phia to the town of Columbia on the Susquehanna; thence by a canal along the Susquehanna and Juniata to Hollidaysburg; thence over the mountains by a portage railway to Johnstown; and thence to Pittsburgh on the Ohio river.

in the

Nor was the canal building confined to the East. By 1833 Canals the State of Ohio had joined Lake Erie to the Ohio River by a canal that ran from Cleveland to Portsmouth, and by 1835 had connected Cincinnati, Dayton, and Toledo by means of the Miami Canal. Thus in the work of opening up the country

by means of canals the West supplemented the great achievements of the East.

Rail

In addition to the canals the railroad also began during this Early period to make its appearance as an agency of transportation. roads At first the cars on the railroads were drawn by horses, but in 1830 a steam locomotive, invented by Peter Cooper, was put upon the tracks for a trial trip between Baltimore and Ellicott Mills. The trip was in the main successful and marked the beginning of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In 1834 a railroad 136 miles in length was completed from Charleston, South Carolina, to Hamburg, opposite Augusta. In 1835 twenty-two railroads were in operation, and by 1840 the railway mileage

The Results

of the Erie Canal

Michigan

of the country had reached nearly 3000 miles. Railroads, however, had not yet demonstrated their great efficiency as carriers; the wagon-road, the canal, and the river were still the chief means of inland transportation.

The canals did all their projectors claimed they would do. The immediate results of the Erie Canal outran even the expectations of Clinton himself. Before this waterway was built it cost $100 to carry a ton of goods from Buffalo to New York City; the canal reduced the cost to $20. The cheap freight rate caused trade in great volumes to flow toward the canal. The grain and fruit of Western New York were no longer sent to Baltimore or Philadelphia, but were shipped to New York City. Within a year after the canal was opened 19,000 boats loaded with lumber, grain, furs, and various other kinds of freight were counted as they passed West Troy on their way to New York. But the canal was not entirely given up to carrying freight, for there were special boats, known as packets, upon which passengers could travel comfortably and at cheap rates. The journey from New York to Buffalo required six days and cost $18, including berth and meals. The canal made New York City the commercial center of the United States, and it caused Western New York to "blossom as the rose," as Clinton prophesied it would. Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, mere villages when the canal was opened, had grown by 1840 to be flourishing cities.

FILLING UP THE WEST

The influence of the Erie Canal extended far beyond the State of New York. Great numbers of those who went out by the canal made their way to Michigan Territory, where the forests were almost as unbroken and untrodden as they were when explored by the followers of Champlain two hundred years before. At the time the Erie Canal was opened there were probably not more than ten thousand inhabitants in all the Michigan country. The only place of any importance was Detroit, and it was only a small fur-trading station. But after the immigrants from New York and New England began to

pour into the Michigan country the population of the Territory increased by leaps and bounds. By 1837 it was nearly 100,000, and in that year Michigan was admitted as a State.

The rapid development around the Great Lakes and in the States north of the Ohio between 1820 and 1840 was matched

Erie Canal, Pennsylvania Canal, and Baltimore and Ohio Railway.

Between

West

and the

by a development equally rapid in the South and Southwest. Trade The development of the South was due largely to the pres- the ence of the steamboat upon Western waters and to the numerous navigable rivers which joined in commercial union the States South of the Mississippi valley and the States bordering on the Gulf. In the Gulf States cotton culture had become so profitable that the planters desired to raise nothing but cotton; their

Exten

sion

of Cotton Culture

Arkansas

Urban

Growth

food-stuffs and horses and cattle they preferred to buy outside of the South. In the States north of the Ohio there was a surplus of the products needed by Southern planters. Hence the grain-growing States supplied the wants of the cotton-growing States, which they were enabled to do by the steamboat and the network of rivers. Vast quantities of pork, bacon, lard, beef, butter, cheese, corn, flour, and whisky were shipped from the Ohio valley to the cotton States.

Inasmuch as the Southern planters could secure from the outside the necessities of life, they were free to devote their energies to the raising of larger and larger quantities of cotton. The ambition of every planter was "to raise more cotton, to buy more negroes; to raise more cotton, to buy more negroes." Under such conditions the area of cotton culture was of course constantly extended. The removal of the Indians (p. 277) threw open many millions of acres of good cotton lands, which were soon filled up by planters with their slaves.

In 1836 the cotton kingdom was still further enlarged by the admission of Arkansas. This Territory (p. 256) received an overflow population from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, and its growth was rapid. Its soil was adapted to the raising of cotton, and, by the terms of the Missouri Compromise, it could become slave soil. So it was admitted as a slave State, being regarded as an offset to Michigan, which was about to come in as a free State.

Although Arkansas and Michigan were the only accessions to the Union during this period, the actual growth of the West was amazing. By 1840 the Ohio valley had become almost an empire in itself. Ohio was almost as populous as Pennsylvania, and Tennessee was more populous than Massachusetts. The West, however, was still rural throughout its whole extent, the only places of any size being New Orleans and Cincinnati.

INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL PROGRESS

The East by 1840 was beginning to have cities of considerable size. New York, with a population of 123,000 in 1820, had by

1840 passed the 300,000 mark; Philadelphia had jumped from 112,000 to 220,000, Baltimore from 62,000 to 102,000, Boston from 43,000 to 100,000. In addition to these larger places, scores of smaller cities were springing up. By 1840 Lowell, New Bedford, Lynn, Providence, Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, Troy, Brooklyn, Newark, were all in the rank of cities that had a population of more than 10,000.

The

Industrial

Revolu

tion in

America

This increase of the urban population was due largely to the fact that people were flocking to the cities to work in the factories that were being established in the North. For the household system of manufacturing was now passing away, and the industrial revolution (p. 156) was changing the whole fabric of American society. Instead of the little shop with its master and journeymen and apprentice, there was rising the great factory with its scores and hundreds of employees. This industrial revolution, which in England was well under way by the end of the eighteenth century, was slow in reaching the United States. As late as 1810 it was officially stated that the greater part of American goods made of cotton, flax, or wool was manufactured in private families. But the War of 1812 and the successive protective tariffs stimulated the manufacturing industries in a wonderful manner, and factories multiplied. By 1830 the factory system2 had secured a firm foothold, and by 1840 factory-made articles were forcing from the market nearly every class of articles manufactured in the household. And the American factory readily attained a high degree of efficiency. The A writer describing our cotton manufactures in 1840 said of System Lowell, Massachusetts: "Here the factory system is perhaps in a more perfect operation than in any other part of the United States. And it may without fear of contradiction be asserted that the factories at Lowell produced a greater quantity of yarn and cloth from each spindle and loom (in a given

In 1790 Samuel Slater, an Englishman by birth, went to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and set up a good-sized cotton factory, equipping it with machinery such as was used in England. The Pawtucket mill was a success, and its establishment may be regarded as the beginning of the industrial revolution in America.

"By the factory system is meant the concentration of all the processes of manufacturing in a factory involving their withdrawal from the household and shop where they had been previously carried on; it involves also the organization of the workers under skilled management, for stipulated wages and fixed hours." (E. C. Bogart.)

Factory