A history of commerce

by Clive Day

Until better means of transportation were provided the turnpikes were important channels of trade. They united the districts of the interior with the coast and with navigable rivers, and made possible throughout the year a freight traffic which formerly had been restricted to the sleighing season. A great highway, like the Mohawk and Hudson turnpike, running from Schenectady to Albany, was studded so thickly with taverns that the traveler was never out of sight of the swinging sign-boards.

618. Failure of the turnpikes to meet the country’s demands.—The success of the turnpikes stimulated the national government to construct a road from Cumberland, on the Potomac River in the western part of Maryland, to Wheeling on the Ohio River. This road was designed to furnish the connection, that was so keenly desired, between the districts lying on either side of the mountains; and was for many years an important route for passenger travel. The expense of wagon transportation, however, prevented a great growth of freight traffic on this or on other land routes of considerable length. The cost of moving freight over the roads of this period has been estimated roughly at ten cents per ton-mile, and this cost prohibited the movement of ordinary freight to a great distance. The turnpike, therefore, did not solve the problem of transportation for the country, and turnpikes declined as better means of transportation were brought into use. About the middle of the century the idea of building roads of wood took strong hold of the minds of men, and plank roads were constructed with great vigor for a few years; but the idea proved impracticable and led to no important results.

619. Importance of the western waterways.—Vastly more important in its effects on the internal and foreign commerce of the country was the development of the means of water transportation. It has been said of North America that no other continent, with perhaps the exception of South America, offers such excellent natural facilities for intercommunication as is furnished by the system of rivers and lakes lying east of the Rocky Mountains. Early in the history of our western settlements traders used the rivers flowing into the Mississippi to secure connection with the market at New Orleans, then under Spanish rule; and the Louisiana purchase of 1803 gave the United States control of the river route from source to mouth. A line of packet boats plying between Pittsburg and Cincinnati was started in 1794, and many flatboats were employed to float cargoes down the Mississippi. The swift current of that river, however, made ascending navigation difficult. The crews of the flatboats had to return home by land, going generally on foot through nearly a thousand miles of wilderness, and using about six months on the round trip. The stream could be ascended only in small boats propelled by poles and sails. Though the freight rate down the river was as low as one cent per ton-mile, the charge in the other direction was about six times as much. The need of some better means of propelling boats against the current was strongly felt; and long before the steamboat had been made a practical success the prediction was common that it would be developed to serve the needs of commerce on our western rivers.

620. Invention and application of the steamboat.—The steamboat, like many other instruments of technical progress, was not the invention of a single man, but was developed by contributions from several different sources. Before the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1789) Fitch and Rumsey had constructed steamboats which maintained a speed of four to seven miles an hour against the current of the Potomac and Delaware rivers; and these successful experiments were followed by many others in this country and in Europe. Robert Fulton, therefore, scarcely deserves the credit commonly accorded him for invention, but his service was not the less important. He combined the ideas and inventions of others, and transferred the steamboat from the sphere of technical experiment to that of practical business operation. The Clermont, which started from New York August 7, 1807, and arrived in Albany, 150 miles distant, in 32 hours, was the first steamboat in the world which maintained a regular and continuous traffic in the public service.

621. Development of river transportation.—Within a few years of Fulton’s success steamboats were introduced on the western rivers, and after an interval of trial proved their capacity for meeting the conditions. In ten years (1817) a steamboat made the trip from New Orleans to Louisville in 25 days instead of the three months consumed by barges; after another ten years (1827) a steamboat made the trip in little over a week. The steamboats did more at first to reduce the time of voyages than to reduce the rates of transportation, but the cost of carriage declined gradually as the means of transportation were improved. The following figures, giving the number of steamboats employed on the rivers of the West, show how rapidly steam navigation increased in importance: 1818, 20; 1829, 200; 1842, 450; 1848, 1,200. Size and carrying capacity were growing also, and it is said that in 1847 the steam tonnage of the Mississippi Valley exceeded that of the whole British Empire. “Pittsburg city, the Pennsylvania great western emporium,” as it was styled in a book published in 1830, grew great by steamer traffic, and other cities, as Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, flourished under the same influence. The most obvious effect of the extension of steam navigation was the growth of internal trade, especially that between North and South. This trade, however, was indirectly of great importance to our foreign commerce, for it enabled the people of the South to apply themselves almost exclusively to the growth of export products, like cotton, relying on other parts of the country for food and manufactures.

622. Demand for canals in this period.—While the river system offered great opportunities for developing the resources of the West, it was necessarily incomplete in the connections it afforded with other parts of the country. It left gaps, to be filled by other means of transportation, between three important sections of country, drained respectively by the Mississippi and its tributaries, by the Great Lakes, and by the rivers flowing into the Atlantic. The need of bridging these gaps in the transportation system was felt acutely in the second quarter of the century, as population spread in the interior of the country, and was first met, with some degree of adequacy, by the construction of canals.

There had been many projects for canals in the colonial period, and some short stretches were constructed before 1800. People contented themselves in general, however, with the natural waterways, and sought merely to regulate their channels and to regulate the flow of water by means of dams. The era of activity in canal construction began after the close of the second war with England, in 1815.

623. The Erie Canal (1825), and others.—The easiest route by which a canal might be carried through the Appalachian mountain ridge lay in the State of New York, along the valley of the Mohawk River. The advantages of this route were recognized in the colonial period, and the advisability of utilizing them was felt especially during and after the war of 1812, when the political danger of leaving the country without means of intercommunication became apparent. The construction of a canal along this route was begun in 1817, and in 1825 the first boat passed from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. Other canals were constructed to connect Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario with the Erie Canal, and further south, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania especially, the people entered actively into the work of canal building.

Further west, canals were constructed to unite Lake Erie with the Ohio River, and Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River (1848), and just before the close of the period which we are studying the St. Mary’s Falls Canal (1855) opened the passage from Lake Superior to the other lakes to boats with a draft of twelve feet.