An equally important factor in the development of the Northwest was the invention and manufacture of grain-planting and harvesting machinery by Cyrus McCormick and others about 1845. This enabled the farmers to increase their operations very much as the Whitney gin had done for the cotton farmers of 1800. Still the transportation of wheat and corn is so difficult that no great revolution would have been possible but for the simultaneous building of thousands of miles of railways which opened to grain production the vast prairie lands remote from the rivers. The manufacture of farm implements and the building of railroads made the Northwest a staple-producing area of greater importance than the South had been, though this was recognized by only a few men before the beginning of the Civil War.
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The value of the wheat and corn crops of the Northwest increased from $80,000,000 in 1850 to $225,000,000 in 1860. In addition to this the Northwest produced pork in great quantities for the cotton plantations, and fresh meats for the industrial cities of the East. The railways, of which mention has already been made, thus brought the isolated farmers of the Western interior into close contact with the markets of the world, and the Northwest was fast becoming the food-producing region of the country and at the same time exporting grain worth at least $50,000,000 a year. In New York, Pennsylvania, and other Eastern States the corn and wheat output steadily declined between 1850 and 1860, while the up-country of the South failed to produce the foodstuffs needed by the planters. Thus the manufacturing and the older staple-producing States came to rely on the Northwest for a large part of their provisions.
Western farmers were now well-to-do. They deserted their log cabins and built frame houses; they bought large quantities of the finer goods of the East. Pianos made in Germany and silks from France found their way to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Villages became towns and towns grew rapidly into cities. Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chicago imitated the ways and manners of Boston and New York. It was a busy, ambitious life that animated the West and produced industrial leaders like Cyrus McCormick, William B. Ogden, and John Y. Scammon, and politicians like Stephen A. Douglas, Salmon P. Chase, and the Dodges of Iowa and Wisconsin.
But in this busy region with its self-sufficing agriculture, the actual surplus capital, as in the South, found its way to Eastern cities. With a population of nearly 8,000,000 and foreign exports of more than $50,000,000, the Northwest still had only $10,425,000 on deposit in her banks and $27,000,000 invested in banking enterprises. Her per capita circulation was only $4. Here as in the South the amount of specie in the banks was twice as great in proportion to population and the volume of business transacted as in the East. The debts of the Northwest to the East and to Europe cannot well be estimated, but they were enormous. States, counties, and corporations owed hundreds of millions, and when the interest on these obligations was paid at the end of each year, the remaining net increase was small indeed. The West had been badly in debt during the Jackson period; it was still in debt.
While the growing Northwest owed more to the rest of the world than it was likely to pay in half a century, its leaders saw that it must continue to expand its area and improve its economic life. Undoubtedly the one leader who best understood the needs of his region was Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois and perpetual candidate for the office of President of the United States. Young, active, and ardently patriotic, Douglas had been among the first to see during the Polk Presidency that the old Western policy of internal improvements and freer lands for all who might come must be changed. The West, even the Northwest, was firmly attached to the Democratic party; but the center of that great organization was the South. The leaders of that section looked more and more to free trade as a national policy. If they succeeded, as there was every reason to expect they would succeed, there would be no more easy money for the building of canals and roadways. Moreover, the South was now jealous of the expanding Northwest, and her leaders were growing more hostile toward the idea of free lands for the Northwestern settlers.