A School History of the United States Part 32

1819. Attempt to make Missouri a slave state.

1820. The compromise.

CHAPTER XXII

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bordentown, NJ.[1]]

[Footnote 1: From an old engraving. Pa.s.sengers from Philadelphia landed here from the steamboat and took stage for New Brunswick.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ca.n.a.l 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Boats on the Mohawk[1]]

[Footnote 1: From an old print.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Erie Ca.n.a.l]

%313. The Erie Ca.n.a.l.%--In 1817 the people of New York determined to provide such a route, and in that year they began to cut a ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l was finished.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's _History_, Vol. IV., pp. 415-418.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Model of a ca.n.a.l packet boat]

Then, one day in the autumn of 1825, a fleet of boats set off from Buffalo, pa.s.sed through the ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l%.--The building of the ca.n.a.l changed the business conditions of about half of our country. Before the ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l increased $100,000,000.

A rage for ca.n.a.ls 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 ca.n.a.l open to use in the United States.

%316. The Pennsylvania Highway to the West.%--In Pennsylvania the opening of the Erie Ca.n.a.l caused great excitement. And well it might; for freight could now be sent by sailing vessels from Philadelphia to Albany, and then by ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.ls at state expense was now listened to, and in 1826 ground was broken at Harrisburg for a system of ca.n.a.ls 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 ca.n.a.l.

%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 pa.s.sengers.[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, Ma.s.s., 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 Ca.n.a.l Company to carry coal from the mines to the ca.n.a.l.]

%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 Ma.s.sachusetts were so excited over the opening of the Erie Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sengers 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l from Johnstown to Pittsburg.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Inclined plane at Belmont in 1835]

As originally planned, the state was to build the railroad and ca.n.a.l, 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 pa.s.senger, 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 compet.i.tion would allow. The result was dire confusion. The road was a single-track affair, with turnouts to enable cars coming in opposite directions to pa.s.s 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._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sed 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-st.i.tch 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts) 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: New York in 1830 (St. Paul's Chapel, on Broadway)]