Thus the benefactor of the nation passed from one county to another, across a great state, and as soon as the advance-guard came in sight of any town, the bells of all the churches, public buildings, and hotels, gave their long and merry peels of welcome—the cannon roared and a vast crowd of waiting citizens of town and country marched forward with huzzas and banners of “Welcome—welcome—to the Father of Internal Improvements.”
The following extract, written at the time by a cool-headed representative of the state, is expressive without coloring or exaggeration:
“The grave and the gay, the man of gray hairs and the ruddy-faced youth; matrons and maidens, and even lisping children, joined to tell his worth, and on his virtues dwell; to hail his approach and welcome his arrival. Every street, where he passed, was thronged with multitudes, and the windows were filled with the beautiful ladies of Ohio, waving their snowy white handkerchiefs, and casting flowers on the pavement where he was to pass on it.”
No king, emperor, president, or statesman; no manufacturer of personal or political enthusiasm, even of palace-car order, ever obtained that intensity and spontaneous manifestation as was shown “The Father of Internal Improvements,” on his passage through the state.
And it is yet a sorrowful reflection to memory, that such magnetism, ability, and influence for good did not live to see the Lake Erie and Ohio Canal completed; that his life’s sacrifices, in physical and mental efforts for the advancement of civilization in the North-west, have been so soon almost forgotten. But more; that his good works should have been so cheaply recognized at his death by a state he had enriched by making himself so poor. But it is never too late to be just, nor too long to right a wrong.
About this time, an era of “prosperity” had already dawned in the East, and was heralded from mouth to mouth—from the Ohio river to Lake Michigan—that the “Erie Canal” was completed, and the first fleet of boats left the Hudson, October 26, 1825, laden with emigrants for the North-west.
On the banners this fleet carried were the significant words, “The Star of Empire Westward Takes its Way,” and the cannons were heard and answered from Buffalo to New York City.
This canal proved a success even beyond the expectations of the most sanguine; and a line of commerce was at once established from tide-water to the western chain of lakes, and soon filled the new states with population and their ports with merchandise. And the Ohio protectionist, who had been so fearful of an influx of “pauper labor” and the products of “foreign industries,” found his own state, while discussing it, ready to disburse fifteen million dollars for day labor in the construction of internal improvements. And the Squirrel Hunter, whose life was one of education, development, power, and progress, hailed with delight the opportunity to work on the Lake Erie canal, twenty-six dry days of twelve hours each, for the sum of eight dollars. It was the first privilege ever offered in Ohio to obtain so much money in so short time, without encroachment upon his store of squirrel and coon skins.
In 1824, the year before the completion of the Erie canal, prices of produce still ranged low: twenty-five cents for wheat and six cents for corn, with no market or demand excepting for making whisky with copper stills. But when the Erie canal was finished and the Ohio and Lake Erie under way, prices on all kinds of produce advanced more than two hundred per cent, with such an unlimited demand that the improvements converted every body into favor with public works. And times became better in Ohio than ever before—corn advanced to forty and fifty cents and wheat to seventy-five and one dollar per bushel; and with the state distribution of millions of money, and her rich and productive soil, she was lifted out of the groove of idle content into the bright sunshine of prosperity and improvement.
It soon became manifest that internal improvements increased the demand and prices of the products of the soil, with a diminution in value of most all kinds of manufactured articles used in exchange. The salines of New York killed the salt manufacture in Ohio as effectually as free trade did the business of the wheelwright, the reelwright, the manufacturer of looms, reeds, flyers, hackles, plows, nails, and other “infant industries.” All were ended by the canal; and a man or boy who desired a new hat had, no longer than 1825, to go to a “hat shop” and have his head measured with a tape-line, and diagram registered, with full directions of minor matters—material, color, and price—and then wait the making.