THE HIGHWAYS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE
%312. Improvement in Means of Travel%.--We have now considered two of
the results of the rush of population from the seaboard to the
Mississippi valley; namely, the admission of five new Western states
into the Union, and the struggle over the extension of slavery, which
resulted in the Missouri Compromise. But there was a third result,--the
actual construction of highways of transportation connecting the East
with the West. Along the seaboard, during the five years which followed
the war, great improvements were made in the means of travel. The
steamboat had come into general use, and, thanks to this and to good
roads and bridges, people could travel from Philadelphia to New York
between sunrise and sunset on a summer day, and from New York to Boston
in forty-eight hours. The journey from Boston to Washington was now
finished in four days and six hours, and from New York to Quebec in
eight days.
[Illustration: Bordentown, NJ.[1]]
[Footnote 1: From an old engraving. Passengers from Philadelphia landed
here from the steamboat and took stage for New Brunswick.]
[Illustration: map: OLD ROUTE FROM NEW YORK TO PITTSBURG]
In the West there was much the same improvement. The Mississippi and
Ohio swarmed with steamboats, which came up the river from New Orleans
to St. Louis in twenty-five days and went down with the current in
eight. Little, however, had been done to connect the East with the West.
Until the appearance of the steamboat in 1812, the merchants of
Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, and a host of other towns in the
interior bought the produce of the Western settlers, and floating it
down the Ohio and the Mississippi sold it at New Orleans for cash, and
with the money purchased goods at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York,
and carried them over the mountains to the West. Some went in sailing
vessels up the Hudson from New York to Albany, were wagoned to the Falls
of the Mohawk, and then loaded in "Schenectady boats," which were
pushed up the Mohawk by poles to Utica, and then by canal and river to
Oswego, on Lake Ontario. From Oswego they went in sloops to Lewiston on
the Niagara River, whence they were carried in ox wagons to Buffalo, and
then in sailing vessels to Westfield, and by Chautauqua Lake and the
Allegheny River to Pittsburg. Goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore were
hauled in great Conestoga wagons drawn by four and six horses across the
mountains to Pittsburg. The carrying trade alone in these ways was
immense. More than 12,000 wagons came to Pittsburg in a year, bringing
goods on which the freight was $1,500,000.
[Illustration: Boats on the Mohawk[1]]
[Footnote 1: From an old print.]
[Illustration: THOMAS HARPER, AGENT FOR INLAND TRANSPORTATION]
With the appearance of the steamboat on the Mississippi and Ohio, this
trade was threatened; for the people of the Western States could now
float their pork, flour, and lumber to New Orleans as before, and bring
back from that city by steamboat the hardware, pottery, dry goods,
cotton, sugar, coffee, tea, which till then they had been forced to buy
in the East[1].
[Footnote 1: McMaster's _History of the People of the United States_,
Vol. IV., pp. 397-410, 419-421.]
This new way of trading was so much cheaper than the old, that it was
clear to the people of the Eastern States that unless they opened up a
still cheaper route to the West, their Western trade was gone.
[Illustration: The Erie Canal]
%313. The Erie Canal.%--In 1817 the people of New York determined to
provide such a route, and in that year they began to cut a canal across
the state from the Hudson at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo. To us, with
our steam shovels and drills, our great derricks, our dynamite, it would
be a small matter to dig a ditch 4 feet deep, 40 feet wide, and 363
miles long. But on July 4, 1817, when Governor De Witt Clinton turned
the first sod, and so began the work, it was considered a great
undertaking, for the men of those days had only picks, shovels,
wheelbarrows, and gunpowder to do it with.
Opposition to the canal was strong. Some declared that it would swallow
up millions of dollars and yield no return, and nicknamed it "Clinton's
Big Ditch." But Clinton was not the kind of man that is afraid of
ridicule. He and his friends went right on with the work, and after
eight years spent in cutting down forests, in blasting rocks, in
building embankments to carry the canal across swamps, and high
aqueducts to carry it over the rivers, and locks of solid masonry to
enable the boats to go up and down the sides of hills, the canal was
finished.[1]
[Footnote 1: McMaster's _History_, Vol. IV., pp. 415-418.]
