We are on a train. We wanted to see Fall colors (!!!!) in such a manner that both of us could enjoy, without the responsibility of driving. We looked at train schedules, looking for the furthest north we could get in a day whilst remaining comfortable, stay overnight, and catching the train back the next day arriving at a comfortable hour. We eventually decided to travel to Amherst, in Massachusetts, and took sounding from travelling Friends on the best week to travel, before finally alighting on this particular week to travel.
America built great railways, in order to build America. Where Chinese ‘coolies’ working from the east and Irish workers from the West met in 1869, dignitaries hammered in a spike to join the rails. History was made. A journey across the US which used to take five or six months now took a week.
Railways occupy an iconic place in America – in the film Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone grand operatic masterpiece of a western, the opening scene, which seems to last forever, is set awaiting the arrival of a train. A few scenes later the heroine arrives at the station, and passes through, only for the camera to move in a swooping soaring shot, accompanied by an equally soaring score, and reveals the town which is being built on the progress which the railway brings: the railways in America are associated with coming of civilisation and progress. Of course it was not really like this. The film itself demonstrates the story of corruption and corporate banditry: an operatic plot shows the railway company to be at the heart of a land grab for water, allowing nothing to stand in its way. Henry Fonda, plays against his usual role of decent lawman by brutally slaying a child . But, as an outsider, Leone has grasped the mythic quality which lies at the heart of America’s relationship with railways, and which was played out again and again in the Westerns of the 50’s, (think of High Noon, which is runs in real time set against the arrival of a train) even as America had fallen in love with the new object of its affections, the car.* Only a nation which revered and celebrated railways could build magnificent structures like Grand Central Station, New York or 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.
Only a nation that knew it could function only if it were linked together across thousands of miles, and recognized that railways were the only means of achieving this could run trains with names – and what names! – like The Silver Meteor, The Empire Builder and the Sunset Limited. We ourselves are travelling on The Vermonter, which once each day makes the journey from Washington DC, via Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York up to St. Albans in Vermont, just south of the Canadian border.
Only a country which fundamentally enjoyed railways could build American trains. They are so big! – huge, and hugely comfortable. Unlike my most frequently used British system, Virgin West Coast main line, there is plenty of leg room. On some trains there is a system of checked in luggage, so like an airline you check in luggage and it then is taken from you so that you do not see it until the end of the journey when it is placed on the platform for you. And even when this facility does not exist, there is a system of porters, or Red Caps that will take luggage for you and place it in the generous space at the front of the railway ‘car’, or carriage.
For decades railways in the US have languished, with the system failing to capitalize on its strengths, falling well below it potential, and undermining its standing in the eyes of the public. Horror stories abound on a system which prioritises freight; with travellers stuck for hours as passenger trains are side-lined and so a train may well arrive several hours late. Although Amtrak owns and runs trains, the lines are mostly owned by freight rails companies, who, not surprisingly, run their track in their own interest.
On the stretch of track that Amtrak does own, the north eastern corner of the US where we are, the infrastructure has been allowed to decay, for years. When, starting in the 1990’s, Amtrak wanted to upgrade the system where it might be most used – the Washington –Boston corridor that we are travelling on for a significant portion of our journey - it found it had to replace rotting railway ‘ties’ (i.e. the wooden blocks between railway tracks that we call which we call sleepers) and ancient bridges.
This malaise at the heart of the system inevitably affects the staff running the system. On the SEPTA (South eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) commuter line into Philadelphia on the line just behind Pendle Hill, on which we start our journey, the station ticket office is staffed by a man who appears to be in his 70’s, who is barely helpful (would I be helpful if I had been expected to work into my 70’s?); on arrival in 30th Street Station concourse, the machine refuses to print our prepaid online ticket, and we are directed around a number of points to the ticket office, where the questions are framed in style, tone and manner as more suitable to an immigration service assuming wrongdoing, than simply a failure of a machine to register a bar code; the indifference of the man serving in the café car once we are on the train is a clearly the equivalent of a PhD in indifference, and a lifetime of applied resignation at being asked to do anything. His question “What can I do for you sir” was a master class in method acting. .
