Recasting American Liberty: Gender, race, law, and the railroad revolution, 1865-1920

Journal of Transport History, The, Sep 2003 by Schramm, Jeff

Barbara Young Welke, Recasting American Liberty: gender, race, law, and the railroad revolution, 1865-1920, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2001), 430 pp., L45.00 (US$64.95).

While historians have long studied railroads, only recently have they explored beyond the right of way and the boardroom into the broader social and cultural effects of railroads and the industrial society that they spawned. Barbara Young Welke has added an important work to this movement by looking at gender, race, and law, and how railroads changed these areas. Her central argument is that railroads fundamentally reshaped the way that Americans of all races, classes, and genders conceived of liberty. She asserts that, before the widespread use of railroads, Americans defined liberty in terms of personal independence, self-reliance, and autonomy. With increasing industrialisation, symbolised and analysed through railroads, both steam and street, this definition changed to one mediated by the State. To ensure liberty in this new technologically sophisticated industrial society, Welke maintains, individuals increasingly called on the government. Liberty was no longer individual independence but more focused on life itself, even if that life had to be protected by safety devices and regulations. She comes to this conclusion by looking at injuries to railroad passengers. Through dozens of individual narratives drawn from court records, Welke concludes that before 1870 most injuries were treated as unfortunate accidents that were the price of maintaining personal liberty in an industrialising society. By 1900 injuries were increasingly viewed as the responsibility of not only the injured party but the railroad company itself. The groups that were at the forefront of this change in the definition of liberty were, ironically, the least free: women and African-Americans.

Gender and race are central elements of Welke's argument. Women, severely restricted in both law and custom during the late nineteenth century, were nonetheless passengers on both steam and electric street railroads. When these women were injured, their dependent status in society translated to preferential status in the courtroom. While men were expected to be able to jump from moving trains or streetcars, women who did so, and were injured, were viewed sympathetically. Women were in the vanguard of the new definition of dependent liberty for a new industrial age. Race, most specifically the Jim Crow laws of the southern states, is also ably dissected by Welke. The segregation of rail cars was more than simply a way for southern whites to reinforce traditional notions of status but also a way to put a traditional cast on a potentially threatening new technology. The railroads did not welcome the many Jim Crow laws throughout the south, a point that Welke makes clear. Not only were the laws an operational headache, but they also represented increasing governmental interference in the railroads' business.

This work is at its best when analysing gender and its impact on the law. There is much to recommend here but, unfortunately, there are also some problems. While Welke sheds new light on the intersections of gender, race, and law, her understanding of the history of technology is less informed. She mentions many works in the footnotes but she does not seem to adopt any particular theoretical approach. Her knowledge of railroad history and technology is less than complete and relies on a few secondary sources. At times, in her account, railroads are merely a 'black box' that impacts upon helpless women and others rather than being a complex, socially constructed technology in themselves. The corporations that ran the railroads are also one-dimensional at times and deserving of further analysis. Moreover while it is extensively footnoted, the only bibliography in the book is a listing of the many court cases that have been consulted. The strengths of the work offset many of the weaknesses, but some questions still go unanswered.

Jeff Schramm, University of Missouri Rolla