To the spread of republican ideas of government in the last years of the eighteenth and the early decades of the nineteenth century may be ascribed the intellectual awakening which swept over Europe and reacted upon America in the latter part of that period. The revival was marked during its most brilliant decade, namely from 1830 to 1840, by such significant events as the publication of Lyell's Geology and of the first volumes by Alfred Tennyson, by the formulation of the cell theory in biology, the invention of the friction match and daguerreotype and by the establishment of the railroad, the electric telegraph and the ocean steamship. The peculiar diversity of interests of the period is apparent. It is also clear that then, as in no previous reawakening, intellectual activity was turned into practical, utilitarian and commercials channels.
In America-a new country, newly launched on a course of in dependent action-the prevailing spirit naturally expressed itself in commercial pursuits. The need of the hour here was expansion, and, as subsidiary to it, communication-some means by which waiting thousands could be poured into the interior, there to develop vast, inert resources-a line of ready intercourse, which should supply the frontier from the coast and the coast in turn from the frontier, each with its respective want-a link to bind the straggling settlements already forming with the great nourishing mother settlements east of the Appalachian divide, and to weld the two in one, before the opportunity had been given them to grow apart. It is precisely in this light that the Erie canal appears to be a manifestation of the spirit of the times.
A work which compares favorably with any wonder of the ancient world in respect to grandeur and shames them all in point of utility, our gigantic waterway stands undeniably as the most enduring, single monument of that period in America. As the progenitor of new and wonderful modes of communication, and more than all else, as an economic force, stimulating and guiding the nation in its development, the canal has wielded a tremendous influence and possesses a peculiar interest for the historian. An attempt to analyze this influence, however, leads to the conclusion that its manifestations are very diverse, that it has permeated many phases of industry and extended far and wide, but so harmonizing with and amplifying other beneficent influences, that its identity is often lost or merged in the prevailing atmosphere of the age.
Tributes to the widespread benefits conferred upon humanity by the improved means of communication introduced during the early canal era are not lacking. A contemporaneous authority, Thomas Tooke, in his History of Prices from 1793 to 1831, states the case very forcibly with especial reference to England. "The high range of prices," he says, "which prevailed in the closing years of the past, and in the earlier part of the present century, contrasted with the comparatively low range observable in the period which has elapsed from 1819 to the present time 1838, forms a very striking feature in the history of the agriculture and commerce of this country. "The author deduces, in the course of two volumes, devoted to the subject, six causes to which he ascribes the phenomenon of the decline of prices and among these he specifies: "The removal of obstacles from the several sources of foreign supply; a great extension of some of them and the discovery of new ones," and again : " A great reduction of the charges of importation and the improved, and cheaper, and mope rapid internal communications," the "fall of some commodities, in a greater degree than the previous rise, being," as he later explains, "the effect of improvements in machinery, in cultivation, ill science, and in the facility and comparative cheapness of communication."
It is thus possible to affirm with some measure of scientific certainty that, even before the advent of railroads, the improved facilities for transportation materially affected prices and reduced the cost of living throughout the commercial world. Exactly how much any one project contributed towards this net result is, however, a matter of speculation. Only in local instances can we adduce proof at all conclusive, and the purpose of this chapter must be, therefore, to study specific and local effects. It is profitable, nevertheless, to preface this statistical study with a few more general considerations.
The fact is well known that the presence of navigable rivers, penetrating the interior from the coast-line, has always noticeably affected the development of a country and the movement of population inland. Australia is an instance of a land peculiarly deficient in navigable watercourses arid the slow and retarded character of its inland growth is a distinctive feature of its history. The United States possesses a wealth of such streams and rivers and its settlements have generally advanced along these waterways and afterwards filled in the intervening territory. The Appalachian chain of mountains, however, early presented the one great barrier to progress across the interior. Through this continental divide there are four natural passes, each in the early days traversed by an Indian trail, subsequently expanded into wagon-roads. By far the most favorable of the four, like wise the most northerly, lies across the state of New York. It was here that the genius of our statesmen and engineers executed the mighty task of supplying the deficiency left by Nature and connecting the extensive inland waterways with the coast by means of the Erie canal.
Let us consider briefly what other possible routes suggest themselves and what changes might have been wrought in the history of our country, had the building of the canal been delayed or abandoned. The St. Lawrence river is the natural out let of the Great Lake system. In pre-canal days many interior products found their way to port at Montreal. In fact, Washington's chief expectation for the Potomac River Company was that it would capture the Detroit fur trade from Montreal, and the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, later on, inherited a similar ambition. The route of the St. Lawrence is impeded by obstructions to navigation. It is at a disadvantage in being more northerly and necessitating a longer course in restricted channel than, for example, the Erie canal and Hudson river. Notwithstanding this, it saves, in comparison with the latter route, some four hundred and fifty miles of distance for freight destined for Liverpool, and admits of ocean navigation as far up the St. Lawrence as Montreal. In spite of the American preoccupation of the field, the opening of the Welland canal took place in 1831, six years after the completion of the Erie, and became the first step towards the improvement of the St. Lawrence route. Up to the present time the Canadian Government has spent, all told, about one hundred million dollars on this system and proposes to duplicate the expenditure in the course of a few years. Meanwhile American commercial interests are keenly alive to the menace of Canadian competition. Add to this commercial issue the strategic importance of the outlet to the Great Lakes-foreseen by Wellington when he asserted, in connection with the War of 1812, that America would not be subdued, until the Great Lakes had been acquired and brought under the control of English navies-and the conclusion is irresistible that, without the Erie canal, the upbuilding of a foreign rival route would have been greatly encouraged, and the absence of our American waterway would have enriched the neighboring domain commercially and strategically almost in proportion as it would have tended to impoverish us.
Probably without the Erie canal, transportation systems across the state of Pennsylvania would have built up that state and its metropolis at the expense of our own, but such a possibility belongs rather to the treatment of local than of national benefits.
There is, however, a third possibility which enables the historian to measure by negative means, so to speak, the benefits of the canal to us as a nation. There are two principal commercial outlets for the Mississippi valley. The Gulf route has been longer developing, but is increasingly recognized as a formidable competitor of the direct route to the Atlantic seaboard. It is not probable that, in the absence of the Erie canal, the southerly route, remote as it was from the center of business activity, would have become what the easterly route actually did become. There is abundant evidence, however, that even prior to canal days the Gulf route, aided by climatic advantages, threatened the supremacy of the more easterly and northerly outlet, and that, in the words of a recent student of the transportation problem, "the opening of the Erie Canal, in 1825, gave the first decisive impulse to commerce to move across the country instead of down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. In later years," the same authority further says, "the construction of the great trunk lines, parallel to the northern water route formed by the Great Lakes and Erie Canal, strengthened a movement which had already become firmly established." Had the Mississippi river formed the principal outlet of the rich interior of our country, no one will deny that the subsequent history of the nation would have been materially modified, and modified in a twofold way-commercially and politically. With the products of the north-central states passing down the Mississippi river, Chicago could hardly have be come so great an emporium as it is, and not a little of the commercial prestige of Boston, New York and Baltimore during the last century would then, perchance, have descended upon New Orleans and Mobile and Galveston. More portentous still than this commercial alliance between the Northwest and the South is the consequent probability that out of it there could have grown racial sympathy and political kinship, with what effect upon the great issues which culminated in the Civil war or upon the present constituency of the American land and people, we can only conjecture.
This consideration leads directly to what is probably the most signal benefit the canal has ever bestowed upon the nation, what Washington in his Farewell Address recognized as the great need of the hour, what Clinton and Calhoun and other famous advocates of internal improvements deemed of first importance-the service such works would perform in binding together, by a more extensive and sympathetic intercourse and interdependence, the great divisions of our land. And these men lived to see the forces they had set in action operating to accomplish the demolition of sectional jealousies, the upbuilding of mutual reliance, the dissolving of provinciality and the substitution of a broad minded community of interest and fraternity of spirit. All men could see then what only the few had discerned before, and the time has long since come when all can understand why Lafayette pronounced the Erie canal "an admirable work of science and patriotism."
We have now discussed, in passing, some of the broader aspects of the influence of the canal. There was one event, however, so near, chronologically, to the period under consideration that its results may seem to be indistinguishable from those we seek. That event was the War of 1812. Its baneful effects were exceedingly transitory, as registered in the statistics of the day. With a marvelous vitality and resourcefulness, the nation had recovered almost before the "Treaty of Ghent" was signed, and long before the first shipments were made on the Erie canal. The beneficent effects of that war consist: first, in educating the Easterner in respect to the opportunities awaiting him in the West, and second, in teaching him the need of more efficient facilities for transportation thither. These were merely initial impulses, however. They were good as far as they went, but they did not go far. To quote the words of Goldwin Smith, "The true instruments of consolidation were, not the war, but the improved means of intercommunication. "Though It has been termed the second war of independence, continues Mr. Smith, that is, the war for a mental as the first had been for a bodily independence, yet "mental independence was promoted, not by the war, but by emigration westward which left old world ideas and sentiments behind." To how great an extent our Erie canal, the mightiest of all these "improved means of intercommunication," affected the "emigration westward" we shall now attempt to show.
At the time of the agitation in behalf of the canal and through the early days of its operation the most rapidly developing section of the land comprised the states carved from the great North west Territory and these constituted precisely the section bordering the Great Lakes and so the most sensitive to the impetus afforded by the Erie canal. It is easy to see by a glance at table No. I, in the appendix to this chapter, that these states were relatively insignificant in 1810, and for the most part in 1820, at the beginning of canal times; also that they have become foremost, with the exception of a very few, in the Union of today, with its fifty-two states and territories and its eighty millions of people. And not only in population have the shores of the Great Lakes attained distinguished rank in our prosperous land, but they have become, in the phraseology of the twelfth census, "the great manufacturing belt of the country," contributing more than one-half of the-total value of the manufactured products of the entire United States. It is the unnumbered craft which ply busily upon these waters that make possible that manufacturing supremacy. The census of 1900 reports that "more than five times as many vessels " pass through the United States and Canadian canals at Sault Ste. Marie as through the Suez canal, and that the ton-mileage of its freight traffic is "equal to nearly 40 percent of that of the entire railroad system of the United States." Therefore it has become the "greatest internal water-way in the world." This sufficiently demonstrates the fact that, whereas there were probably in 1812 but three vessels navigating the lakes and where there was thus early in the century such difficulty of inland communication as to render intimate relations and interchange of products impracticable, such condition has been long extinct; that the inland has been able to profit from its improved facilities for transportation, whereby its output has been rendered many times more marketable and its lands have brought far greater returns. Yet just how much of the stimulation is attributable to any one influence among the many which contribute to the development of a particular region, it is always impossible to say. Our judgment must be based on certain specific instances, which are assumed to be representative, although we cannot know with assurance that they are not abnormal or accidental or else we may study the growth in its salient features and seek to determine from their uniqueness and correspondence, chronologically or otherwise, with the action of such forces, just the extent to which this influence has prevailed and regulated subsequent events.
