Thoreau's mixed attitude toward progress is clearly illustrated in his views on the railroad. In the "Economy" chapter of Walden, he wrote:
Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over. . . .
On the other hand, he wrote lyrically of the railroad in the chapter titled "Sounds":
. . . when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils, . . . it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it.
Thoreau was clearly moved by the raw power of mechanical invention.
Although Emerson had difficulty reconciling material progress with the Transcendental elevation of the individual, his successful lecture career would not have been possible without the railroad and the telegraph. For example, in 1871 Emerson crossed the country via railroad and lectured in California. Alcott, too, toured extensively as a lecturer from the 1850s until his stroke in 1882. Thoreau traveled by railroad and steamboat on his last and longest journey, to Minnesota in 1861. Despite the philosophical dilemma that technological advances raised for the Transcendentalists, they clearly displayed a certain degree of pragmatic acceptance of the fruits of progress.
