Divide students into three groups. Give the first group Worksheet One, the second group Worksheet Two, and the third group Worksheet Three. Further divide each group into teams of 2-4 students.
Direct students to work with their teams to read their articles and answer the questions on their worksheets.
When they have finished the task to your satisfaction, reassemble the whole class and ask a person from each group to summarize the article that he or she read. Then make a list on the board of all the different ways that railroads affected people's lives
in these communities (more types of food available, new forms of recreation, competition with other regions for service, labor unrest, dangerous accidents.)
Draw from students' U.S. History textbooks to add to this list of effects. For example, Bailey and Kennedy's The American Pageant discusses how railroads, canals, and steamboats brought about the "transportation revolution" that took place between
1800 and 1860. This "revolution" fostered regional economic specialization (cotton in the deep South, grain and livestock in the West, and machinery and textiles in the Northeast) and brought mass-produced products such as shoes, cloth, and candles to the once self-sufficient household.
Students may find it interesting to compare the effects of antebellum
railroads with the effects of our current dominant mode of transportation: cars and trucks. Like railroads, our automobile culture has created opportunities for both recreation and danger
. Refrigerated trucks and our interstate highway system makes fresh vegetables available throughout the country all year. Areas still compete for highway construction, but today, energies are often expended trying to prevent construction as well as encourage it. Although trains certainly generated great amounts of air pollution, cars and trucks have been held responsible for serious global environmental damage.
