one of the reason for this was the large numbers of people who had directly experienced the annihilation of space by time through the use of railways: in 1870 alone, 336.5 million journeys by rail were made in Britain. the employment of the phrase by marx was particularly appropriate, through, for it way the effort by capitalists to seek out new markets and to accelerate the turnover time of capital that was in large part causing the annihilation of space so widely remarked upon in the nineteenth century.