American left leaning liberals will time and again express a malign role for corporations that sometimes seem to amount to paranoia. Only whilst researching this article did I learn that railway improvements within a state could only be undertaken with states funding; a state which wanted to improve its road system could apply for 80% of its costs to be covered by Federal funding. “Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you” – one does not need to look too far to assume the influence of corporate oil on policy makers in Washington. The Obama administration has lifted this restriction, and offered Federal funding to states. Some, whether for ideological, political or pragmatic reasons, have refused. But it seems to place in jeopardy the possibility l of replacing an ageing, creaking infrastructure with a high speed system.
Effectively, it may be too late, just as it might well being for Britain. Japan, France, Spain have all systematically developed a high sped system. Obama has promised $8billion to develop a high speed system; China is expected to invest $200 billion over the next five years. According to a Radio 4 programme, China has more or less stolen Japanese technology, and is now developing trains expected to run at 300 kph – that is 189 miles per hour! So, a nation which put a man on the moon with less computing power at its disposal than the current day notebook I am using to typing this Blog on places itself in a position where it is less than a world leader in the field in which it once excelled – transporting people by rail.
I’m not sure why it is that the political left, along with Quakers, have such an attraction to trains, and the Right of Britain and America seems so viscerally opposed. It may be something to do with the apparent freedom of the car. The car appears to be a triumph of individualism and freedom to go where one chooses at a time of one’s choosing. Such at least, was Mrs Thatcher’s celebration of the car. In contrast, perhaps even a deliberate contrast, Mr Major offered a (wilfully?) naïve, sentimentally nostalgic evocation of the 30’s railways where every station master apparently looked after his station platform with flowers from his garden. His government then went on to offer a a botched privatisation which probably contributed significantly to the accidents at Hatfield and Ladbroke Grove And , before all this, of course it was a Macmillan Government which encouraged Dr. Beeching to wield his infamous axe, which tried to excise all social responsibility from a national rail network, and ensured that there are now regions of the country – especially in Wales and Scotland – with insignificant access to a rail network. Those of a certain age will remember that the Minister of Transport at the time was Ernie Marples, and remember him riding his bike into Whitehall. What will be less remembered, if known at all, is that he owned a construction company with a direct interest in road building. The M1 had recently opened in 1959; there was clearly a fortune to be made in building roads. When it was pointed out to Mr Marples that he might have had a conflict of interest, he agreed – and promptly passed his shares over to his wife.
The Right has alwys demanded deregulation, and having untrammelled, completely free access to markets and resources. And a rail network, by definition, runs on train lines. On a train journey, one is constrained in terms of direction and time of travel. And the traveller goes in a particular direction with other people: there is a public quality in participating in a rail journey, with the need to accommodate oneself to a public arena, as opposed to the car which offers private space and apparently unlimited freedom.
But I think the opposition to the railways goes deeper than this. Railways demand infrastructure, heavy investment and long term planning for both track and rolling stock. For any reasonable person these days, this means heavy government involvement. To governments of either persuasion on the continent this seems a reasonable. However, the Anglo Saxon Right wing mind is viscerally opposed to any government role in economic life of a nation. And I think we are often unaware the extent to which the political parties of both sides of the ideological divide on both sides of the Atlantic enjoy cordial relationships and exchange ideas. Thus it is that the American Right, which to the liberal mind seems increasingly bizarre and out of touch with any kind of reality as we know it, has much greater influence on the right wing mind in Britain than many of us would recognise or enjoy, enjoying the easy connection between peoples who nominally speak the same language and can communicate relatively easily.
Returning to railways, it was not always like this of course. At the outset of railways in Britain and America, capitalism built the railways. It was the ‘Railway Mania of the 1840’s which laid down most of the system we still enjoy today, all funded by private capital newly released by the development of joint stock companies, and the development of a banking system. Huge fortunes were won and lost on both sides of the Atlantic .
