Normaal Breischool (Taak: Spoorwegen)

This Dutch wood engraving satirizes railway expansion through the conceit of a knitting school. A corpulent schoolmistress instructs young pupils in their craft—here, the literal "stitching together" of rail infrastructure. The print mocks the era's feverish railroad investment and bureaucratic overconfidence by rendering grand engineering ambitions as domestic needlework. The engraving inherits the northern European tradition of political humor from Hogarth and Gillray, using grotesque physiognomy and absurdist tableau to deflate contemporary pretension. Such satirical prints, distributed widely as single sheets, pioneered mass-market social commentary—a direct ancestor to the illustrated joke strips and editorial cartoons that would follow.