Society in America, Volume 2 (of 2)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~140,000 words · 646 passages
Cite this work
- APAHarriet Martineau. (n.d.). Society in America, Volume 2 (of 2). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/harriet-martineau/society-in-america-volume-2-of-2
- MLAHarriet Martineau. Society in America, Volume 2 (of 2). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/harriet-martineau/society-in-america-volume-2-of-2.
- ChicagoHarriet Martineau. Society in America, Volume 2 (of 2). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/harriet-martineau/society-in-america-volume-2-of-2.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The second volume of Harriet Martineau's 1837 study of the United States.
Context and history
Martineau travelled through the United States between 1834 and 1836 and published this in 1837. What makes it remarkable is not the travel narrative but the method: she went with a criterion declared in advance — to compare what the country said of itself in its founding documents with what she found there — and with rules for how to observe, which she published separately. That is why she is counted among the founders of sociology, and often is not listed as one. Her conclusion is hard: the republic that proclaims itself founded on equality holds slaves and keeps women without rights, and the two facts are of one kind. She wrote it when doing so could cost her her safety in the southern states, and it did. She had been deaf since youth and earned her living by writing throughout her adult life.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
streams. Sixty-eight culverts of masonry pass under the road, and eighty-five drains. There are four viaducts of hammer-dressed sandstone, to carry the line over streams. The most splendid of these is over the Conemaugh, eight miles from Johnstown. It has a semi-circular arch of eighty feet span; the top of whose masonry is seventy feet above the water. There is a tunnel through a spur of the Alleghany, nine hundred and one feet long, by twenty feet wide, and nineteen high. The foundations of this road are partly stone and partly wood. Each station has two steam-engines; one being used at a time, and the other provided to prevent delay, in case of accident. Four cars, each loaded with 7000 lbs. can be drawn up, and four such let down at a time; and from six to ten such trips can be accomplished in an hour. A safety-car is attached to the train, both in ascending and descending; and though not an absolute safeguard, it much increases the security. This little machine, when pressed upon from behind, grounds its point, and materially checks the velocity of the otherwise flying train. The iron rails, and some other of the metal portions of the work, were imported from Great Britain. The cost of constructing this rail-road at the contract prices was 1,634,357 dollars; but this does not include office expenses, or engineering, or accidental extra allowances to contractors. During the first year of the two tracks being opened, fifty thousand tons of