Study: Average 19th-Century American Spent 93% Of Time Waving At Trains, Boats

PROVIDENCE, RI—Shedding new light on the everyday life of citizens during the Industrial Revolution, historians at Brown University concluded in a study published Tuesday that the average 19th-century American spent roughly 93% of their waking hours waving at trains and boats. “Journal entries from the period show that most citizens spent their days stationed at docks and rail platforms shouting things like ‘Do write when you get to Siam!’ to anyone who happened to be leaving,” said lead author Casey Hogan, adding that in early daguerreotype photographs, Americans are often seen with one abnormally muscular arm from years of constantly greeting or bidding farewell. “The primary reason medical breakthroughs, sanitation, and improvements in standard of living were delayed in their development is that all of the nation’s top minds spent nearly 15 hours a day sprinting toward steamboats to yell things like ‘Bon voyage!’ and ‘Good welcome, inspector!’ Most people today don’t realize how grueling life could be for the average person of this period. Americans would rise before dawn to see off departing loved ones, chase steam locomotives down the tracks until they collapsed, and then immediately hurry back to the docks to cheerfully greet a returning transatlantic vessel by shouting something like ‘Hurrah! Safe harbor at last!’” Hogan noted that it’s difficult to overstate just how much the 1800s were a period of great change, as only a few decades earlier, most Americans had been accustomed to spending the majority of their time weeping into Mama’s bosom as their sweetheart rode away on horseback.