[Illustration: Model of a canal packet boat]
Then, one day in the autumn of 1825, a fleet of boats set off from
Buffalo, passed through the canal to Albany, where Governor De Witt
Clinton boarded one of them, and went down the Hudson to New York. A keg
of water from Lake Erie was brought along, and this, when the fleet
reached New York Harbor, Clinton poured with great ceremony into the
bay, to commemorate, as he said, "the navigable communication opened
between our Mediterranean seas [the Great Lakes] and the
Atlantic Ocean."
%314. Effect of the Erie Canal%.--The building of the canal changed
the business conditions of about half of our country. Before the canal
was finished, goods, wares, merchandise, going west from New York, were
carried from Albany to Buffalo at a cost of $120 a ton. After the canal
was opened, it cost but $14 a ton to carry freight from Albany to
Buffalo. This was most important. In the first place, it enabled the
people in New York, in Ohio, in Indiana, in Illinois, and all over the
West, to buy plows and hoes and axes and clothing and food and medicine
for a much lower price than they had formerly paid for such things. Life
in the West became more comfortable and easy than ever before.
In the next place, the Eastern merchant could greatly extend his
business. How far west he could send his goods depended on the expense
of carrying them. When the cost was high, they could go but a little way
without becoming so expensive that only a few people could buy them.
After 1825, when the Erie Canal made transportation cheap, goods from
New York city could be sold in Michigan and Missouri at a much lower
price than they had before been sold in Pittsburg or Buffalo.
%315. New York City the Metropolis.%--The New York merchant, in other
words, now had the whole West for his market. That city, which till 1820
had been second in population, and third in commerce, rushed ahead and
became the first in population, commerce, and business.
The same was true of New York state. As the canal grew nearer and nearer
completion, the people from other states came in and settled in the
towns and villages along the route, bought farms, and so improved the
country that the value of the land along the canal increased
$100,000,000.
A rage for canals now spread over the country. Many were talked of, but
never started. Many were started, but never finished. Such as had been
begun were hurried to completion. Before 1830 there were 1343 miles of
canal open to use in the United States.
%316. The Pennsylvania Highway to the West.%--In Pennsylvania the
opening of the Erie Canal caused great excitement. And well it might;
for freight could now be sent by sailing vessels from Philadelphia to
Albany, and then by canal to Buffalo, and on by the Lake Erie and
Chautauqua route to Pittsburg, for one third what it cost to go
overland. It seemed as if New York by one stroke had taken away the
Western commerce of Philadelphia, and ruined the prosperity of such
inland towns of Pennsylvania as lay along the highway to the West. The
demand for roads and canals at state expense was now listened to, and
in 1826 ground was broken at Harrisburg for a system of canals to join
Philadelphia and Pittsburg. But in 1832 the horse-power railroad came
into use, and when finished, the system was part railroad and
part canal.
%317. The Baltimore Route to the West.%--This energy on the part of
Pennsylvania alarmed the people of Baltimore. Unless their city was to
yield its Western trade to Philadelphia they too must have a speedy and
cheap route to the West. In 1827, therefore, a great public meeting was
held at Baltimore to consider the wisdom of building a railroad from
Baltimore to some point on the Ohio River. The meeting decided that it
must be done, and on July 4, 1828, the work of construction was begun.
In 1830 the road was opened as far as Ellicotts Mills, a distance of
fifteen miles. The cars were drawn by horses.