Quakers played a significant role in this stage of the economic development of Britain. Quaker reputation for honesty of dealing in business affairs meant they were ideally placed to play a vital part in the development of the banking system – the banks we know today as Lloyds and Barclays had their origins in Quaker banks. What is less well known is Quaker involvement in development of the railways. The first railway was the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Edward Pease, a Quaker MP, worked with the engineer Stephenson, invested funds, and brought the bill before Parliament to secure the foundation of that railway. Even today, the Darlington football team are known as The Quakers. It is a matter of conjecture whether it is this title, the economic decline of Darlington reflecting in their ability to buy players, or any other factor that means The Quakers now play in the Conference League!
The railways also offer a model of the development of human consciousness – that it is extremely difficult to see the present moment in terms of our past, and we can only with difficulty see beyond the limitations of the present moment to envisage an alternative reality. The first railways were tracks along which ponies would pull tubs of coal. Initially it was thought that these tram lines might serve for both the new-fangled steam engines, and local carts. We devised our train gauge because Stephenson, the first great railway engineer, measured one hundred local carts to have an average of four feet eight and a half inches. I am not a good engineer or mathematician, but even I know that such an average does not mean that even one of these carts could use this line: a system was imposed which did not server the present or the future. *** The system for carrying passengers also reflected the deep inequalities of a cavalier inspired society (see previous blog) - so there was not only a First and Second class railways system, but even a Third class, with an accordingly punitive system of discomfort built in, reminding the passengers not only were they poor, but must be punished for being so. And of course, the carriages themselves are so called because if one looks at the very earliest attempts to develop conveyances for passengers they were modelled, not on a vision of what this new form of transport could be, but on what existed – the stagecoach. In this as so many fields, human beings looked at the current moment through the eyes of their past experience, and failed to recognise it for what it was for itself.
This railway system was all laid out in the 1840’s. And it may be the hard Right truly believe that this kind of entrepreneurial capitalism can provide such investment for major projects today, despite evidence to the contrary from across the world (the much vaunted investment in the railways since privatisation as been achieved by increasing government subsidy, and marked by const overruns and spiralling – ironical, since we have been repeatedly told, again and again ad nauseum, that governments cannot manage, only private companies can manage efficiently) Repeatedly in news broadcast and analyses I hear the economic right indicate that such providers of entrepreneurial success deserve their huge rewards – we are told it again and again so often that we perhaps we begin to doubt our interior judgement, this must be a self-evident ‘fact’ might even appear to be true.
I look at how many companies have not ceased their final lump sum pension schemes. I see how many of my ex students, some of them with Masters Degrees, who are working for minimum pay. I listen to the rhetoric , again and again, that ordinary people must be content with minimum pay increases, or none at all; how they must be grateful that they have a job; that social security is presented as a huge system for scroungers and the work shy……………….whilst providers of wealth need to be richly rewarded for their ‘labours’ – none more so than the bankers who exercised such judgement and foresight that they brought the world economic system to its knees. These are exactly the arguments used by factory owners, mill owners and those who fought against every advance in decency and humanity won in the last century and a half.
In the false Darwinism of the right wing world view, it is nature red in tooth and claw, and where there are economic winners, there are economic losers. In the 1840’s women and children worked down mines, factory laws were non-existent and children worked 14 hour days. According to the evidence at the time, factory owners saw nothing wrong with this, for when the children were released they immediately began to play. And of course, ran the argument, if they had enough energy to play, then they clearly had enough energy to work harder, longer.
Since that time, it has been a long, slow battle to establish decent working conditions for a reasonable working wage. In the nineteenth century, worker pay is stopped at the fifteen minutes to the time they had an arm pulled off in a machine. Such economic slavery is now dead in the West, and capitalism has successfully outsourced such appalling conditions, along with many of the actual jobs. But when I hear much of the political Right arguing that restrictions should be lifted for businesses to thrive, I realise that many of those regulations are about ensuring a right to strike, establishing sickness, maternity and paternity benefits as part of the dignity of work, along with paid holidays and a pension. Of course the argument is made that we cannot compete with economies which do not support such obligations on employers, with the assumption that such rights could be removed from workers in the west. Would it not be more reasonable to assume that all workers in the world such have access to such rights, at levels appropriate for the median wage levels of a particular country? Quaker factory owners such as Cadbury’s were model employers, offering sickness pay and pensions long before they were compelled to do so by government regulation. And still made a profit.
