Ubiquitous, Promiscuous, Frequent, and Numerous

Abstract

This chapter discusses the life and legend of two train robbers active in Alabama in the 1890s – Railroad Bill and Rube Burrow. While there is a tendency to see train robbers as embodiments of resistance to capitalism, this chapter argues that it is more useful to see these men as personification of the dangers of capitalism. In their train robbing careers, Rube Burrow and Railroad Bill both exploited the increasing systemization, expansion, connectivity, and circulation of the southern railroad network. The crimes of these men touched off panicky reactions that revealed southerners anxieties about the railroad itself. In the end, these anxieties were obscured by the mythmaking that occurred after their violent deaths. Railroad Bill faded into legend as the subject of a folk song that stretched the truth about his deeds and popular memory and the media conflated Rube Burrow’s legend with that of Jesse James and sought to portray him as an anti-capitalist and neo-confederate avenger.