The early railroads, as the word implies, were roads made of wooden
rails, or railed roads, over which heavy loads were drawn by horses. The
very first were private affairs, and not intended for carrying
passengers.[1]
[Footnote 1: The first was used in 1807 at Boston to carry earth from a
hilltop to a street that was being graded. The second was built near
Philadelphia in 1810, and ran from a stone quarry to a dock. It was in
use twenty-eight years. The third was built in 1826, and extended from
the granite quarries at Quincy, Mass., to the Neponset River, a distance
of three miles. The fourth was from the coal mines of Mauchchunk, Pa.,
to the Lehigh River, nine miles. The fifth was constructed in 1828 by
the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company to carry coal from the mines to
the canal.]
%318. Public Railroads.%--In 1825 John Stevens, who for ten years
past had been advocating steam railroads, built a circular road at
Hoboken to demonstrate the possibility of using such means of
locomotion. In 1823 Pennsylvania chartered a company to build a railroad
from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna. But it was not till 1827, when the
East was earnestly seeking for a rapid and cheap means of transportation
to the West, that railroads of great length and for public use were
undertaken. In that year the people of Massachusetts were so excited
over the opening of the Erie Canal that the legislature appointed a
commission and an engineer to select a line for a railroad to join
Boston and Albany.
At this time there was no such thing as a steam locomotive in use in the
United States. The first ever used here for practical purposes was built
in England and brought to New York city in 1829, and in August of that
year made a trial trip on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal
Company. The experiment was a failure; and for several years horses were
the only motive power in use on the railroads. In 1830, however, the
South Carolina Railroad having finished six miles of its road, had a
locomotive built in New York city, and in January, 1831, placed it on
the tracks at Charleston. Another followed in February, and the era of
locomotive railroading in our country began.
%319. The Portage Railroad.%--As yet the locomotive was a rude
machine. It could not go faster than fifteen miles an hour, nor climb a
steep hill. Where such an obstacle was met with, either the road went
around it, or the locomotive was taken off and the cars were let down or
pulled up the hill on an inclined plane by means of a rope and
stationary engine.[1] When Pennsylvania began her railroad over the
Alleghany Mountains, therefore, she used the inclined-plane system on a
great scale, so that in its time the Portage Railroad, as it was called,
was the most remarkable piece of railroading in the world.
[Footnote 1: Such an inclined plane existed at Albany, where passengers
were pulled up to the top of the hill. Another was at Belmont on the
Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, and another on the Paterson and Hudson
road near Paterson.]
The Pennsylvania line to the West consisted of a horse railroad from
Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna River; of a canal out the
Juniata valley to Hollidaysburg on the eastern slope of the Alleghany
Mountains, where the Portage Railroad began, and the cars were raised to
the summit of the mountains by a series of inclined planes and levels,
and then by the same means let down the western slope to Johnstown; and
then of another canal from Johnstown to Pittsburg.
[Illustration: Inclined plane at Belmont in 1835]
As originally planned, the state was to build the railroad and canal,
just as it built turnpikes. No cars, no motive power of any sort, except
at the inclined planes, were to be supplied. Anybody could use it who
paid two cents a mile for each passenger, and $4.92 for each car sent
over the rails. At first, therefore, firms and corporations engaged in
the transportation business owned their own cars, their own horses,
employed their own drivers, and charged such rates as the state tolls
and sharp competition would allow. The result was dire confusion. The
road was a single-track affair, with turnouts to enable cars coming in
opposite directions to pass each other. But the drivers were an unruly
set, paid no attention to turnouts, and would meet face to face on the
track, just as if no turnouts existed. A fight or a block was sure to
follow, and somebody was forced to go back. To avoid this, the road was
double-tracked in 1834, when, for the first time, two locomotives
dragging long trains of cars ran over the line from Lancaster to
Philadelphia. As the engine went faster than the horses, it soon became
apparent that both could not use the road at the same time; and after
1836 steam became the sole motive power, and the locomotive was
furnished by the state, which now charged for hauling the cars.[1]
[Footnote 1: On the early railroads see Brown's _History of the First
Locomotives in America._]
[Illustration: The first railroad train in New Jersey (1831)]
The puffing little locomotive bore little resemblance to its beautiful
and powerful successors. No cab sheltered the engineer, no brake checked
the speed, wood was the only fuel, and the tall smokestack belched forth
smoke and red-hot cinders. But this was nothing to what happened when
the train came to a bridge. Such structures were then protected by
roofing them and boarding the sides almost to the eaves. But the roof
was always too low to allow the smokestack to go under. The stack,
therefore, was jointed, and when passing through a bridge the upper half
was dropped down and the whole train in consequence was enveloped in a
cloud of smoke and burning cinders, while the passengers covered their
eyes, mouths, and noses.