It has indeed been asserted by many, and notably by as high and supposedly as impartial a tribunal, or investigating committee, as the country could well furnish, that the thrift and activity of this great Northwest (now the Middle West) belt is the outcome of its facilities for through water transportation. At least the "Select Committee [of the United States Senate appointed in 1872] on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard"-of .which Mr. William Windom, representing in the Senate the interests of the extreme lake state of Minnesota, was chairman-reported that in its opinion " the railroad interests practically control the transport of grain from all that part of the states of Illinois and Indiana situated south of a latitudinal line 60 miles south of Lake Michigan," referring to competition of rail and water for shipments to the seaboard. And the committee gives the water system credit for governing rates, above that parallel, even on that portion of the traffic which it does not directly handle. This view of the utility of the waterways is certainly no less applicable to the period which we desire to examine and from its authority and definition of statement is as forceful as it is suggestive."
Pursuing, however, an independent course of study, which may at least convey some intimation of the services of the canal, we find that table No. 2 emphasizes the extraordinary development of these border states during the early canal days and especially that of Michigan after the opening of the canal-the peninsula state of Michigan being perhaps the most restricted to that outlet, on account of its remoteness from the Mississippi and Ohio Fivers. This, as has been stated, was the most rapidly developing section of .the country. Table No. I, already cited, will show, on the basis of rank of the several states, when the most conspicuous strides in the population of each state took place, namely, in 1810 to 1820 for Ohio, 1820 to 1830 for Indiana, apparently in the last twenties and in 1830 to 1840 for Illinois and from 1830 to l840 for Michigan. It will thus appear that their greatest impulses to development occurred, except in the case of Ohio, simultaneously with the early effects of the canal.
Yet in point of magnitude of participation in the business and benefits of the canal it is probable that Ohio led all the rest. MacGregor in his Progress of America, published in 1847 (Vol. II p. 747), quotes a Mr. Scott of that state, as writing that " Ohio has great natural facilities for trade in her lake and river coasts; the former having become available only since the opening of the Erie canal, in 1826, and that to little purpose before 1830." Table No. 3 verifies that fact. Again, that the effect of the canal was not lost on Ohio, but rather obscured by the contemporaneous emigration westward, is indicated by the exhibition of table No. 6, showing the unique growth of the new town of Cleveland, on the lake shore, during the decade 1830-40. Equally remarkable was the growth of Detroit, shown in table No. 6. The unparalleled stimulation of the new and the old alike, where peculiarly sensitive to its effects, thus bespeaks conclusively the influence of the canal. To appreciate the benefit derived by the inland states from the facilities afforded by the great waterway, it is necessary to reflect that, in the early decades of the century, no better thoroughfare than the incomplete National road existed for the transportation of goods between the northwestern states and the seaboard and that for a quarter century thereafter (1825 to 1851), or until the opening of the Erie railroad, the canal furnished the only practicable means for through communication, other than the batteau and the Conestoga wagon, or at best the stage-coach and Durham boat. If any statement is necessary to demonstrate the large service of the canal to the Northwest and preeminently, perhaps, to Ohio and Michigan, it is but necessary to cite table No. 8, which shows the relative extent to which the several states used this waterway for transportation purposes and again table No. 4, exhibiting the remarkable growth of the proportion of out-of-state products passed upon the canal, these products being in 1836 the merest fraction and in later years the predominant share of the total movements. That in itself is a tribute in the highest degree to the part borne by the waterway and the need which it supplied in the evolution of the West.
The facts of history are always more graphic from the lips or pen of a contemporary. As touching the subject in hand we submit, therefore, the following statements from the early historian of the Mississippi valley. "Ohio," he says, "with the largest and most dense population of any of the western states, has nearly double the number of inhabitants, by the census of 1830 which she had by that of 1820. During that interval, her gain by immigration has scarcely equaled her loss by emigration; and, of course, is simply that of natural increase. In the rapidity of this increase we believe that this state not only exceeds any other in the West, but in the world."
Of an adjoining state the same historian writes: "In consequence of the great change produced by the opening of the New York canal, and the canal connecting Lake Erie with Ontario, the north front of Indiana along Lake Michigan, which, a few years since, was regarded as a kind of terminating point of habitancy in the desert, has begun to be viewed as a maritime shore, and the most important front of the state." To what extent the canal facilitated such an increase may be understood when it is remembered that "the universality and cheapness of steam boat and canal passage and transport, have caused, that more than half the whole number of emigrants and nine-tenths of those that come from Europe and the northern states, . . . . . . now arrive in the west by water " and again that " perhaps more than half the northern immigrants arrive at present by way of the New York canal and Lake Erie." Why the immigrants prefer water transit is further explained by the same contemporaneous historian : " They thus escape," he says, " much of the expense, slowness, inconvenience and danger of the ancient cumbrous and tiresome journey in wagons. They no longer experience the former vexations of incessant altercations with land lords, mutual charges of dishonesty, discomfort from now modes of speech and reckoning money, from breaking down carriages and wearing out horses."
Most of us are somewhat familiar with the trials of travel by stage-coach in the olden time, if only through the vigorous Pickwickian pictures drawn by so many masters of English fiction. Yet it is probably difficult for us to picture adequately the extremity of discomfort and privation endured by late seventeenth or early eighteenth century travelers in what was then our frontier territory. And although the benefit derived from the canal through its packet lines is hardly to be compared with its service in connection with the transportation of freight and produce, yet the bare fact that it reduced the time required to make the trip between New York and Buffalo from six weeks to ten days is sufficient to excite some comprehension of the magnitude of that benefit and the stimulus it afforded to the development of the West.
But when we consider the benefits accruing to merchants, producers and consumers, through the cheapening of rates and the enlargement of the market, we undertake a, subject of large pro portions. The trials which beset the immigrant in journeying to the West were small in comparison with the difficulty of establishing himself, when once on the spot, of obtaining a livelihood and providing for his family some small measure of those comforts which all classes enjoyed in the East. The canal aided him in emigrating, but it encouraged him far more, when it enabled him to ship his grain and flour from Buffalo to New York markets for about twelve dollars, whereas before it had cost him a hundred dollars per ton; and when, through the medium of that transporting agency, he was able to buy the merchandise and manufactured products of the eastern country at prices not greatly different from those which prevailed along the coast.
The rapidity with which prices of local products rose on the completion of the Erie canal and allied systems, and how far their united influence penetrated, is evident from the subjoined table, showing prices in Cincinnati, invigorated by the extension of the market and the consequent increase of demand. If the western producer was able to double his price on flour and nearly triple that on corn, it meant that his profits were enhanced many times, and this at a point, too, from which navigation had always existed,-through to the Mississippi and the Gulf.
| 1826 | 1835 | 1853 | 1860 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flour per bbl | $3.00 | $6.00 | $5.50 | $5.60 |
| Corn per bush | .12 | .32 | .37 | .48 |
| Hogs per cwt | 2.00 | 3.12 | 4.00 | 6.20 |
| Lard per lb. | .05 | .08 | .085 | .11 |
The effect of an improvement in the transportation facilities of a new country is always felt directly in the rates of transportation and prices of commodities, but the ultimate result, of which that is merely a promise, consists in the consequent development of the region served. The influence of any great work of intercommunication on the prices of commodities and rates of shipment cannot fail to be interesting and suggestive and to identify that work as the responsible agent and benefactor. But the real measure of its accomplishments is rather in the extent to which it opened and developed the interior. Therefore we proceed to a study of population and the varied growth of the territory under the influence of the canal.
As a subject for more detailed treatment, let us consider the situation in the State of Michigan during the period after the opening of the Erie canal in 1828. Turning again to table No. 2, it will be observed that this state occupies the first place among all the states of the Union in point of increase during each of the two decades from 1820 to 1840; that its percentage-increase in the second decade is more than double that in the first and exceeds the maximum percentage-increase found anywhere during the previous decades discussed. From this circumstance and the known fact that the population had been increasing slowly in earlier years it would be inferred that the rapid rate of increase began about the middle of the decade 1820 to 1830 and was exceptionally large, as compared with that of other new and developing regions.
Reference to table No. 6 also has impressed us with the astounding growth of Detroit, far greater during the period from 1830 to 1840 than at any other time. It serves to strengthen the conclusions already drawn and to verify also the following forcible statements from a reliable, local source in regard to the influx of population into this state and its metropolis during the period in question:
"Fifteen thousand emigrants arrived in 1830. The Detroit Free Press of May 19, 1831, said: say nothing of those who have arrived by land, and through Lake Erie by sail vessel, the following steamboats arrived here within the last week [with passengers] amounting to more than 2,000, and nearly all in the prime of life. Such was the tide of immigration during the entire season of navigation that both steam and sail vessels were crowded to their utmost capacity. On October 7, 1834, four steamboats brought nearly 900 passengers. In January, 1836, three steamboats-two first class and one second class-arrived each day, with an average of 260 passengers each way. On May 23, 1836, 700 passengers arrived, and during the month there were ninety steamboat arrivals, each boat loaded with passengers. The roads to the interior were literally thronged with wagons. A careful estimate made in June by a citizen showed that one wagon left the city every five minutes during the twelve hours of daylight. In 1837 the immigration was fully as large; there was an average of three steam boats a day, with from 200 to 300 passengers each, and on one occasion in the month of May, 2400 passengers landed in a single day. The larger part of these immigrants were from New York, and the rest mostly from New England. It is probable that, in proportion to its population, Detroit, and in fact the entire State of Michigan, has a larger percentage of New York and New England people than any other western city or state."
Speaking of Detroit the same writer says: "No considerable number of Irish were here prior to 1833, but at that time numbers of them came. The Germans began coming In the spring of 1832", and again he cites the statistics of nativity of the census of 1880 and asserts that, of those states contributing to the population, "New York heads the list with 7,722, Ohio sent 1,965, Pennsylvania 998, Massachusetts 922, and Illinois 568. Out of a total of 116,340 there were born in America 70,695." The same historian alluded to the " emigration fever " and then reprints an effusion, much circulated, as he says, in that day, "known to have been largely influential in promoting emigration, " and containing the following lines, which, if they do little credit to the versification inspired by the achievement of our Clintons and our Wrights, yet echo the extensive spread of its influence :
" Then there's the State of New York, where some are very rich ; Themselves and a few others have dug a mighty ditch, To render it more easy for us to find the way, And sail upon the waters to Michigania,--- Yea, yea, yea, to Michigania."
When we consider the isolated condition of this peninsula state, jutting northward among the lakes and remote from the grand routes of inland travel, and at the same time the wonderful accessibility of its territory to navigation on these lakes and thence by the cheapest route which Nature had furnished or man could possibly contrive, and extending through to the seaboard, except for three hundred and fifty miles across the state of New York-apprehending these conditions, we are forced to conclude that the removal of this solitary obstacle to through traffic by water, accomplished in the opening of the Erie canal, accounts for no small proportion of the simultaneous renewal of growth which occurred in Michigan. The history of the epoch, in a single sentence, we quote from an encyclopedic sketch: "The completion of the Erie canal in 1825 opened a new route to Michigan; and population increased rapidly." This is a simple statement of cause and effect, but it is for that very reason a striking epitome of the influence of the canal upon the northwestern country.
We pass now to a consideration of the influence of the canal from the more restricted point of view of the self-interest of the State of New York. As we survey this field, there appears an other notable source of competition, which was possibly anticipated and averted by the construction of the Erie canal. The State of New York, indeed, possessed natural advantages superior to those of any other Atlantic state, as a route of communication from the inland district to the seaboard. New York is today the only state extending from the ocean through the country to Canada, touching the lakes, and tapping the great productive in land region of the Middle West.
