The Emigrant Train

In order to entice foreigners (especially wealthy ones who would purchase huge tracts of land), the railroads offered incentives - free inspection trips, cut-rate steamship and train tickets, free transport of household goods, installment payments for the land...all offered to interested wealthy Europeans.

For the ordinary emigrants from overseas who came to America with only their families, they lacked any of these privileges.  An ocean voyage in steerage, slow-moving trains packed with families who sweltered in the summer and froze in the winter, one stove per car for heating and cooking, straw mattresses at an extra cost - that was the way most emigrants came to the western United States.

In these poor conditions, families moved westward, babies were born, people died, quarrels were frequent, several different languages spoken at once which no one understood...but they endured to the promise of their parcel of free land.  There their hard work, luck and smarts could transform them from peasants to lord of their own prosperous domain.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in Across the Plains in 1899 of "Crossing the Country on an Emigrant Train"
       It was a troubled uncomfortable evening in the cars.  There was thunder in the air, which helped 
       to keep us restless.  A man played many airs upon the corner, and none of them were much
       attended to, until he came to "Home, sweet home."  It was truly strange to note how the talk 
       ceased at that, the faces began to lengthen.  I have no idea whether musically this air is to be 
       considered good or bad, but it belongs to that class of art which may be best described as a 
       brutal assault upon the feelings...An elderly hard-looking man, with a goatee beard and about
       as much appearance as you would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a start and bade
       the performer to stop that "damned thing. I've heard about enough of that, give us something 
       about the good country we're going to."  A murmur of adhesion ran around the car, the 
       performer took the instrument from his lips, laughed and nodded, and then struck into a 
       dancing measure; and like a new Timotheus, stilled immediately the emotion he has raised.

Next time...Train of Woe
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Today in Pioneer History: "On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam collapsed, causing a flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that killed more than 2,200 people 60 miles east of Pittsburgh in a valley near the Allegheny, Little Conemaugh, and Stony Creek Rivers. The dam was part of an extensive canal system that became obsolete as the railroads replaced the canal as a means of transporting goods. As the canal system fell into disuse, maintenance on the dam was neglected.