5.06 - The Iron Horse

Texas's first locomotive - the "General Sherman" - available online at Houston Metropolitan Research Center, HPL.

Railroads made Texans wealthier than they had ever been. They brought labor-saving and efficiency improving implements like riding plows, threshers, mechanical harvesters, and soon, tractors, which collectively lifted the standard of living of most Texans far beyond anything their parents could have imagined. And Texans hated them for it! Texans very conflicted feelings toward the "Iron Horse" exposed an irreconcilable tension between their frontier regulatory model and their unshakable conviction that land was the only proper basis for wealth.