In colonial times there were four primary routes of travel across the Appalachian system in the North, following, each one of them, an ancient Indian trail. The early settlers might penetrate to the interior by way of the Cumberland Gap, or Tennessee valley, to the southward; or they might cross southern Pennsylvania to the Monongohela river and thence to the Ohio; following up the Hudson and Mohawk rivers it was possible to strike across from the head waters of the latter to the Allegheny; or finally there was open to them, after the strongly entrenched Indians of the Iroquois nation had been pacified, a fourth route, keeping west from the upper waters of the Mohawk, crossing the famous "'Oneida" portage and thence on towards the lake at Fort Oswego, or away through the tribal lands of the Onondagas and Senecas and Cayugas to the Niagara river. The most southerly of these routes had figured prominently at first in the settlement of the Ohio valley. Braddock's road and the Cumberland road, however, had been laid out across the mountains by way of the second route and had thus attracted later the principal inter- course. But, as an authoritative writer states, " of all the routes by which the Appalachian barrier could be crossed, the most favorable in the north was by way of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys to the lakes." In addition to being the best natural route, with least height of land to be overcome, it had the ad- vantage of a connection with a harbor and port unequaled for natural facilities throughout the whole orient of the coast, where Nature had, by glacial agencies, sunk the mouth of a broad and navigable channel to a remarkable depth. New York was thus in a real sense the natural key to the interior.
There were, however, on foot in the last days of the eighteenth century projects much advocated, and emanating, in one case at least, from General Washington himself, which proposed to connect the head of Chesapeake or Delaware bay of the Potomac river with the Ohio and the lakes." Nothing but the difficulty of overcoming the intervening high land deferred the construction of such a canal in that favored climate; but had the utilization of the advantages peculiar to New York been less prompt, it seems probable that the inducement offered would have been ultimately sufficient to effect its construction-much as the recent indifference of Liverpool in regard to her commercial interests induced the construction of the Manchester ship canal, and transferred to Manchester part of that monopoly which had been vested in Liver pool by Nature. Once built, a more southerly canal from the Ohio system to the seaboard might indeed have swept away our prospective commercial glory, the joint product of our unique opportunities and our energetic, far-sighted policy of administration.
This possibility assumes some degree of practical importance when we but consider that "heroic efforts were made [by Pennsylvanians] after the construction of the Erie canal to hold or capture their share of the internal trade. Every effort was made to link Lake Erie with the Ohio system and then with Philadelphia. Indeed, a great debt which for years after weighed heavily on Pennsylvania was contracted in the attempt." The Legislature was memorialized, public meetings were held and a "Society for Promoting Industrial Improvements" was formed. Railroads and canals were compared and discussed and in 1825 an address appeared, in which "it was said that in 1796 the aggregate exports of Philadelphia were forty percent more than those of New York; whereas now they are forty-five per cent less. The difference was to be ascribed to the facilities for transportation afforded by the canals of New York." With such enthusiasm prevailing it seems not at all impossible that Pennsylvania, had it not been for the Erie canal, would have succeeded ultimately in overcoming natural difficulties and piercing the mountain barrier in season to secure for herself and her metropolis the commercial prestige which the canal in reality captured for New York State.
In broaching the question of local benefits we have been led to a consideration of a phase of our subject more favorable for direct statistical treatment than that which has been already discussed, for, while the United States, had it been divested of the liberal benefits which it derived from all its internal waterways, would still undoubtedly have advanced to its conspicuous place among the nations of the earth, on the other hand, without the Erie canal, it is reasonably certain that New York State would not have risen by such gigantic strides from the secondary position, which it occupied in early times, to the attainment of that prominence among the states of the Union, from which it has never since been dislodged.
To illustrate further this relative growth of our home state, we may refer to the statistics prepared for New York in table No. 21, et seq., and represented among the curves in the diagram of plate No. 11, which will be discussed more at length in subsequent pages of the chapter. A glance at this table or diagram will suffice to convince the reader of the pronounced impetus to growth imparted in the period from 1814 to 1820, at the beginning of which period our State passed the one million mark in population. It may be assumed as a fact, therefore, that there existed some cause for acceleration of development at about this juncture-a cause which must have been, in the light of the history of the time, either a reaction from the War of 1812, acting from without the state, or else the construction of the Erie canal, which was the distinguishing domestic occurrence of the period. Now the far-reaching effects of the War of 1812 were national in their scope and would be expected to influence the several states alike while the direct benefits of the Erie canal which was largely confined to New York and the Middle West. The figures of table No. 7 show that, compared with the other six seaboard states, the growth of New York in the period of 1820 to 1840 was unparalleled. Table No. 8 exhibits the progress of the thirteen original states, and illustrates the fact that the percentage which these states contained of the total population of the United States diminished from census to census after 1800 with the exceptions only of New York and Georgia.
It may be objected that figures somewhat disguise the proper relationship between New York State and the original states, since, unlike some of them. New York possessed or acquired a large undeveloped territory in addition to her sea and river front, the growth of which portion would be more fittingly comparable with that of the newer states. This does not, indeed, affect the comparison of New York with such of the original thirteen as Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas. Moreover, it is apparent from the studies outlined by table No. 19, that the density of population of the western section of the state exceeded that of each of the northwestern states even as late as 1840, while in 1820 western New York was very much more densely populated than Ohio, the earliest settled state of the Northwest, thus indicating that in their development our western tracts were considerably in advance, chronologically, of Ohio and the entire northwestern group. As the normal rate of gain of a region rapidly decreases with its increasing density, the comparison between western New York and any of the northwestern states during this period might be presumed to prove very unfavorable to New York. Yet, actually, the western counties bordering on the canal (Division Ill in the table) increased 55 per cent from 1820 to 1830 with a density of population of 33 per square mile at the beginning of that period, while the State of Ohio increased but 61 percent with an initial density of only 14 per square mile.
Notwithstanding its considerable density in 1820, New York State, as we have seen, nearly doubled its population in the twenty years ensuing. If compared with the principal example of a new and rapidly developing state in the East, namely, the State of Maine, it will be found that New York's rapidity of increase for each decade is always somewhat and generally far superior. These and kindred studies thus indicate the relatively rapid growth of New York and only tend to confirm the conclusions which we have already drawn from previous investigations.
Again, since the metropolis, the City of New York, bears so conspicuous a ratio to the state, its progress is intimately associated with the state's progress; and as the great distributing point, fed by the canals, it is likewise peculiarly a subject for the exhibition of the fruitful results of canal activity. In order to show the importance of the metropolis to the State of New York at the present time, let us consider what would be left, were the state to be deprived of that city. In the first place we should have practically no seaport and, therefore, no exports nor imports nor coastwise trade, in all of which particulars we far surpass other states, and which constitute a source of immense wealth. We might portray New York under those conditions as a comparatively small, inland state, covering all area less than twenty per cent that of Texas, deprived of three and one-half billions of assessable property, out of a total of less than six billions, and of more than three million inhabitants, out of its total population of a little over seven millions. There is nothing imperial in this picture, except, to the mind of a cynic.
The progress of the City of New York, therefore, has been of vital consequence to the state in proportion as that city is now its mainstay. Yet in 1820 the present bounds of " Greater " New York contained less than ten percent of the population of the state. In the early days there was not as much business con- ducted at our port as at other Atlantic ports. Table No. 9, while it exhibits the far greater increase of that city than of any of the other three great competitive seaports in the twenty-year period from 1820 to 1840, also reveals the fact that in the preceding double decade New York was not the most rapidly increasing of the four, while as late as 1820 it was surpassed in population by Philadelphia (accepting the present boundaries of Philadelphia, which are identical with those of the county of the same name), and did not become in reality the metropolis of America until after the canal had wielded its influence and contributed its quota.
The fact is, as we have said, that our great commercial city had been, previous to that time, among the more backward of the colonial ports. There came, however, an improvement. The facilities of the harbor of the metropolis and of the great and navigable Hudson river began to induce trade. So New York increased in the last half decade of the eighteenth century and the first few years of the nineteenth to a more conspicuous rank. Nevertheless, from about that date its export trade wavered, fell and did not recover its former proportions until some twenty years afterwards, or about 1828. During this interval, as the accumulated evidence of population and commercial statistics attests, there seems to have been something of a critical period experienced, as if the prize of supremacy were being held in abeyance. There was apparently a moderate retardation of growth and an awaiting of developments. Perhaps figures are misinterpreted or their bearing on the case exaggerated, but further details, to be presented later, certainly indicate that this unsettled condition existed.
Suffice it to say now that, corresponding with this period of stagnation, there was taking place, as every historian knows, a fundamental change in the character of our commerce. Table No. 11 gives an exhibit of the shipping per capita engaged in foreign trade for a succession of years and shows that a maximum was attained early in the century, which was followed by a decline, continuing until the present time. Figures from the same source, giving the proportion of American carriage in foreign trade for exports, show in 1826 practically ninety per cent, or more than in a long time previously, but more also than from that year to the present day. The carrying trade of the world, which had been almost a monopoly and the source of so much profit to American seamen, especially during the European wars, was rapidly passing from our grasp. It was then that many thrifty ports which it had nourished, such as those along the New England coast- Newburyport, Salem and Portsmouth- became largely decadent. It was a period of changes and of new developments; for, as the foreign trade diminished, the coastwise trade began to increase, and, more auspicious than all else, at this juncture the internal trade of the nation had its birth, came rapidly to the forefront and grew to be a most important element in the wealth, comfort and community of interests of the several states. Thus the particular advantages, which once made cities and seaports, shrank into relative insignificance. Conditions were reversed. It was as though Commerce had abandoned her old haunts and sought new ones and especially a site for a great metropolis, the requisites for that site being an ample harbor and a direct connection, by some sort of "Northwest Passage," with the Interior. Thus the introduction of new ruling elements into the commercial problem, and especially the rise of the internal trade in conjunction with the opportune building of the Erie canal, made New York City the commercial capital of the nation.
So great is the prominence of the change which we have thus depicted, that historians distinguish the year 1830 as the beginning of a new and glorious epoch in the annals of the City of New York. And they set down, as the great opening event, the building of the Erie canal and its early operation, accompanied by the increase of commerce, the influx of aliens and-not the least of them all-the spread off democracy, first manifested in the metropolis through the demand for the convention of 1822 and the sweeping extension of the suffrage.
If further corroboration of the commercial changes which we have outlined were necessary, the evidence is not lacking, even from sources least disposed to exaggerate the glory of New York and the beneficence of her institutions. There was one famous rival port situated somewhat similarly in the middle states, liberally endowed by Nature and possessing prospects no less illustrious than those of our metropolis-probably far more promising in the eyes of our forefathers, the colonists-and this city the one which, as we have already said, had a population at the be- ginning of canal times (present boundaries considered) exceeding that of our own seaboard city. Yet today the one port. New York, has a population of three and one-half millions and combined exports and imports valued at nearly a billion and a quarter of dollars; the other, Philadelphia, has little more than one-third that population and one-tenth the combined export and import trade.
The historian of the City of Philadelphia, writing in the light of more than half a century of subsequent developments, focuses all of that light in one emphatic statement which, being like a forced confession rather than a voluntary tribute, possesses more than ordinary significance. "Be the cause whatever it may," he says, " the fact stands out prominent that from the completion of the Erie Canal New York became what Philadelphia had previously been,-the commercial emporium of the United States." Other writers confirm this view.
