Philosophy of railroads and other essays : Railroad promotion and manipulation in the 19th century / T.C. Keefer; H.V. Nelles.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keefer, T.C., author.

Contributor:

Nelles, H.V., editor.

Series:

Social history of Canada.

Heritage

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Railroads--Canada.

Railroads.

Canada.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (251 pages) : illustrations, map, tables.

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

T.C. Keefer's Philosophy of Railroads is one of the greatest hymns of praise to the age of iron and steel ever written in North America. Better than any other document it shows why railroads were seen as the arteries of the Canadian nation during the nineteenth century, This volume brings four of Keefer's works together with a brilliant introduction by H.V. Nelles. It includes Philosophy of Railroads, originally published in 1849; a lecture in which Keefer outlines his hopes for the development of the Montreal region and in passing reveals the philosophical foundation upon which they rest; the Sequel to the Philosophy of Railroads, a fascinating illustration of the problems the first engineers faced in raising their trade from a scramble for money and prestige into a legitimate profession; and a final essay on railways written in the early 1860s - expressing Keefer's disillusionment at the failure of railways to fulfill their promise. At one level these essays say a great deal about railroads and about Canadian society in the nineteenth century; at another they represent a cycle, from enthusiastic idealism to realism, in one man's thought; and at yet another they introduce us to the historian's problem of establishing relationships between ideas and the material conditions within which they appear.

Contents:

PART 1: PHILOSOPHY OF RAILROADS: Economy, regularity, safety, convenience. Appendix A; What railroads do for the land and house owners 1848. Appendix B: What railroads do for consumers. Appendix C: .What they do in Ohio-a farming country. Appendix D: What they do in granite, ice, and 'wooden notion' country. Appendix E: How they do in the North. Appendix F: How they do in the South. Appendix. Appendix G; How they beat canals. Appendix H: How they pay in Massachusetts. Appendix L: How they pay in England. Appendix M: How railroads catch fish. Appendix N: What the world thinks of railroads [1849]. Appendix O: The folly of cheap engineering. Appendix P: How they pay in New York. Appendix Q: What they do for graziers and drovers. Appendix R: How they do in the West.

PART 2: MONTREAL : A lecture on Montreal from the pamphlet, 'Montreal and Ottawa' [1854]. PART 3: A SEQUEL TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RAILROADS: Extracts from lectures on civil engineering; Petition to the legislative assembly; The Honourable John Ross before the legislative council; Letters of explanation in the Montreal 'Herald' [May 1856]; Editorial from the Toronto 'Leader' [May 1856]; Keefer's reply in the 'Globe' [May 1856]; Editorial from the 'Leader' [May 1856]. PART 4: RAILWAYS: A chapter in railways from 'Travel and transportation'. Map: the railway system in the Eastern Provinces of Canada, 1876.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 19. Feb 2019)

ISBN:

9781487590734

1487590733

9781487589097

1487589093

OCLC:

1088909274