Railroads and The Developing of Consumption Ethos

The merging of the railroad industry in the eighteenth century was one of the key factors that helped developing The United States in many ways. The Atlantic Coast line Railroad was one of the railroads that helped the movement of developing the United States. It was constructed between 1834 and 1840 in North Carolina. It railroad goes all the way south till it reaches Florida. It gave job opportunities to many people. With many people getting jobs at the railroad industry, workers were divided into groups. Each group of workers in the industry had different position based on the knowledge and experience in the job and got paid different amount of money. Depending on what a person have, and how much he gets paid, people were divided into classes based on the economic status into three groups: upper class, middle class and poor class. These three groups had segregation in more than one way. The people of the upper class, which had a lot of money lived in better areas and had better shops and good services. They had higher consuming rates because they had the money to afford essential and leisure goods for their homes. And those in the middle class who lived in normal areas and cities and didn’t have a lot of money. They had enough money to buy the essential goods and they didn’t have a lot of options. The people of the poor class were usually slaves and some farmers. They didn’t have enough money to survive and lived in areas that were dangerous.

In the 1890’s, the railroad system has made it easy to move and transport goods between the boarders of the country. This gave a chance to people from both the upper and middle classes to have more options in choosing their goods. Because of the rising need for goods, more people got into trading business which created a spirit of competition between traders. This competition made the prices of goods go down because each one of them is trying to get more sales and more profits. At that time, there were more job opportunities for people with the merging of trading and manufacturing businesses. More people got developed from the poor class and to the middle class, and so on because they had new or better jobs. Most people from the upper and middle classes had enough money with the variety of options to buy goods. At that time, consumption rates reached to roof because people had more money and more leisure time to enjoy the benefits of different goods. Railroads system helped in developing people in their social status, gave them more options, and more free time. Railroad made easy for traders to move their goods and gave them better connections with other traders or manufactures in other cities. That helped in the raising of consumption between people.