In the Unlikely Event: Danger and the Transportation Revolution
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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by ASU Digital Repository In the Unlikely Event: Danger and the Transportation Revolution in America by Paul Kuenker A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2016 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Susan Gray, Chair Victoria Thompson Catherine O'Donnell ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY August 2016 ABSTRACT This study is a cultural history of danger, disaster, and steam-powered transportation in nineteenth-century America. The application of steam power to transportation, a globally transformative innovation, had particular influence in the early United States. A vast American continent with difficult terrain and poor infrastructure posed significant challenges, both to individual mobility and to a nation eager to build an integrated economy, a unified culture, and a functional republican government. Steamboats and locomotives offered an apparent solution, their speed and power seemingly shrinking distances between places and expanding mobility and access across space, a process contemporaries and scholars have described as a sort of space-time compression. However, these machines that overcame space also blew up, caught fire, wrecked, collided, derailed, and broke down, killing tens, and often hundreds, of Americans at a time. This dissertation analyzes the ways Americans encountered, interpreted, and adapted to these new dangers, all the while making the technology that created them an ever more essential aspect of their lives. I argue that Americans’ responses to disasters, filtered through the transportation and communication networks created by steam power, constituted a deep, shared reflection about the nature of expanded mobility in a fast-evolving modern America. Though few suffered disaster directly, Americans collectively framed the danger of steam as both a profound national problem and an evocative symbol of modernity. Through public conversations mediated by print, Americans identified susceptibility to danger as inherent to high-speed travel, and, alongside practical safety measures, developed distinctly modern cultural adaptations to understand and manage that danger. By century's end, Americans had i cultivated a modern mentality on mobility, technology, and danger: though most Americans never experienced disaster they were intimately aware of it, and though familiar with catastrophe they understood it as unlikely and accepted it as a feature of their modern technological lives. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a great pleasure and honor to be able to acknowledge the many people and institutions that helped me through this project. Essential funding for my research came from the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University and from a generous fellowship from the Huntington Library. I had the privilege to spend considerable time researching at the Huntington Library and the American Antiquarian Society, and it is hard to imagine there are many better places to work. At both institutions, the wonderful collections, knowledgeable and helpful staffs, and the beauty of the work environments themselves made my archival experiences a true joy. I owe the earliest bit of inspiration for this dissertation to Andy Fisher, whose suggestion that I use disaster to contemplate the western mining industry set me on the path that ultimately brought me to this topic. He and others at the College of William and Mary, and the College itself, moved me to pursue the study of history. Thank you also to my professors at Arizona State, who helped that pursuit along. Special thanks to Chris Jones, who read portions of the dissertation and provided excellent advice. The struggles and successes of graduate school and the dissertation have been most enjoyable when shared with others, so thank you to my colleagues and friends at Arizona State and elsewhere. You continually inspired me with your own work, listened and talked with me about mine, and often kept me sane. This dissertation would not be what it is without the assistance and advice of the three dynamic historians on my committee. Catherine O’Donnell consistently pushed me to defend and better articulate my most significant claims. Victoria Thompson, through iii her cultural history courses and the model of her own historical questions, helped me locate my intellectual home. Writing this dissertation has been such a rewarding experience in large part because of Susan Gray. She has been and remains the ideal adviser and mentor, blending incisive criticism and confident support, and continually feeding my ambitions and encouraging creativity. My family has had more influence on this venture of mine than they know. Thank you to my sisters, Amy, Emily, and Tessa, who showed me new possibilities, indulged long-winded historical explanations, and provided much-needed distraction. No words can truly express my thanks to my parents, who have provided so many means of support through the years of this project and before. You opened all the doors, and I will always be grateful – I hope this dissertation can be a reminder of that. Finally, thank you to Elizabeth, who became my fellow passenger on this exciting and occasionally frightening journey. Your love of history influenced the content – at least one person appears more in this dissertation than he would have otherwise – but more importantly your enthusiasm for the project, your eagerness to talk about it with me since the beginning, and your love and patience provided me strength when I needed it the most. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION........... .........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 AMERICA WELCOMES STEAM ......................................................................... 27 2 ENCOUNTERING DANGER ............................................................................... 69 3 VISUALIZING CATASTROPHE ........................................................................ 115 4 THE LESSONS OF DISASTER ........................................................................... 161 5 THE CONSEQUENCES OF SPEED .................................................................... 209 6 THE RIGHTS OF THE TRAVELING PUBLIC .................................................. 252 7 ACCEPTING UNLIKELY EVENTS ................................................................... 290 EPILOGUE......................................................................................................................... 328 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................. 336 v ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations are used after the first mention in each chapter of the collection or archive in the footnotes. AAS American Antiquarian Society ASPC American Satirical Prints Collection HL Huntington Library JLIC Jay T. Last Insurance Collection JLMC Jay T. Last Maritime Collection JLSMC Jay T. Last Sheet Music Collection JLTC Jay T. Last Transportation Collection vi Introduction “In the unlikely event.” Anyone who has ever been a passenger on a commercial airline has probably heard these words, usually preceding “of a water landing” or “of a loss in cabin pressure.” They form a standard phrase in the safety instructions presented to passengers at the beginning of a flight. Passengers board the plane, take their seats, and begin whatever activity they will use to pass the travel time. For most, the safety instructions go relatively unnoticed, their familiarity encouraging dismissal. If we actually think about the words “in the unlikely event,” we know what they mean. These words confront us with the possibility of mass catastrophe, injury, and death. They also reassure us – the word “unlikely” emphasizing the remoteness of that possibility. Even so, many of us still think about the potential disaster. We have seen it happen and we know what it looks like, from the news and popular culture. A crash is not a possibility that is difficult to imagine. But it’s also easy to believe that disaster will not happen to us. For most of us, the unlikely event does not keep us from traveling. Few moments embody our modern existence as well as those at the beginning of an airline flight, moments experienced by hundreds of thousands of Americans every day.1 They represent a launching point from which we reach distant destinations in a world that is accessible because of the speed, power, and convenience the technology presents to us. Americans can cross their country in five hours and reach the opposite side of the globe in fifteen. But this modern luxury is dependent on large, physical objects using massive amounts of internal power to move through space at high speeds. Thus, 1 Marc Augé also begins his study of “supermodernity” with a prologue posing the spaces and moments occupied by a man preparing for and taking a flight as emblematic of the modern condition, though he makes no mention of potential danger, which I see as another crucial feature of modernity. Marc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, trans. John Howe (New York: Verso, 1995), 1-6. 1 they also hold an inherent potential for danger. Modern technologies bring tremendous progress but also social consequences. Not all technologies