The Road to Ruin. WW, artist, and Dalziel, engraver. Fun 5 (6 July 1867): 178-79. A locomotive labeled “Speculation” heads over a cliff while passengers with bubbles marked “miscellaneous stock,” “Smashem Railway Company,” “Grand Hotel Limited,” “Mining Company,” and “the Philly Financial Company,” don’t notice. One bubble bearing the word “obligations” floats free in the air with various bank notes, and no one pays any attention. Appropriately, given the fact that it was the railway mania of the 1840s that led to such financial lunacy and subsequent crash, a locomotive on a railway provides the main analogy for the cartoonist, W.W., artist. Dalziel, engraver. Source: Hathi Digital Library Trust web version of a copy in the University of Minnesota library. Click on image to enlarge it. — George P. Landow
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Related material
- “For Godsake be done with railways and shares!” — the Railway Panics of the 1840s
- Railway Mania
- Victorian railways
- Train wrecks, other disasters, and danger on the rails
Last modified 9 February 2016