This same historian further develops the subject as follows: "The decline of the foreign commerce of Philadelphia was made the subject of a series of letters in 1851 by Job B. Tyson to William Peter, Her Britannic Majesty's Consul for Pennsylvania. In these letters the causes of that decline were examined and the means of reviving it discussed. Mr. Tyson reviewed the past, examined the present, and forecasted the future. The fact that New York had stepped in between Philadelphia and her foreign commerce and drawn the same away could not be denied, but the former position of pre-eminence might, in Mr. Tyson's opinion, be recovered by the exhibition of more pluck and energy, on the part of Philadelphia merchants. The merchants of 1851, he said, have only to echo the sentiments of one of the non-importation resolutions of 1765 as steadfastly as they were uttered and observed by their fathers, the merchants and traders of the city of Philadelphia do unanimously agree, and the work is done. It is not within the power of individual, corporate, municipal, or State resolution to command the circumstances that make up the commerce of any port. It is not upon every fine harbor or navigable river that the marts of commerce are to be found. There are innumerable elements which, combined, fix and determine whether commerce will grow and prosper, without regard to the unanimous resolutions of merchants, or any other part of the population. The Erie Canal poured into New York the vast productions of the Northwest, and thirty years ago one city was equal to their distribution. New York and not Philadelphia reaped the benefit of that trade. The revolutions which the last thirty years have made in the material wealth of the great Northwest, the West, the Southwest, and the South, no longer put it within the capacity of any one city on the seaboard to distribute the thousands of millions of dollars worth of products raised annually by the trans-Alleghany section of the country. Philadelphia has regained very much and will regain much more of her ancient commerce, as transportation is cheapened and the products of the country-are delivered at her wharves at the same or less cost than at New York. The common reason given why the trade of the country seeks New York is because New York has more capital than any other American seaport. But money or capital is only a convenient medium of exchange and is attracted by the product which is the real value. Nor has it any more power to draw the product to it than the eagle has to draw the carcass. Money gathers at New York because the products are there, and the products go there because it is cheaper to carry them there than to Philadelphia. Transportation is king. Neither cotton, iron, coal or any other product is sovereign. The conditions that fix the cost of transportation to market fix the amount and value of the products and their place in the commerce of the country."
Obviously this phenomenon, the decline of Philadelphia and the rise of New York, was recognized in early years, but the cause seems to have been misconstrued and the historian well says: "It is not within the power of resolution to command the circumstances that make up the commerce of any port. Nor has it [money or capital] any more power to draw the product to it than the eagle has to draw the carcass." Again, "The Erie Canal poured into New York the vast productions of the Northwest. Money gathers at New York because the products are there. Transportation is king."
This very comprehensive work, from which we have just quoted, exhibits the large foreign trade in Philadelphia in years previous to 1830, which exhibit concludes with the words, "Enough is shown, however, to indicate the great loss Philadelphia has sustained in her commercial interests." By 1830 or earlier this foreign trade of the port of Philadelphia had practically disappeared. Meanwhile, with a terminus in New York, the first line of regular packets crossing the Atlantic between Europe and America had been established, and by 1838 the business had risen to proportions indicated in the following statement:
| To Liverpool, 5 times in each month | 20 packets |
|---|---|
| To London, 3 times in each month | 12 packets |
| To Havre, 4 times in each month | 15 packets |
| To Liverpool and Belfast | 4 packets |
| To Greenock | 3 packets |
| To Carthagena, Havana and Vera Cruz | 5 packets |
| Total | 59 packets |
By assurance of a return freight the transatlantic lines had been attracted from Philadelphia, and no doubt from other ports, to New York City and thus, as we have seen, the facilities for internal trade had come to govern very largely the entire commercial status.
That the supremacy of New York in its facilities for communication with the interior was the nucleus of its supremacy in a far broader sense, may be gathered first from the story of the foreign trade, which we have just rehearsed, and again from the interesting history of the manufacturing industry in the metropolis. Upon the development of manufactures we shall touch in a later section of the chapter, but, as an instance of the remarkable correlation of business interests of diverse character, we cannot refrain from pursuing further the comparison of the two cities- the one on the Delaware, which, despairing of the retention of a commercial primacy, devoted herself to manufacturing industry with brilliant success for a time, and the other at the mouth of the Hudson, bent upon commercial prowess, yet not only becoming the mistress of the seas, but gradually, inadvertently almost, attaining the first rank in the land in the value of her manufactured products. In this study we have recourse again to a Philadelphia publication, a pamphlet entitled, Philadelphia as a Manufacturing City, a Report presented to the City Councils of Philadelphia by the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, and published in 1899, from which one of our tables already considered has been taken. We quote from this publication (p. 25): " It is within the memory even of the present generation that Philadelphia was the great manufacturing city of the New World. Every writer and speaker of the first rank so described the Quaker City to preceding generations. On the other hand, New York City made small claim to manufacturing pre-eminence in other days. That city was the premier of foreign trade, a great distributing and financial center. It lacked cheap fuel, was poor in skilled labor, and even in the matter of unskilled labor ranked below many American cities of less pretension. But New York wooed and won the merchant marine of the world; and the blessings of low freights, the facility to handle the largest tonnage, soon began to draw to the city of New York such great manufacturing interests as worked on close margin and were forced to ship at the lowest possible cost." The same publication proceeds by a review of statistics to demonstrate the fact that New York has indisputably "moved to the front rank as a manufacturing city " and has, in 1898, three times as many industries, with total valuation of products nearly twice as great as Philadelphia. It is because of this chain of numberless benefits, which followed the years of hesitation and uncertainty just prior to 1820, that we are forced to give a large measure of credit to the Erie canal, whose influence secured, or at the very least preserved to New York her supremacy during a critical period of her history and laid the foundation for the structure which succeeding decades have built into the second city of the world.
But, of all the rivals which New York State and its metropolis met upon the sea and had to subdue, none put forth more strenuous efforts to secure the mastery than New England, or more particularly the maritime State of Massachusetts. In table No. 12 we have in juxtaposition the figures for the value of exports in these two states. New York and Massachusetts, which may be regarded as principal competitors for the export trade of the nation." While intervening figures show considerable fluctuations, those chosen appear to be fairly representative. It will be seen that in 1811 the two states were substantially on a par in this respect. New York then displayed a tendency to rise, which was curtailed by the war-a circumstance perhaps the outcome of hop more marked suspension of business during the campaign and reflecting an accumulation of produce held in the country during war times until more favorable opportunity for exportation should arise.
At all events, a steady decline from 1816 is shown by this table, No. 12, so that in 1821 Massachusetts still tenaciously rivaled New York in the value of her exportations. Had such a condition lasted until the extraordinary development of manufacturing, which swept over the New England states about a decade later, this commercial rivalry might still have continued to threaten the supremacy of the Empire State. As it was, upon the most rational basis of comparison, employed in table No. 19 and on plate No. V, Massachusetts, alone of all the states east and south of the old "Northwest Territory," surpassed New York ill growth during the double decade from 1820 to 1840. However, the underlying forces at work -the disappearance of money scarcity and war prices and more than all else, internal improvements, of which the Erie canal was chief-brought about a revulsion of commercial conditions after 1821 and the decline in export values was followed by a general increase rendering New York speedily the first exporting state in the Union, with exports for the year 1841 valued at about three times those of Massachusetts.
Although statistics of imports previous to 1821 are not avail- able, table No. 13 exhibits the rapidly ascending valuations for subsequent years. From diagrams of plate No. I, plotted to represent the data of table No. 14, it will appear at once that not only values of exports but also property values suffered a setback prior to 1820, attained a minimum about the year 1822, and subsequently, as the table will show, increased-the exports with occasional fluctuations, the property values with scarcely another retardation up to the present day. The correspondence of these records is strengthened from the fact that the decline and rise in property valuation occurs somewhat tardily, as compared with the exports. Since commercial and financial depression are first manifested in the impairment of trade relations and felt last of all in the real estate market, this feature would imply a common causation in the two cases, and mere fluctuation could not be construed to explain the conditions.
MacGregor, in his Progress of America, avers that the Chain- plain and Erie canals, from the time of their opening, employed "an amount of inland navigation tonnage larger than that of all shipping, entering and departing from In line with this statement the exhibit of table No. 17 illustrates the fact that the value of shipments brought to tide-water oil the New York canals was, by 1846, greater than the whole export trade of the state and more than one-half the combined trade of all the principal commercial states of the Union. It points first to the commencement and growth of the canal trade in the twenty years and then to the upbuilding of New York in respect to its export trade during the same twenty years, from a position of rivalry to a rank of complete supremacy among the states of the Atlantic seaboard. Table No. 15 is in tended to emphasize the fact that during the period with which we are chiefly concerned the value of articles transported on the canals exceeded the imports or exports of the state. A comparison of this table with No. 17 will further establish the fact that the way-traffic--movements which mostly originated within the state, but did not reach tide-water-represented twice the value of the through traffic, or traffic in articles shipped to tide-water. New York had therefore an immense bulk of way traffic which benefited her almost exclusively. She had also in the earlier years the overwhelming share of the through traffic, originating within her borders and contributing to her upbuilding. Down to the year 1847 (see table No. 4) the majority of the through traffic arriving at tide-water still came from the interior of the state; and until 1874 (see table No. 10) a greater tonnage passed over the canals than upon either the New York Central or the Erie railroad, thus illustrating the services and importance of the canals.
The State of New York, up to the year 1882, the time of abolishing tolls, had earned considerably more from the various canals than she had expended upon the entire system (see table among the statistics of Part Two of this history), and even to the close of the fiscal year 1902-3 (approximately the time of beginning the 1,000-ton Barge canal) had expended only $169,466,410 (without interest), as against receipts amounting to $144,234,120. The Erie canal, to the year of the abolition of tolls, paid for itself, maintained itself, supplied funds to numerous lateral canals, now abandoned, no one of which was self supporting, paid a large sum annually to the support of the general State government through a period of about thirty years, and then presented the State with some millions of surplus from its revenues. Thus the State actually realized on its original investment, aside from the long train of benefits, which it derived from the construction of the Erie canal.
There are some general considerations worthy of notice before proceeding to the more intricate study of the effects of the canal upon the economy of New York State. For example, a perusal of table No. 7 shows that the state's population of 1820 had increased ill two decades by more than seventy-five per cent; mean while (as tables Nos. 23 and 33 indicate) the numbers engaged in agriculture had increased even more, those engaged in manufacturing had nearly trebled and almost five times as many were employed in commercial pursuits in 1840 as in 1820. In the fifteen years from 1820 to 1835 the valuation of real property increased far more rapidly than the population, while the personal property nearly quadrupled in value during the same time, so that by 1835 the individual in New York State possessed an average property of the assessed value of two hundred and forty-three dollars and of market value doubtless considerably more-and all this, not withstanding that there was for some time prior to 1821 an absolute and steady decline in property valuation, as already stated. In 1820 the unnaturalized alien population was scarcely a factor in New York State. As a class it constituted only about one per cent of the total. The change in this respect during the fifteen years to 1835 is remarkable-greater than any other of which we treat. The increase during that time amounted to nearly 450 per cent and in 1835 there averaged nearly four of this class to every ninety-six citizens. The change thus brought about-a change marking the commencement of a tremendous social revolution-furnishes an attractive subject, which we reserve for further investigation. The percentage of the total area of the state under cultivation increased a little faster than the population, so that, from less than one-fifth in 1821, almost a third of the entire land and water acreage was returned as unproved land in 1835. In 1810 there were but 66 newspapers published in New York State; in 1840 the number was 302. That is, from one to every 15,000 inhabitants, the proportion had risen in thirty years to one per 8,000 of the population. The total productivity of New York in 1840 was 50 per cent greater than that of any other state. Probably in the valuation of its property, certainly in the amount of its import and its export trade, and in its output, severally of manufacturing, commercial and forest products, it surpassed all others. From a secondary rank in 1810 it had risen and become pre-eminently the first State in the Union.
