    |
     |
Perspective: Steam Revolution
| A. N. Homer, The Imperial Highway. (London: Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, 1912), 90. |
|
Steamship, ca. 1900. The use of steamships fundamentally altered trans-Atlantic transportation. Not only did it shortened the travel time for goods and people -- largely immigrants -- but it also reduced the expense of overseas voyages. |
Historians have studied the ways in which steam shipping lines and railways encouraged emigration. Newspapers, immigration brochures, land pamphlets, and word-of-mouth accounts all found circulation in distant, rural areas due in large measure to steam networks. Regionally, railways tended to increase the circulation of foodstuffs and agricultural produce. In eastern Europe, for instance, the railways
gave the local peasantry greater opportunities to sell produce. They then had the necessary funds to begin planning migration. Migrants not only used steamships, and, later, railways to reach new agricultural lands in distant countries but, once there, they also often earned the money they needed to begin farming by working in the railway construction gangs that built rail branch and feeder lines in the new farming districts.
|
© Chinook Multimedia Inc., 2000. |
Previous Page 