If, in 1834, the number of steamboats on western waters was two hundred and thirty, the expense of running them could be estimated at $4,645,000 annually. In 1844 the calculation was $9,036,000.... It appears that the steamboat tonnage of the Mississippi valley at this time exceeded, by forty thousand tons, the entire steamboat tonnage of Great Britain in 1834. In other words, the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain was only two-thirds that of the Mississippi Valley. The magnitude of this fact will be best appreciated by considering that the entire tonnage of the United States was but two-thirds that of Great Britain, showing that this proportion is exactly reversed in western steamboat trade.
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The history of the Ohio Basin river-men, from those who paddled a canoe and pushed a keel-boat to those who labor to-day on our steamboats, has never been written. The lights and shades of this life have never been pictured by any novelist and perhaps they never can be.
The first generation of river men, excluding, of course, the Indians, would cover the years from 1750 to 1780 and would include those whose principal acquaintance with the Ohio and its tributaries was made through the canoe and pirogue. The second generation would stretch from 1780 or 1790 to 1810, and would include those who lived in the heydey of the keel-and flatboat. The third generation would carry us forward from 1810 to about 1850 and in this we would count the thousands who knew these valleys before the railway had robbed the steamboat of so much of its business and pride.
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River life underwent a great change with the gradual supremacy of the steamboat in the carrying trade of the Ohio and its tributaries. The sounding whistle blew away from the valleys much that was picturesque—those strenuous days when a well-developed muscle was the best capital with which to begin business. Of course the flatboat did not pass from the waters, but as a type of old-time river-men their lusty crews have disappeared.
In connection with the first generation of river-men social equality was a general rule. There were no distinctions; every man was his own master and his own servant. In the days of keel-boats and flatboats conditions changed and there was a "captain" of his boat, and the second generation of river-men were accustomed to obey orders of superiors. Society was divided into two classes, the serving and the served. With the supremacy of the steamboat this division is reduplicated over and again; here are four general classes, the proprietors, navigators, operators and deck-hands.
The upper ranks of the steam-packet business have furnished the West with some of its strongest types of aggressive manhood. Keen-eyed, physically strong, acquainted with men and equal to any emergency, the typical captain of the first half-century of steamboating in the West, was a man any one was glad to number among his friends and acquaintances.