From all this it would seem to be evident first, that, however much the War of 1812 and the spirit of the times had done for the State of New York from without, there were at work within the state other causes not possessed by sister states, differentiating its progress from theirs and contributing to elevate it to an exalted rank. In the light of these studies, too, the source to, which we must naturally attribute such influences is the greatest work of the period, one which we know to be responsible for so much invigoration,-the Erie canal.
"Since such therefore are the advantages of water-carriage, it is natural that the first improvements of art and industry should be made where this conveniency opens the whole world for a market to the produce of every sort of labor, and that they should always be much later in extending themselves into the inland parts of the country." -Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations.
To a certain extent in order to ascertain by a more specific and perhaps a more convincing research the occasion for such disproportionate growth and prosperity as we have depicted, and no less for the purpose of tracing the influence of the Erie canal in the diversity of its manifestations, an elaborate compilation has been made of the official statistics of the early period, which relate to the towns-and counties in our home state and their progress. We may not hope that such a study will demonstrate with mathematical exactness. We may rest assured that it cannot exhaust the subject nor picture all the channels of that influence. Our problem resembles, on the contrary, that of the geographer who seeks to delineate the ocean bed. Were the measurement of every point of its topography essential, generations and even ages would not suffice. But clearly, he may derive a liberal store of information by fathoming here and there, and evidently, too, the knowledge he secures is more or less reliable and his range of interpretation broader or more contracted according to the frequency of his soundings.
First, we have purposed, by separating the major portion of the state into four main divisions, to adduce a contrast between the sections most susceptible to the effects, for good or ill, of the construction of the Erie canal and those more remote in situation or otherwise presumably less affected by its inception and continuance. We have recognized in New York and Kings counties -the territory comprising our Division I-interests and a history quite distinctive and unlike that of the remainder of the state. The counties of Kings and New York represent the modern city of "Greater " New York, the metropolis, the only notable seaport, and containing at the present day about one-half the population and far more than one-half the assessed valuation of the entire state. Even in 1840 New York county, alone, was larger than any four other counties combined, and in its environment and progress was comparable with no other district or division of territory from the coast to the lakes. This distinction was really vital and extended to the alimentary channels, as it were. The sources of the city's nourishment and up building were wholly external. But for its daily draught on tributary districts and agricultural communities its manufactories must starve and its commerce disappear. Indeed, only to a limited extent a manufacturing city, its absorbing interest was as a mart for the interchange of the commodities and produce of the world. Generally speaking, its function was to serve. It existed only because of the surplus and needs of other communities. It was, and is, a great distributing center, and as such has been subject to peculiar laws of growth and opportunity for increase in density of population, forbidden to other localities. Not only was it non-agricultural and dependent, but in addition it has come to be widely known as cosmopolitan-a port whose prosperity, unlike that of the rest of the state, has been very largely and directly drawn from national and international sources. New York City responds punctually to each westward impulse of emigration and civilization. The supplies, the capital, the emigrants themselves pass through her portals and deposit their respective contributions in her coffers before proceeding to the interior. Her population in its disproportionate rapidity of increase, as we shall see later, displays this expansive feature of her composition. But in the earlier part of the last century the story was different. That uniqueness had not yet been acquired. Other cities were rival ports of entry, and the metropolis of the state was not the overwhelming majority of the state in wealth and business prominence. It is thus to avoid confusion of the different phases of the influences of those times as much as possible, and to set in relief the phenomenal growth of New York City that we have selected it for separate treatment as the first division of the state's territory. A second and a third division, together comprise those counties bordering the Hudson river between Manhattan and the Mohawk, the counties touched by the Erie canal, and in addition Suffolk and Chautauqua. It might be expected that these would present, on account of proximity to improved facilities for navigation, decidedly the most conspicuous example of the benefits derived or the injury suffered. However, as that partition of this strip seaward from the head waters of the Mohawk had been in earlier times opened up and settled more or less extensively through the medium of existing facilities for navigation by way of the portage from Albany to Schenectady, the Oneida-Madison county line has been chosen as a boundary between Divisions II and III and we may regard the entire strip to the east, namely. Division II, as developed sufficiently to have attained a condition of normal growth before the canal era of which we treat. On the other hand we may reasonably look to see the most striking stimulation to settlement and industry exhibited in the third division, Madison to Chautauqua counties, inclusive; for these counties lay along the "frontier" district, as it was familiarly known in the war times of 1812-14, and away from through, navigable watercourses of importance. Thus they were virtually opened to through communication by the new waterway. It is no great exaggeration to say, therefore, that whatever they were in 1840, that the canal made them.
Another class of counties presents itself to our consideration. We have designated it Division IV, and have included within it all the remaining inland counties to the south of the Erie canal, those counties now known as the " southern tier." This section is and has always been chiefly agricultural. We have not treated this division at the same length as the other three divisions, since the influence of the canal, acting overland, so to speak, or else reflected through mutual interests and common prosperity, is bound to be less striking and more difficult of identification. In order to probe even further the abundant influences engendered by the commercial stimulus of the period and to ascertain just how far away from the shores of the canal we may trace this effect with reasonable certainty, or how its intensity varies in passing from the margin (where it may be assumed a maximum) back inland, we have established two belts or zones throughout Divisions II and III, the first, or A belt, consisting of the town ships actually bounding the canal, and the second, or B belt (geographically two belts on opposite sides of the water- ways), of the remainder of the border counties. These two belts we have styled: in the East, Subdivisions II-A. and II-B, respectively, and in the West, Subdivisions III-A. and III-B, respectively. We have found this separation along the somewhat irregular, civil boundary-lines to be the only practicable means of studying the situation, and even in this we have been obliged to introduce some estimated figures in connection with minor details of the investigation, as, for example, in the statistics for towns which were erected or made over between 1820 and 1840-the limiting dates of our principal investigations. In such cases, however, we have generally included the whole extent of the parent township, where we could thus avoid estimation of data, and have thus treated in Belt A some towns remote from the waterways, and in rare cases have omitted border towns from their proper subdivision. Likewise, in the several main divisions we have been obliged to consider the important changes of county boundaries, and frequently to compile our data independently, from the township figures given in the census reports. These are all available back to 1810, however, and thus scarcely an estimated figure is introduced in treating of the main divisions. But in 1810 the population of the state by townships is not available to us and we are compelled, therefore, to confine ourselves to the summary of that census, thus ignoring a number of civil alterations and rendering the comparisons between this year and subsequent years the least reliable of any-a feature which, however, concerns us only in our study of the population.
In the range and scope of our investigations we have been limited only by the amount of information available and by the period of the initial and most distinctive influence of the canal. We have extended our most elaborate study (that of the population) back to 1810, when the canal was first seriously projected-in order to catch the rate of growth and the general conditions prevailing before its active intervention-and we have discussed that population in numerous ways, with the aid of the national decennial census and the state censuses of 1814, 1825 and 1835, thus covering the period through the year 1840, at which time the full initial effect of the stimulus had been felt. The western division had passed the eastern in its journey along the path of progress; and, though the era of unchallenged canal supremacy was not over until about 1850, yet before that time the railroad and telegraph and manifold and diverse interests were to a greater or less degree collaborating to favor and upbuild the community. But the initial influence of the canal-to use a mechanical analogy-imparted a ceaseless motion, and the same force has been acting as a continuous acceleration from that day to this. Whence we have added data from the census of 1900. The increase for the sixty-year period intervening has then been resolved into an average increase for a five-year period, to compare with the other rates shown for five-year periods. In 1821 the first attempt was made in a New York State census to gather statistics other than those of population, and from this census, retained in manuscript in the State Library, we have been able to compile figures for the amount of improved land and for the number of manufactories of ten different classes, to compare with similar statistics in the State census of 1835." From the United States census for 1820 we obtain the numbers of unnaturalized male aliens, and corresponding data are again found for 1835 in the State census of that year. From the 1820 census also come the numbers of those engaged in the three principal classes of gainful occupations, and these are compared with similar figures for the Federal census of 1840. The additional columns of our table, representing the property valuation in 1820, as compared with 1835, both real and personal, are abstracted from the special reports of the Comptroller of the State to the Legislature.
Reflection oil the subject will suggest that the results of such early enumeration's must have been quite defective, and perhaps so ambiguous in classification as to prove nothing in any comparison to be drawn. The assertion is true to a limited extent.
Too much reliance may not be placed on the intricacies of such a study, but with the exercise of much care the general observations are seldom visited, we believe, and especially where so extensive a range of interest is considered, the danger of ill-founded general conclusions is slight.
There are several notable sources of uncertainty. For example, the figures for the number of persons engaged in commerce in 1840 are supplemented by the numbers of those engaged during that year in navigation of lakes, rivers, canals and also separately of the ocean, these classifications not being given in the census of 1820. Moreover, the instructions to marshals of the 1820 census do not enlighten us with respect to the exact definition of the term commerce as used in that census, while from internal evidence, deduced from details of comparison of the two years, we are reasonably certain that in many cases at least the persons engaged in navigation were included under the head of those engaged in commerce in the returns of 1820. Thus the combined figures for persons engaged in commerce, plus those engaged in navigation for 1840 appear to be comparable with the numbers returned in 1820 of persons engaged in commerce only. The increase, however, on the other basis is striking enough, and, as there is no absolutely conclusive evidence in existence, results of comparison on each basis have been given. Again, some question exists as to whether the figures for unnaturalized aliens used, as obtained from the censuses of 1820 and 1840, are entirely parallel. There are, no doubt, some facilities for further study of the increase of the various sections of the state. There are Federal census returns, for instance, as early as 1810, of the value of manufactured articles. A recapitulation of these data is furnished in the twelfth census, but the details are not available and the returns make little pretension to sufficient accuracy and uniformity for purposes of comparison. There is facility for discussing more in detail the various classes of population recognized by the early census, of ascertaining the proportion at different ages, the ratio of male to female, et cetera, but their very slight bearing on the subject seems not to warrant painstaking inquiry. Thus we consider that we have examined the principal and most suggestive basis of comparison available in view of the meagerness of the census at so early a date as 1820. We venture the statement that, if further insight be desired, it will rather be found through increase in the number of divisions of territory than by any other expedient. We are convinced, moreover, that no greater refinement in classification of border lands along the waterways than by counties and townships can be pursued with any approach to a satisfactory accuracy.
In order to study the data accumulated for each section of the state we have made numerous arithmetical deductions. We have throughout obtained the differences in absolute figures for each period representing the actual gain or loss. These have been reduced to percentages of the original figures (tables Nos. 27 and 33), then, in connection with the area, the density of population per square mile has been computed (table No. 28), together with its gains and losses (table No. 29). For the industrial statistics the data have been divided by the population; per capita figures, or oftener figures per one hundred of the population, have been obtained thereby (table No. 35) ; and losses and gains in this respect have been ascertained (table No. 34). Again, to adduce a significant comparison between the several divisions, each has been treated in its progress and absolute condition relative to the progress and absolute condition of the entire state, figures of which have been, largely for this purpose, compiled; that is, the equivalency of these data in terms of the corresponding data for the state has been found (tables No.. 30-31 and 36-37). Also the subdivisions have been treated in some such manner with respect to each other or to the main divisions embracing them. In addition, occasional results have been deduced, such as in finding the percentage of the total area of the several divisions actually under cultivation (table No. 38), and the approximation to the average number of acres of improved land to each person engaged in agriculture (table No. 39)-this latter study involving a severe extrapolation on account of the dissimilarity of periods represented in the data used. In order to investigate and to present results pertinently, the densities of population have been plotted for each census year and curves drawn, which appear on plate No. II.
