Keller and Sullivan

By the mid 1880s and early 1890s, America had changed considerably from twenty years before. What historian Rebecca Edwards calls the “age of instantaneous communication” and the “accelerating pace of life” was particularly evident. ¹ Railroads, once a novelty, were everywhere, spewing smoke through the countryside, dropping off businessmen and tramps alike at all but the smallest towns. The invention of the transcontinental cable (1866) and the linotype printer (1884) had transformed the mass media, as did the invention of the telephone (1876). Stories that once broke slowly were now quickly national (and international) news. In fact, only in this environment could the story of Annie Sullivan teaching the “blind-mute” (as it was termed then) Helen Keller how to communicate become known to the world so quickly. America was becoming more urban with each census, from less than a fifth of Americans in 1860 to far more than a third in 1890; but New England was far ahead with almost two of three residents being a city dweller by 1900. ² Electric lighting, electric streetcars, even the internal combustion engine arrived, and time, once a local matter, developed into the modern standardized zones, due to the pressure of railroad schedules. ³ To those who worshipped progress and saw “time as money,” these were exciting developments, but for many used to the old rural way of life, the settled neighborhoods of the American town or the European village, they were hardly without problems. As Alan Trachtenberg comments, “in the 1880s, as much as 40 percent of the population of rural townships seemed to disappear. Images of bustling, frenetic cities arose against a background of abandoned farmhouses and deserted villages, and many Americans pondered the change with regret and lament.” ⁴