I am completing this blog entry heading back south on The Vermonter. We have had a wonderful visit. The Fall colours were very rich – the variety of yellow was particularly striking. And while we had a wonderful sunny day travelling up, the rain promised by the TV weather forecast last night materialised, but had the effect of making the colours more startling. At one point the train has to turn round in the small town of Palmer to head south on a different line. It makes for an extensive delay for the serious travellers, who furiously type into their spread sheets and power point presentations all around me, even as I type this piece for you; but for us the train goes slowly, silently and mysteriously through dense woods on either side of the track, allowing a sense of the deep mystery of New England forest.
I’m sure that the colours further north were even more startling, given that it is colder, but this is more than sufficient for us now – and this far north felt significantly colder after nightfall as we walked from the Persian restaurant where we had supper.
Amherst is a lovely university town of green spaces, small bookshops , funky eating places, and shops devoted to personal grooming – hair, skin, nails could be taken well care of in the numerous small shops which abound. Each state has its own liquor laws, so it was interesting to see in a small town the number of shops devoted to wine and spirits. It must have been a very different town for the poet Emily Dickinson, and I wonder to what extent she would recognise the town she lived in. Her housed now museum, offers an insight into gracious living. And for a liberal, white American in regular I can imagine Amherst must be as pleasant as it gets – the university ran a day’s symposium of the Civil War earlier in October, clearly demonstrating its sympathies; a casual chat with a teacher of Afro American studies at the university reveals that most people of colour here are immigrants, who have as much difficulty grasping the issues of black experience in America as white and Asian students; the upwardly mobile black taxi diver who drives un in the rain clearly enjoys a town with so many restaurants, and so little crime, other than university students “getting a little crazy” at the week-ends. As a white liberal, I could envisage living here and having a wonderful life – urbane, cultured, much the same as we would have enjoyed had we continued to live in our village near Cambridge all those years ago with the additional attraction of such rich, stunning scenery, including easy access to the ski areas of Vermont. The white Quaker lecturer in African American studies we meet at the station tell us that one of his challenges is relating the Black American Experience not only to the white students he teaches, but to the black students he teaches, for they are mostly immigrants, and have no relationship to the experience of African Americans.
As we leave Amherst, we encounter one part of the town which would Emily Dickinson surely would have known and recognised: the railway station which seems to have been untouched by time
Besides the Autumn poets sing
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the Haze—
A few incisive Mornings—
A few Ascetic Eves—
Gone—Mr. Bryant's "Golden Rod"—
And Mr. Thomson's "sheaves."
Still, is the bustle in the Brook—
Sealed are the spicy valves—
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The Eyes of many Elves—
Perhaps a squirrel may remain—
My sentiments to share—
Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind—
Thy windy will to bear!
The name—of it—is "Autumn"—
The hue—of it—is Blood—
An Artery—upon the Hill—
A Vein—along the Road—
Great Globules—in the Alleys—
And Oh, the Shower of Stain—
When Winds—upset the Basin—
And spill the Scarlet Rain—
It sprinkles Bonnets—far below—
It gathers ruddy Pools—
Then—eddies like a Rose—away—
Upon Vermilion Wheels—
Emily Dickinson
These pictures are from Pendle Hill
*Or apparently in love. One only has to watch any Hollywood blockbuster to recognise America’s deeply ambivalent attitude to cars – the inevitable car chase, with the ensuing mayhem, chaos and destruction as cars collide, crash and destroy each other, with no apparent effect on the humans driving them.
** The art of ju-jitsu is to apparently use the strengths of the opponent against them. In the America of 2001 terrorists learnt to fly in a market economy where flying lessons are a commodity on offer like any other service and where airlines fought to offer the cheapest fares, to as large a group of consumers as possible, and had insisted in offering a walk-on/walk-off service, in the face of advice, saying that their customers did not want to be hindered by security checks on internal flights.
*** The remarkable engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel devised a gauge of seven feet for use in the west country (The Great Western Railway – GWR), where train speeds could be higher and the journey more comfortable, But eventually Stephenson’s system won out, a fact which I remember with annoyance every time I stumble with a cup of coffee form a Virgin train line café on my way back to my seat