Thus equipped with the necessary preliminary information for weighing the evidence, we proceed to the consideration of the data accumulated, and first to the study of the population.
It will be seen from table No. 32 that in 1810 about 10 per cent of the population was in " Greater " New York (Division I) and nearly one-half was in Division II, whence nearly 60 per cent ranged along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers to the Sound, and that there was contained about 16 per cent each, in Divisions III and IV-the whole territory treated comprising 90.4 per cent of the state, though only 34,000 out of 50,000 square miles, or 68 per cent, of its total area. In 1840, however, New York contained about 15 per cent. Division II now less than one-third of the total, while Divisions III and IV still contained about equal percent ages-namely, 21 per cent each-although the latter (Division IV) covered almost twice as much territory as the former. There was still nearly one-half the population concentrated along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. The sections considered now contained 87% per cent of the state's population, showing that the remainder with 32 per cent of the, area was yet a small factor in considering the increase of population, and further that the population of these northern counties, varying about uniformly with that of the state, is consistently eliminated from the discussion. The four divisions considered contain now (1900) 93.6 per cent of the total population of the state.
It is apparent from the curves of plate No. 11 that generally much the least progressive portion of the period covered was at the start, 1810 to 1814, at which time the several sections appear to receive new inducement to growth.. The entire state, also, quite uniformly increasing throughout the remainder of the period, is at this time notably invigorated. This circumstance may be accounted for in two principal ways, as we have observed on previous pages. First, the War of 1812, concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, had given the country at large a setback. The rate of increase was thus much enhanced immediately following the census of that year. The second reason consists in the internal forces. We have already shown from table No. 7 that all the states had prospered in the reaction from the War of 1812, yet the rate of increase of New York during the double decade 1820 to 1840 was by far the largest, thus indicating the operation of local rather than national forces to a large extent in its upbuilding, and of these local forces principally the internal improvements-chief among them the Erie canal, formally authorized in 1817, and finally completed in 1825.
It will also be observed by reference to the curves that on the final opening of the canal in 1825 an acceleration, though much less pronounced than the first, is yet distinguishable in some instances.
It may be wise to remark here that the percentage increase normally decreases with increase in population, or density. Even if the population curve is straight-that is, the rate of increase uniform, no matter how steep-this condition is fulfilled. To represent a constant or augmented percentage-increase the population diagram must curve upwards. This means, therefore, that any continued ascending progression of the figures for periodic percentage-increase of a section-or, indeed, the constancy of this figure-implies a rate diagram curving upwards, or an anomalous growth.
Proceeding to the consideration of the four divisions, we find that Division I, substantially New York City, differs in being a distributing point and on the seaboard, influenced thus by different conditions from the producing communities. It is noticeable that just prior to canal times (namely, in 1810-14) its population suffered a decrease of 1.4 per cent-due in part, no doubt, to the War of 1812. This is the only absolute decrease which appears in any of the sections throughout the period treated (that for Division II in the same period being only apparent and due to including in the 1810 figures for Montgomery and Oneida counties returns for the whole or parts of the present Hamilton and Oswego counties), and it is in strong contrast with the phenomenal increase throughout the remainder of the period, or following the impetus furnished by the canal. This division experienced an increase in density of population per square mile from 1810 to 1840 more than seventy times as great as the increase of the state at large. It passed, as we have already shown, the last of its rivals among the ports of the Atlantic coast during this period, increasing more rapidly relatively to the other cities after 1820 than it had done previously, and much faster than it had itself increased in earlier times. Plate No. I (upper diagram) illustrates the fact that from 1810 to 1820 New York City was gaining less rapidly than the state at large, from which time it has steadily risen from about 10 per cent to nearly 50 per cent (Richmond and Queens counties are not included in Division I which in 1900 equaled a per cent) of the whole state's population.
Regarding population as proportional to business and other growth, its incontestable primacy for the nineteenth century among the cities and marts of the New World was, it would appear, established and secured during this period, as nearly as it can be designated by census years. The foreign commerce of the entire country, together with the merchant marine, diminished greatly in relative magnitude after the War of 1812, but that of New York least of all the states. It thus seems unavoidable to conclude that in the acquisition of the internal trade-the key to coastwise and foreign trade at this period particularly-our metropolis captured the prize which was to become the foundation of her importance. She was henceforth the Gibraltar, controlling for one hundred years at least the resources of the upbuilding West.
Possibly on account of some deficiency in the State census, or overestimation in the Federal census, the population of Division II fluctuates with some regularity, dropping in the middle of each decade. The population remains about stationary from 1810 to 1814. Its rate of increase is manifestly accelerated between 1814 and 1820, simultaneously with the beginnings of the canal; but obviously the draught of the westward emigration reacted upon it between 1820 and 1826, so that the resulting average rate (If increase, adhered to with striking uniformity from 1825 to the present day, is somewhat less than that of the entire state, and accordingly the percentage which it contains of the total population of the state falls from 48 to 30 between 1810 and 1840, while every other division treated contains a greater percentage of the state's population in 1840 than in 1810. Nevertheless, from 1820 to 1840 its population multiplied 1.38 times, thus indicating a more rapid percentage-increase than that of the prosperous State of New Jersey, shown in table No. 7.
Evidently the forces of the day did not develop Division II as much as the remainder of the state. The explanation is found in the fact that the disproportionately rapid growth of the newer sections drew heavily upon the population of the older settlements along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers and thus counteracted the stimulating effects of the canal upon its shores. As these counties had long been open, to a greater or less extent, to navigation from the seaboard by way of the two rivers, the portage from Albany to Schenectady and the improvements of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, the canal did not, as in the case of the western counties, so conspicuously facilitate their trade. As they were not directly benefited by the mere through commerce passing on the canal and did not contain terminal or distributing points to any considerable extent, it is apparent that they would not profit from the new waterway in the same-manner as did New York City, to the east of them. Unquestionably the canal affected considerably the distribution of the population in local instances throughout this district, as instanced by the loss at Schenectady and the gains at Watervliet and Albany. Doubt less, too, its influence would be more apparent in the counties from the Hudson river west, if treated separately, as that section had borne the additional expense of the portage and the high tolls charged by the Navigation Company. Nevertheless, Division II as a whole remains a comparatively neutral zone, only normally affected by the influence of the canal, which had fostered such an abnormal growth to the eastward and to the westward.
There is one further characteristic of the population curves for Division II (which will be later emphasized), namely, the slight increase of progressive rate at the conclusion of the period, coexistent with the retardation to Division III. Both of these features, the positive and the negative, are duplicated and thus are confirmed in the discussion of all the respective subdivisions, and possess, therefore, some augmented weight. We withhold this subject, however, for examination in connection with Division III.
The border towns of this division cover slightly less than one- fourth of the total area. It is obvious that the population was well concentrated along these border towns from the beginning of the period, that is, from 1810, in confirmation of which it is only necessary to note that Subdivision II-B, having a density of only about one-half that of II-A in 1810, still continues about four-tenths in 1840. In the thirty years the population of the division had increased some 70 per cent, but even then had only reached about the density of the A belt of the division at the commencement of that period. These border towns, constituting the A belt, exhibit a growth comparatively uniform with the exception of the phenomenal leap at the time of the completion of the canal, or of turning into it the through traffic from the West- an acceleration which partially, but not entirely, relaxed in 1830, so that the growth of the subdivision continued to be somewhat more rapid than by the rate of increase, which obtained before the day of the canal. Had it not been for this acceleration operating after 1825, it is noteworthy that the ratio of densities of subdivisions would have continued 1: 2 until the year 1840. The cause of the phenomenon is thus clearly responsible at least for the progress of these towns in so far as it exceeds the rate of progress of the townships back of them. Thus also it may be stated of the eastern border towns, that decidedly the most distinctive feature of their progress was this leap between 1825 and 1830, leaving its impress on the subsequent rate after it had itself expired. So sudden and striking a feature can be attributed to nothing, we surmise, but the opening of the canal in 1825, the benefit of which, it appears from an examination of table No. 26, fell to both the towns bordering the canal and those bordering the river. This is, in effect, a proof of the wide and beneficent influence of the canal, even upon the eastern counties. The fact that the phenomenon is not reflected in the remote towns, which we should suppose less sensitive to commercial stimulus, at once strengthens our proof and serves an index, pointing to that influence.
In its magnitude this acceleration is not paralleled in any other section treated, for, while the same cause is operating with even more force in Subdivision III-A, yet the rate of growth of that section is already so great as not to admit of accentuation, even with the unusual transportation and other facilities offered. Its population, too, has been increasing rapidly for fully ten years, partly in anticipation of the canal, thus producing a phenomenon of premature effect, while the result upon the older and more conservative country is not distinguishable until after the influence has been operating for a definite length of time.
The interior townships, containing 75 per cent of the area and nearly 60 per cent of the population, exhibit no marked fluctuations- though presenting a very uniform and slow growth-and apparently were not much affected by the canal over and above their share in the wide-spread benefits accruing to the state (plate No. IV, upper diagram). Their population, one would suspect from the curves shown, was agricultural and their lands not peculiarly fertile. They were more populous in 1810 than either belt of Division Ill, but as early as 1820 Division III had attained a like density. The wonder, perhaps, is that this unattractive rear belt, with the depopulating tendency of the westward movement, was not actually diminished, rather than slowly yet steadily increased. Throughout the period discussed, we may state, there existed a much greater difference between the A and B belts in the eastern than in the western division- the A belt being more populous east than west and the B belt more thickly peopled after 1820 west than east.
We may add also, to avoid being misconstrued, that the classification adopted in this chapter could not be expected to distinguish the full local variations of the distribution in these counties, as affected by the canal. Such phenomena, for example, as the changes brought about by the transfer of terminal and other business from Schenectady to West Troy (Watervliet) and Albany, and from Lewiston and Black Rock to Lockport and Buffalo, do not appear, since a single subdivision may include the shifting population both before and after its migration. (See, in this connection, the latter part of foot-note No. 12.) Division III represents a territory very little developed until canal days, its initial density of population for the period 1810 to 1840 being not greatly in excess of one-half that of Division II, last discussed; but while Division II increased invariably less in density of population than the state as a whole. Division III, up to 1835, far surpassed the state in its periodic progress. From 1820 to 1835 the population per square mile increased about uniformly, and on an average by 1.75 persons yearly. Although it increased by a less percentage than New York City (represented by Division I) for the entire period, yet for all but the concluding five years, or during the quarter century from 1810 to 1835, its population trebled; that is, there were 60 instead of 20 inhabitants to every square mile in 1836, as compared with 1810, while the population of the metropolis increased only in the ratio of 2.9 to 1. Eliminating the unavoidable discrepancy in this division in the 1810 figures, that slight difference might perhaps disappears-but the comparison still emphasizes the abundant and unexampled prosperity and growth of the district under consideration throughout the range of its 7,700 square miles. For 25 years of the 30-year period which we discussed, the western border counties, comprising from one-sixth to one-seventh of the area of the state, outstripped all the other sections in point of relative growth. There is a slight acceleration noticeable at the time of the final opening of the canal, but, as subsequent study reveals, this is confined to the rear towns and appears to be of little significance. The actual and final opening of the canal was not like the infusion of a sudden stimulant. Many such effects were experienced, but the long, wide-spread agitation, and the eight years of construction, during which "Clinton's big ditch " crept steadily through the western frontier, followed by the advance guard of commerce and industry, served to distribute its stimulating effect through the period before and after. In its largest signification it was a subtle, economic force, wherein both cause and effect were interwoven.
