This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Henry J. Fletcher was a prominent Iowa lawyer and essayist until 1895. That year, he took a closer look at his beloved state, and was awakened to his true calling: Old Testament prophet. "Iowa is doomed," cried this modern Jeremiah, "some evil influence is at work."
What Fletcher's awakened eyes saw was the disappearance of Iowa's small rural towns, the backbone of her prosperity. "One by one, family, by family, their inhabitants slip away. A steady migration takes away the young, the hopeful, the ambitious. There remain behind the superannuated, the feeble, the dull, the stagnant rich, the ne'er-do-wells who have nothing to risk."
It did not take long for Fletcher to identify the culprit, the devil in Paradise: it was the railroad. How ironic that Iowans had welcomed the first railroad to cross the Mississippi in 1856, the Chicago and Rock Island. How eagerly Iowa small towns had been bribed, or tricked rail lines to reach them. How Iowa had bragged about having more railroad tracks than New York, five major lines into the state from Burlington, Rock Island and Dubuque.
Too late, Fletcher said, Iowa towns realized that the railroad provided young people a way out of town. It did not help that all Iowa lines ended up at wickedly attractive Chicago. Too late the small towns realized that the railroads were bringing in mass manufactured goods from the large cities at a cheaper price. Once, each Iowa small town had been its own self-sufficient kingdom, with a saw and grain mill, brick and tile factories, butcher and blacksmith shops. All these lay idle and decaying. Now, Fletcher road of the small towns, "dilapidation seems their natural condition." How different from the age of steamboats, he mused, which brought passengers and prosperity to every Iowa town and township along the Mississippi from Lansing to Keokuk.
It's been just over 100 years since Henry Fletcher pronounced doom on Iowa and her small towns. I wonder what's happened? One of these days I'll have to head over to interstate 80, veer off onto a blue highway or even a gravel road, and see what's left.
Rock Island Lines is underwritten by the Illinois Humanities Council and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, with additional funding from Humanities Iowa, the Iowa Arts Council, and Augustana College, Rock Island.