%320. Railroads in 1835.%--In 1835 there were twenty-two railroads in
operation in the United States. Two were west of the Alleghanies, and
not one was 140 miles long. For a while the cars ran on "strap rails"
made of wooden beams or stringers laid on stone blocks and protected on
the top surface, where the car wheel rested, by long strips or straps
of iron spiked on. The spikes would often work loose, and, as the car
passed over, the strap would curl up and come through the bottom of the
car, making what was called a snake head. It was some time before the
all-iron rail came into use, and even then it was a small affair
compared with the huge rails that are used at present.
%321. Mechanical Inventions.%--The introduction of the steamboat and
the railroad, the great development of manufactures, the growth of the
West, and the immense opportunity for doing business which these
conditions offered, led to all sorts of demands for labor-saving and
time-saving machinery. Another very marked characteristic of the period
1825-1840, therefore, is the display of the inventive genius of the
people. Articles which a few years before were made by hand now began to
be made by machinery.
Before 1825 every farmer in the country threshed his grain with a flail,
or by driving cattle over it, or by means of a large wooden roller
covered with pegs. After 1825 these rude devices began to be supplanted
by the threshing machine. Till 1826 no axes, hatchets, chisels, planes,
or other edge tools were made in this country. In 1826 their manufacture
was begun, and in the following year there was opened the first hardware
store for the sale of American-made hardware.
The use of anthracite coal had become so general that the wood stove was
beginning to be displaced by the hard-coal stove, and in 1827 fire
bricks were first made in the United States. It was at about this time
that paper was first made of hay and straw; that boards were first
planed by machine; that bricks were first made by machinery; that
penknives and pocketknives were first manufactured in America; that
Fairbanks invented the platform weighing scales; that chloroform was
discovered; that Morse invented the recording telegraph; that a man in
New York city, named Hunt, made and sold the first lock-stitch sewing
machine ever seen in the world; that pens and horseshoes were made by
machine; that the reaping machine was given its first public trial (in
Ohio); and that Colt invented the revolver.
%322. Condition of the Cities.%--Yet another characteristic of the
period was the great change which came over the cities and towns. The
development of canal and railroad transportation had thrown many of the
old highways into disuse, had made old towns and villages decline in
population, and had caused new towns to spring up and flourish.
Everybody now wanted to live near a railroad or a canal. The rapid
increase in manufactures had led to the occupation of the fine
water-power sites, and to the creation of many such manufacturing towns
as Lowell (in Massachusetts) and Cohoes (in New York). The rise of so
many new kinds of business, of so many corporations, mills, and
factories, caused a rush of people to the cities, which now began to
grow rapidly in size.
[Illustration: New York in 1830 (St. Paul's Chapel, on Broadway)]
This made a change in city government necessary. The constable and the
watchman with his rattle had to give place to the modern policeman. The
old dingy oil lamps, lighted only when the moon did not shine, gave
place to gas. The cities were now so full of clerks, workingmen,
mechanics, and other people who had to live far away from the places
where they were employed, that a cheap means of transportation about the
streets became necessary. Accordingly, in 1830, an omnibus line was
started in New York.[1] It succeeded so well that in 1832 the first
street horse-car line in America was operated in New York city.
[Footnote 1: Many did not know what the word "Omnibus" painted along the
top of the stages meant. Some thought it was the name of the man who
owned them. It is, of course, a Latin word, and means "for all"; that
is, the stages were public conveyances for the use of all.]