The canal was not indispensable to the advance of civilization. Without the opportune moment no canal or work of improvement could have produced the immigration, industry and prosperity actually induced. Yet without the canal the westward movement would have been much hampered, perhaps delayed, and unquestionably it would have left New York in its onward passage less rich and fruitful than the Empire State of 1840 and 1850, to which history, as written on the printed page, and in every busy town and productive plain from Suffolk to Chautauqua, today heaps witness. Natural resources are essential to the successful application of artificial, auxiliary expedients, but had man trusted to unaided Nature, his period of savagery would not yet be over.
It is of interest to note that from the date of the passage of the canal construction law up to the census of 1835 the gain of Division III is practically uniform; and that, while previous to this early date it partakes largely of the typical downward trend, it is again slightly retarded during the last five years, namely, from 1835 to 1840. For the first time since the beginning of the period its population increased relatively less than that of the entire state, and as Division II exhibits a simultaneous acceleration, the anomaly is the more conspicuous. It is difficult to say positively to what this feature should be ascribed, especially in the absence of connecting data prepared on the same basis; and it is perhaps idle for us to speculate or to lay stress upon a feature not very pronounced, where a continuation of the curves might tend to vitiate our conclusion. The retardation, however, from 1830 to 1840 is undeniable, as it is further more reflected in both Belts A and B. We shall recite several facts, therefore, which seem to us to have an obvious bearing on the case.
First, we may attribute the phenomenon, in a measure, to the continuous march of civilization westward. The region built up in middle New York State at the expense of the seaboard was now in turn contributing its quota to the states which had sprung from the great Northwest Territory. In the early days of the collector's office in Buffalo clearances from out of the state for the Erie canal were insignificant when compared with the great number of internal trade interests subserved (see table No. 4, already cited). By 1836, 54,000 tons of out-of-state shipments were reported as arriving at tide-water by way of the Erie canal, but in 1841 this amount had more than quadrupled and from about one-seventh it had reached the significant fraction of two-thirds the volume of local New York State traffic arriving at the same point by the same channel, and this volume of internal traffic had itself dropped slightly in the interval. The ratio of foreign to domestic commerce continued to mount, although in no subsequent period of equal duration did it experience a like percentage of increase. The significant fact is, however, that where the West sent hack to us its tens of thousands of produce, it drew from us its thousands of wealth and population, of which these were the fruit.
Still other facts suggest an explanation of the diminishing increment of gain through the western district. It may have been the outgrowth, for instance, of the business depression occurring about 1837, which would naturally reduce the amount of capital disposed to venture into a new district. Such a district would be indeed more sensitive than the conservative and opulent East to a panic and its consequences. Again, it will be observed by reference to the diagram that these counties of Division III from their commonplace position at the start (their density being practically the average for the state in 1810 to 1814) attain a density of population equal to the density of Division II at about the time of the completion of the canal; that they continue uninterruptedly in their upward course until 1.13 times more dense in 1835 than Division II, and that in 1840, in spite of the retardation and upward tendency in Division II, they are still 1.1 times as thickly populated as the older and more easterly counties. It might thus be readily conjectured that this section had, at the close of the period under consideration, reached a state of normal development, as compared with the seaboard district, and was settling into the beaten path of progress, and suffering, as is usual, somewhat of a reaction from the extreme rapidity of its advance; that, in short, there was now less potent reason for the extravagant disproportion between the prosperity of the western and eastern portions of the state, although the larger extent of undeveloped and productive country lying back from the canal and tributary to the western border counties, and their greater proportion of commercial population and interests, might still be expected to afford the western section somewhat more opportunity for further development than the eastern.
However that may be, the average rate of increase for Division III from 1840 to 1900 falsifies the argument that this division had reached a very materially inflated state of development and was, from any cause whatever, about to revert and settle into a growth parallel to that of the older and less progressive regions. Its average increase from 1840 to l900 is not only greater than from 1835 to 1840, but is scarcely less than its rapid rate previous to that date and greater than the rate of increase of the less dense region. Division II, during the same sixty-year period. Since we must thus acknowledge both a slight decline and a subsequent rise, and have been able readily to assign reasons for the former, it behooves us only to explain the second of these reciprocal phenomena, and the solution, as it appears, is not far to seek. This solution consists first, in the temporary action and timely cessation of the causes to which we have ascribed the previous decline-the panic, the excessive draught of the West and the over-exploitation of its resources. Secondly, it is not reasonable to question but that a powerful influence, restraining this tendency of decline and inoculating with new vigor, was the second great stride in the development of transportation systems, namely, the introduction of railroads, in conjunction with the enlargement of the waterways, which the railroads were at first designed to supplement and reinforce.
To recapitulate then, the data obtained indicate that Division III, taking a new start about the time of the actual authorization of the canal, increased with unequaled rapidity and marked uniformity, until by the year 1835, having become even more populous than the long-settled and well-established easterly section, having met the competition of regions further west and being exposed to the prevailing business depression of 1837, it faltered slightly, but soon resumed its previous rate of progress through its wonderful vitality-the outcome of its rich tributary area and those facilities for transportation, without which it must have continued a sparsely-settled farming country, namely, the canal and later the railroads, which the canal attracted thither and held to the beat service of the community.
The separation from Division III of the border townships, comprising about one-third of the total area, offers opportunity for various significant comparisons. It is to be observed that many towns bordering on the lakes and others on the lateral canals have not been included in this class, and yet the effects felt throughout this section are so striking that minor omissions do not impair the suggestiveness of the data.
From tables and curves illustrating them it will be seen that the figures for townships, both in Divisions II and III, since the detailed 1810 census was not available, fail to exhibit the acceleration in the rate of increase imparted about 1815. The data for Subdivision III-A do, however, in their main features correspond closely with those of Division III, indicating in general a very rapid and uniform rate of increase from about 1815 to the noticeable decline in the rate towards the end of the period. In certain respects, now to be investigated, however, the data for the division and the A belt differ. At the beginning of the period 1814 to 1840 the density of population of the A belt was about eight-tenths that of the B belt. By the date of the passage of the canal law the former had presumably almost risen to the same magnitude as the latter. At the end of the period, in 1840, the A belt had become about 1.75 times as densely populated as the B belt, its final density being more than five times its initial density, so that its rate of increase was nearly twice that of the corresponding B belt.
It thus appears that the inherent relations existing between the two zones of Division III were very different from those discovered in our treatment of Division II. In the latter case the relative standing of the two classes was well established before canal days and changed but little throughout. On the contrary, in the case of Division III, those regions back from the canal had actually been more thickly settled at the start, but evidently, in part at least through the influence of the canal, the population became concentrated more and more along its banks (see plate No. III).
We pass next to the consideration of Division IV. This is the last class of counties treated and comprises all those south and west of the border counties (Divisions II and III) and to quite an extent-corresponds, as we have said, with the section known today as the southern tier of counties. In area it covers more than one-fourth of the state, is somewhat larger than Division II and approaches twice the size of Division III. In situation it lies off the natural and earliest improved routes of communication, the larger lakes, the rivers and the through canals.
From the smallest density of population encountered in the whole range of the classification adopted, namely, about six-tenths of that for the state at large and for Division III, these counties attained a density nearly 3.5 times as great at the close of the period. Thus, while their final density scarcely exceeded .75, that of the average for the state and was in a less ratio with respect to the other divisions treated, yet they had experienced a percentage-increase throughout the entire period slightly greater than that of the marvelously advancing canal counties of the western section. They had maintained and increased their slight superiority of rank above that of Division III on the basis of population relative to the whole state, so that they comprised 21.9 per cent in 1840, while Division III comprised 20.6 at the same date, the two having risen from 15.9 and 15.7 respectively. This fact does not detract from the anomaly of the growth of Division III, however. The density of Division III continues about twice that of Division IV. Considering relative densities, a far greater percentage-increase would thus be normal for Division IV than for Division III, and Table No. 19 and plate No. V will properly Illustrate the comparative growth on a fair basis. Yet from this same table, which exhibits the superiority of Division III, it will be seen that Division IV makes a much better showing than Division II, its percentage of gain from 1820 to 1840 being twice that of the latter.
It is, of course, impossible to state to what extent the canal was responsible for the upbuilding of the non-contiguous counties. A glance at the curves depicting these data will, however, prove instructive. The curve of increase of density parallels that of the state for some years. It stands, however, alone among all the divisions, in that no retarding effect has apparently been felt between 1810 and 1814, a constant rate of increase being observable from the start to 1830. This may be due to the minimum susceptibility of the inland counties to the drain and perturbations of warfare. On the other hand, the absence of an acceleration, corresponding with that of the remaining divisions, may in part be regarded as a witness to the lesser effect of internal improvements on these remote counties, and to that extent it is a confession of the extraordinary beneficence of the canal and other allied influences upon those divisions which do exhibit so marked an acceleration.
The effect on, the counties bordering the lateral canals has been treated separately, moreover (in table No. 20), and their density may be seen to have increased very uniformly, and from a much smaller initial density than the whole division, by a much greater rate of increase. Their more westerly location in general is, no doubt, responsible for this phenomenon, as the lateral canals themselves were not constructed until about the end of the period.
We have already called attention to the fact that the rate of increase of Division IV was somewhat diminished in 1830. Again, the diagram will Illustrate the fact that it dropped by about an equal amount in 1835 and similarly in 1810, until during the period 1840 to 1845 it had attained about the average rate of the period 1840 to 1900, or in other words, settled conditions at length prevailed.
Thus, both Divisions III and IV resemble one another in the retardation at the close of the period. They are widely diverse in one particular, however-the prompt recovery in the one case and not in the other-which is worthy of distinct and careful consideration.
It requires no proof to assert that the canal, with its inducements navigation and thus to the manufacturing interests, attracted such interests to its immediate shores and fostered them, on account of their ability to undergo congestion, more largely than the agricultural vocations. It is true, as we shall soon demonstrate, that agriculture experienced a liberal growth where subjected to canal influence, while the railroad seemed to discriminate in favor of the manufacturer and his high-priced products and against the farmer and the bulky produce of the soil. But it is also true that the canal had its largest share of direct influence in the State of New York in building up the infant industries of commerce and manufacturing. Let us ask what would have been toe condition of New York State today if it had been obliged to depend upon agriculture as the principal pursuit of its inhabitants and chief source of its wealth, eliminating from immediate consideration, so far as possible, competition, which has entered our home market from the West. We need only examine the statistics of population as roughly proportional to the progress of a people to answer the query propounded.
The year 1840 is the extent of the period which has been treated in detail. The research has been carried to 1845 in the single instance of Division IV to study the effect of lateral canals. However, data for the year 1900 have been compiled and, as already explained, the average rate of increase for the 60 years has been ascertained and the curves of density continued five years beyond 1840 to illustrate this rate for comparison with previous rates.
