Redefining the public convenience: a social and cultural history of nineteenth century American railroads

Abstract

Does convenience have a history? This dissertation uses United States railroad history between the 1830s and 1880s to establish and explore the mutually shaping relationship between the idea of public convenience and the technological change of railroad equipment and practices. Americans built railroads in the United States to support the public convenience and designated the companies that operated the railroads agents of the public convenience. Over the following fifty years the technology of railroads and public convenience shaped each other in significant ways. Railroad companies sought to refashion their responsibilities to the public convenience, while the public's understanding of its convenience simultaneously influenced railroad business practices and technologies. This project contributes to understanding the wider social and cultural structures of the nineteenth century United States by positing that studying convenience provides insight into how Americans’ perspectives and choices influenced the materials and processes around them, and how these materials and processes in turn affected how Americans thought about their own choices regarding, space, time, and toil.