century would have happened in any case. The increasing influence of the middle classes, the sharper political consciousness of the nation as a whole, the growth of ‘public opinion’ as a source of power, the loosening of provincial ties, the weakening of class distinctions, the dominance of the large towns, the steady rise in population—all these tendencies were visible before the coming of the railways. There is no reason to think that they would not have continued; only that the pace would have been slower. The railways did not so much create as accelerate change. They acted as agents rather than initiators; but with such unprecedented force as to make them seem even more significant than they really were.