Proceeding with this comparison, we observe the wide difference which exists in the rate of increase after 1840 for the several other divisions and that for Division IV up to a moderate density. Until perhaps 1830 or 1835 and an attainment of a density of 30 or 35 per square mile, the growth of this inland section was not so materially different from that of districts given over to commerce and manufacturing, and which were developing under normal conditions. However, having attained its critical density, there remains for it nothing but a slow and painful struggle with gathering forces of contention. Its improved lands could not stand the natural increase of population, not to say invite an influx, and as a result there was a continual thinning of the youth, which was scattered among scenes more promising, or was attracted to urban life. This is true of agricultural regions generally and more especially so in a partially developed, resourceful country, such as our own. Among the older nations the scarcity of facilities for expansion sooner stimulates the inventive genius to utilize to better advantage the limited area available. Even there it may be set down as an economic principle that the commercial and manufacturing industries, admitting of greater concentration, will develop what may be termed a crucial density of population at a much greater absolute figure than the agricultural community. In the latter each new inhabitant who separates unto himself a few acres of land renders the per capita return-other things being equal- just so much smaller. The income per acre may thus be said- expressing relations in mathematical terms-to vary inversely as the density, while, as the single example of New York (Division I) demonstrates, the increasing population of the manufacturing or commercial city tends to provoke still further gain through the better facilities afforded such industry by concentration of capital and division of labor. Again, such a community increases, so to speak, according to some power of the density, or in a geometrical progression. The agricultural district, in short, and the manufacturing or commercial district increase on a somewhat similar basis until the attainment of a certain density, varying in amount with conditions, beyond which point of saturation, shall we say, the agricultural section suffers a retardation and its growth is very slow or merely nominal- it can stand no more-while the sister community of different organization proceeds to the very acme of its existence.
Had the great manufacturing belt along the course of the Erie canal grown up, nourished only by its native fertility of soil, even though the same facile transportation and the same ready market were provided-had this world-famous industrial section, the glory of the " up state ", been consecrated and devoted to plow and scythe in preference to loom and foundry, then, we answer, New York might well have gained like the inland tier during the 60 years anterior to 1900 scarcely more than a single person per square mile on the average, instead of eight persons per square mile, as she actually did during that period. Then had Syracuse and Rochester and Buffalo, yes, and Albany and Utica stood today, thrifty market villages. If the canal had prospered only the farm lands and failed to lend the first and shaping impulse to the upbuilding of the centers of industry, if on the site of the Salt City and the Flour City it had instead nourished farms, however productive, and orchards, though never so flourishing, could our New York have become the Empire State, to hold for so long a supremacy among the sister states, to breathe the spirit of industry and commerce in a measure tantamount to the wildest dreams of her far-sighted pioneers?
In order to present, in compact and terse form, some of the most distinctive observations to which our study of local population in the period under consideration has led us, plate No. III has been prepared. To reduce the data already obtained to the desired terms, the lengths of the several divisions and subdivisions were first ascertained to be roughly as follows: Subdivision II- A 270 miles; Subdivision II-B, 310 miles; Subdivisions III-A and III-B, 232 miles ; and Division IV, 225 miles. From these figures and areas given in the tables the average widths of the several belts were approximately computed. Of the A and B belts one-half of each was assumed to lie south of the canal. If the average densities of population for any year, already determined for the several sections, were assumed to prevail at the middle of these strips to the southward of the canal, and in addition if Division IV were regarded as a third strip with a known density midway of its width, then a good idea could be had of the variation of the population in crossing the state from the Pennsylvania line to the canal. This treatment, pursued for both eastern and western divisions and for one census before and one after the construction of the canal, results in the diagram of plate No. III. That diagram shows the extent to which the direct local influence of the waterway extended, at least on our basis. Exactly how many miles from its shores this might be, is a matter of judgment in the interpretation of the curves. Apparently it is notice able for ten miles or so in the East and possibly fifteen in the West. The diagram also exhibits the transformation which over took the immediate margin of the canal in the West, especially as compared with the settled conditions in the East prevailing both before and after the construction days. The diagram only summarizes and verifies data heretofore discussed and presents them so forcibly as to furnish a fitting conclusion to our study of the effect of the artificial waterway on the population of the state.
We proceed now to a discussion of the other statistics compiled, in which we omit Division IV for the sake of brevity, considering only the first three divisions.
The data of the alien population are of extraordinary interest because the State of New York more than trebled its percentage of aliens between 1820 and 1835. The change of condition is thus more marked in this than in any other respect of which we treat and the question of distribution of the new class of population assumes commanding proportions.
In nearly all respects, as is to be expected. Division I, New York City, leads the several sections in growth, that is, in absolute increase of per capita figures, so far as the present statistical resume indicates. Exceptions occur, but principally in the case of agricultural statistics. When, however, gains are considered in percentages of the original figures, the order of standing is materially, different and is often reversed. We have already remarked and cannot too strongly insist that neither system of treatment is wholly fair as a basis of comparison. Absolute increase of per capita figures may be very slight, comparatively, in the small district which has really doubled or quadrupled its interests. On the other hand, if mere percentage figures, based on original data, are adopted, the installation of a single relatively large industry in a region hitherto undeveloped in that branch may seem to indicate that this whole region has developed in a phenomenal manner, and would be unfair to the district given extensively to a like industry, yet whose periodic gain can be but a small percentage of its vast interests. This feature would be apparent in a comparison of New York, as Division I, with the several other divisions in relation to their alien statistics. In actual increase of aliens per 100 of the population Division I ranks first, being from 1.5 to 5 times greater than the other divisions and subdivisions; but, on the basis of percentage-increase over the initial figures. Division I is eclipsed by all the remaining divisions (though not by Sub division II-A), the percentage-gain in numbers being from 6 to 7 times as great for Subdivision III-A as for Division I.
That from 4 per cent of its population, the aliens increased to more than 10 per cent in the 15 years from 1820 to 1836 indicates, however, that the city had, during this period, taken a long stride towards that cosmopolitan, character which it now possesses. Even to the present time the percentage of alien population in the entire state has risen to little more than the figures for the percentage in New York City in 1840. The metropolis was thus becoming a center for the alien population not only of this state but of all America, and the reason for this is not far to seek.
We have presented evidence to show that the commercial prestige, both domestic and foreign, passed at the time of building the Erie canal from Philadelphia to New York, that the superior inland communications of the latter supplied return cargoes for the transatlantic trade and attracted thereby the European lines. With the foreign vessels transferred to New York came also the foreign immigrants as a matter of course, and for the further good and sufficient reason that the metropolis, as we have said already, was the "Gateway to the Interior"-that rich interior which with its surfeit of resources was the ultimate objective of a large proportion of the newcomers. If these immigrants yearned for the crowded conditions of their home countries, they were best contented to remain in New York. If they sought communication with kinsmen or clients who had gone in land they established themselves in New York. If, going inland themselves, they still desired to maintain ready connection with foreign shores. New York City was the principal intermediary between them and the great terminals of Europe. In any case the metropolis became their rendezvous and profited accordingly. Thus, while in contrast Philadelphia is today the distinctively American city of the East, containing the largest percentage of native-born inhabitants. New York, shorn of its foreign population, would sink, startling as the fact may seem, almost to a position of mediocrity. In proof whereof, compare the native population of the two great cities from the 1890 census and it will be found that on this basis the New York of this recent day is scarcely twelve per cent larger than Philadelphia. So many nations have from the first participated in the upbuilding of our metropolis that it has always savored of racial incongruities, but the foundation of its real cosmopolitanism may be traced, thus, back to the acquisition of the foreign trade in the early years of the last century.
Referring to the curves of plate No. IV, it will be seen that in both Divisions II and III the percentage of unnaturalized alien population in 1820 was virtually insignificant, less than one percent in each case, and that in all the subdivisions this percentage diminished as the distance from the coast increased, presumably owing to the fact that the immigrants lingered, at least until naturalized, in more thickly settled portions and likewise those nearest to the point of disembarkation, while it was the natives, thoroughly schooled in the peculiarities of the land, the hardships of the soil and, perchance, the treachery of the aborigines, who ventured to a greater extent on the frontier settlements. This distribution might perhaps be accounted for in part on the less plausible ground that, if there were foreign traders, they would easily escape emuneration as transients or from ignorance of there whereabouts. The extensive acquaintance of western New York developed by the military operations of 1812-14 doubtless also conduced to native occupation rather more than alien. However that may be, it is significant that only fifteen years later, in 1835, the ranks of Divisions II and III in this respect are seen to be reversed. The growth in numbers of aliens had kept pace with the increase of population in Division II, but it also more than kept up with the western section with the wonderful increase of the canal counties. The glitter of prosperity and fascination of the opening of a new and rich country, with its unexploited opportunities, attracted them inland.
Still, as table No. 16 will indicate, the inhabitants of the state were in 1855, 64 per cent of them, born in New York, and 73 per cent were of American birth. The fact that the eastern part of New York supplied a large proportion of those who settled the western lands, first of our own and then of other states, is, by such figures, reiterated authoritatively. Of the other Americans contributing to our up building, the sturdy New Englanders to the east of us, in conformity to the western movement of population, constituted the largest part. The local history of the middle of the state abundantly testifies that, "for thirty-five years after the Revolution," to use the language of a well-known writer, "the great immigration was from New England." Our countrymen have been our advance guards in the progress of settlement over the middle and into the western states, while the greater proportion of the European influx has followed after the example was once set and the way made easy. It was when our extraordinary prosperity became well known and the resources of the land were rumored far and wide, that the aliens began to flock to our shores; and the earliest years of the canal mark the point of turning as nearly as any brief period can mark so vast a movement in the evolution of history.
Not only did the canal induce activity of business and furnish opportunity for obtaining a fresh start in life and thus operate to attract the alien population, but, from the construction days on, it supplied immediate occupation for an army of laborers, in whose ranks the humble emigrant from foreign shores found employment suited to his capacity and rich in its returns as compared with that he had lately forsaken. Little by little the day was drawing near when he should became a chief reliance of the American public in its projection of great public works. To how small an extent this condition prevailed when the canal work began, however, may be inferred from the following sentence, taken from the Canal Commissioners' Report of January, 1819, the year in which the first section of the canal was opened: "A very few of the contractors are foreigners who have recently arrived in this country; but far the greater part of them are native farmers, mechanics, merchants and professional men, residing in the vicinity of the line; and three-fourths of all the laborers were born among us." Obviously, when foreigners constituted so small a proportion of the laboring class of the lowest order, their percentage of the whole population must be almost insignificant, as indeed our study has already indicated.
Reverting to that study, we find that figures for Subdivision A reveal something of a paradox. The relations of that subdivision in 1835 for the eastern and western parts of the state are the reverse of those established for 1820, and for the divisions at large in 1836. Proceeding from the coast along this belt, the percentage of unnaturalized alien population somewhat diminishes throughout, as in 1820. This signifies that the alien growth has been, relative to the increase of the total population, much greater in the border towns of Division II than in the rear towns, and in fact the percentage of alien population of the rear towns has fallen in the fifteen-year period from six-tenths to three-tenths that of the corresponding A belt. In the B belt of the western division during the same time the percentage of alien population has also dropped from once to five-tenths that of the A belt, thus indicating a similarity of relative development for eastern and western sections in this particular. Yet, when it is observed that the two western belts started on the same basis, each having, in 1820, three-tenths per cent of alien population, it will be seen that there is implied a much more favorable record for the B belt in the West