From Boston To Portland We
Traveled By Railroad - The Carriages On Which Are In America Always
Called Cars.
And here I beg, once for all, to enter my protest
loudly against the manner in which these conveyances are conducted.
The one grand fault - there are other smaller faults - but the one
grand fault is that they admit but one class.
Two reasons for this
are given. The first is that the finances of the companies will
not admit of a divided accommodation; and the second is that the
republican nature of the people will not brook a superior or
aristocratic classification of traveling. As regards the first, I
do not in the least believe in it. If a more expensive manner of
railway traveling will pay in England, it would surely do so here.
Were a better class of carriages organized, as large a portion of
the population would use them in the United States as in any
country in Europe. And it seems to be evident that in arranging
that there shall be only one rate of traveling, the price is
enhanced on poor travelers exactly in proportion as it is made
cheap to those who are not poor. For the poorer classes, traveling
in America is by no means cheap, the average rate being, as far as
I can judge, fully three halfpence a mile. It is manifest that
dearer rates for one class would allow of cheaper rates for the
other; and that in this manner general traveling would be
encouraged and increased.
But I do not believe that the question of expenditure has had
anything to do with it. I conceive it to be true that the railways
are afraid to put themselves at variance with the general feeling
of the people. If so, the railways may be right. But then, on the
other band, the general feeling of the people must in such case be
wrong. Such a feeling argues a total mistake as to the nature of
that liberty and equality for the security of which the people are
so anxious, and that mistake the very one which has made shipwreck
so many attempts at freedom in other countries. It argues that
confusion between social and political equality which has led
astray multitudes who have longed for liberty fervently, but who
have not thought of it carefully. If a first-class railway
carriage should be held as offensive, so should a first-class
house, or a first-class horse, or a first-class dinner. But first-
class houses, first-class horses, and first-class dinners are very
rife in America. Of course it may be said that the expenditure
shown in these last-named objects is private expenditure, and
cannot be controlled; and that railway traveling is of a public
nature, and can be made subject to public opinion. But the fault
is in that public opinion which desires to control matters of this
nature. Such an arrangement partakes of all the vice of a
sumptuary law, and sumptuary laws are in their very essence
mistakes.
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