%323. The Owenite Communities.%--The efforts thus made everywhere and
in every way to increase the comforts and conveniences of mankind turned
the years 1820-1840 into a period of reform. Anything new was eagerly
taken up. When, therefore, a Welshman named Robert Owen came over to
this country, and introduced what he considered a social reform, numbers
of people in the West became his followers. Owen believed that most of
the hardships of life came from the fact that some men secured more
property and made more money than others. He believed that people should
live together in communities in which the farms, the houses, the cattle,
the products of the soil, should be owned not by individual men, but by
the whole community. He held that there should be absolute social
equality, and that no matter what sort of work a man did, whether
skilled or unskilled, it should be considered just as valuable as the
work of any other man.
All this was very alluring, and in a little while Owenite communities
were started in Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and New York,
only to end in failure.[2]
[Footnote 2: Noyes's _History of American Socialism._]
%324. The Mormons.%--But there was a social movement started at this
time which still exists. In 1827, at Palmyra, in New York, a young man
named Joseph Smith announced that he had received a new bible from an
angel of the Lord. It was written, he said, on golden plates, which he
claimed to have read by the aid of two wonderful stones; and in 1830 he
gave to the world _The Book of Mormon_.
After the book appeared, Smith and a few others organized a church. Many
at once began to believe in the new religion. But the West seemed so
much better a field that in 1831 Smith and his followers started for
Ohio, and at Kirtland established a Mormon community. There the Mormons
lived for several years, and then went to Missouri, whence they were
expelled, partly because they were an antislavery people. In 1840 they
settled on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois and built the town
of Nauvoo. At Nauvoo they remained till 1846, when, having adopted
polygamy, they were driven off by the people of Illinois, and, led by
Brigham Young, marched to Council Bluffs, in Iowa. There they stopped to
look about them for a safe place of abode, and finally, in 1847, left
Council Bluffs for Great Salt Lake, then in the dominions of Mexico.[1]
[Footnote 1: Kennedy's _Early Days of Mormonism_.]
SUMMARY
1. The rise of the new states in the West, and the appearance of the
steamboat on the Mississippi, were the causes of a great revival of
public interest in internal improvements.
2. The first to build a great western highway was New York state, which,
between 1817 and 1825, built the Erie Canal.
3. This cut down the cost of moving freight to the West, led to
settlement along the banks of the canal, and made New York city the
metropolis of the country.
4. It was during this period, 1815-1830, that many inventions,
discoveries, and improvements were made in the arts and sciences.
5. The railroad was introduced, and the steam locomotive successfully
used.
6. The cities grew, and in New York the omnibus and the street car began
to be used.
The movement of population into the West.--The formation of new states
there.--The rise of manufactures in the East.--The fine market the West
offers for the products and importations of the Eastern States.
* * * * *
Lead to great rivalry between the Atlantic seaboard cities for Western
trade.
* * * * *
This rivalry leads to the development of three routes to the West.
_The New York Route._
1807. Steamboats on the Hudson.
1817-25. Erie Canal
1818. Steamboats on the Lakes.
Chautauqua Lake and Allegheny valley.
Effect of Erie Canal.
_The Pennsylvania Route._
Old Conestoga wagons.
Effect of Erie Canal.
1827. Pennsylvania state canals and railroads.
The Portage Railroad.
_The Baltimore Route._
1828. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad commenced.
* * * * *
The expansion of the country.--The development of the steamboat, the
railroad, and manufactures, and the increased opportunities for
doing business.
* * * * *
Lead to demand for labor-saving and time-saving machinery.
Hard-coal grate and stove.
Fire bricks.
Paper made from straw.
Brick-making machine.
Planing machine.
Platform scales.
Reaping machine.
Colt's revolver.
Sewing machine (Hunt).
Steel pens.
Threshing machine.
Telegraph (electric).
Steam printing press.
Matches, etc., etc.