424 Chapter 22
English mining engineer, won the race to develop the
first practical vehicle to carry passengers and goods, by
designing a high-pressure steam engine in 1800. In
early 1804 Trevithick’s locomotive, riding on colliery
iron rails, pulled five wagons containing seventy pas-
sengers and ten tons of iron ore, for a distance of 9.5
miles at a speed of nearly five miles per hour.
George Stephenson, an inventor who had devised
the miner’s safety lamp, built on Trevithick’s work to
start the age of railroad service. Stephenson built the
forty-three kilometer Stockton-to-Darlington in the
early 1820s to serve the heavy industries of the mid-
lands—so the first train became known as Stephenson’s
Rocket. He then turned to a more important line, a rail-
road linking the mills of Manchester with the port of
Liverpool. Many people opposed this development,
and dire predictions were made of the impact of rail-
roads: The smoke and sparks from coal-burning loco-
motives would kill flora and fauna, start wildfires, and
destroy foxhunting. When the Liverpool-Manchester
line opened in 1830, however, it carried 445,000 pas-
sengers and ninety-eight thousand tons of goods in its
first full year. Stephenson’s railroad was so successful
that, of the twenty-nine stage coach services between
Manchester and Liverpool in 1830, only one remained
in business in 1832.
On the continent, where rapid industrialization
did not begin until after the end of the Napoleonic
Wars in 1815, a railroad-building boom that started in
the late 1830s supported industrialization. For much
of the mid-nineteenth century, Britain kept a huge
lead in railroad lines, as it did in iron, coal, steam, and
textiles. Ten years after the Stockton-Darlington line
opened, no railroads had been built in Austria, the
Italian states, Russia, or Spain; all of the German states
combined contained only six kilometers of railroad
track (see table 22.4). Railroads were already changing
the continental economy, however. A railway con-
necting the Belgian seaport of Antwerp with the
Rhine River port of Cologne was inaugurated in 1843;
this Iron Rhine became one of the world’s industrial
arteries and made Antwerp the third largest port in
the world (after London and New York).The Urban World
The impact of industrialization upon European society
was most vivid in the growing cities. The population
explosion, the decline in agricultural employment, the
rise of the factory system, and the improvements in
transportation combined to uproot thousands of peo-
ple. Young adults, and sometimes whole families, found
themselves so desperate for employment that they
chose migration to the growing factory towns.
Unprecedented growth changed the nature of
cities and urban life, but there was a range of types ofRailway lines open, in kilometers
Country 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850
United Kingdom 43 157 544 2,411 4,081 10,662
Austrian Empire n.a. n.a. n.a. 144 728 1,357
France n.a. 31 141 410 875 2,915
German States n.a. n.a. 6 469 2,143 5,856
Italian States n.a. n.a. n.a. 20 152 620
Russia n.a. n.a. n.a. 27 144 501
Spain n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 28
Total continent n.a. 31 167 1,421 4,772 12,362
Total Europe 43 188 711 3,832 8,853 23,024
Percent in United Kingdom 100 84 77 63 46 46
Source: B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics 1750–1970(London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 581–82.
n.a. Not available.TABLE 22.4The Beginning of the Railroad Age in Europe, 1825–50