Modern Civilization [pp. 62-69]

MODERN CIVILIZATION.
ing more agreeable and cheaper so to live, for the railroad
breaks up country schools, villages, mechanic shops, &c., and
in the country the farmer must keep a carriage and horseswhich expense, as also the boarding out his daughters, he saves
by living in town.
Railroads feed cities by impoverishing the country. The
only possible corrective, is to have as many towns as possible
where railroads shall terminate, so that those towns shall re.
turn to the country around them, the manners of which they
rob it, and furnish to the country residents easy access to the
advantages of town. States tributary to cities without their
own territory, must be ruined.
City railroads, we think, will do more for modern civilization, than any other recent improvement. They will disperse
city populations over a large space, because laborers will find
it cheaper, and far more agreeable to live four or five miles
from the place where they labor, in the midst of the city than
to be crowded in six-story, illy-ventilated houses, near their
work. A laborer cannot walk four or five miles to his work,
because both of the loss of time and physical exhaustion it
would occasion, but he may ride that distance on a city railroad, without fatigue or much loss of time, and save in rent,
what his ride costs. The ancient cities of Asia were scattered
over an immense space, and each dwelling had its court and
garden attached. This " rus in urbe" life must be the perfection of social organism, for it gratifies man's strongest feeling,
the love of variety, without robbing him of the loveliness of
nature, or of the healthful and invigorating air of the country.
All the statistics of pauperism show, that the health and the
morality of the poor are more injured by crowding a great
many families in one house, with small illy-ventilated rooms,
than from any other cause. City railroads, we think, may be
successfully used to correct this evil. If so employed, they
will do more to advance the cause of humanity, morality, and
true refinement, than all other modern improvements.
Nominating conventions, committees of vigilance, caucuses,
preambles and resolutions, written constitutions, and ingenious
platforms, are no part of modern civilization, nor of civiliza.
tion at all, but the temporary, impoverished expedients of a
pioneer people, which answer instead of regularly-organized
governments, just as long and as well as tents and log cabins
subserve the purposes of houses.
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