612. Survey of commerce, 1815-1860.—In contrast with the period ending in 1815, the next period which we study, extending from 1815 to 1860, was marked by the slowness and the comparative steadiness in the growth of foreign commerce. An indication of the course of trade in this period is given by the following table, in which the figures represent millions of dollars.

Though the statistics of selected years can give only a rough picture of commercial development, the figures here given suggest the striking features of our trade in this period with sufficient accuracy. For about twenty years after 1815 the foreign commerce of the country was nearly stationary, or actually declined. Not until 1835 did our exports reach again the mark attained in the year 1807. Towards the end of the period, however, they showed increasing strength; the figures for 1860 show the upper limit which they attained, but for some years previously they had been approaching the sum of three hundred millions.

613. Reasons for slowness of growth.—The reasons for these changes in our foreign trade must be sought both abroad and at home. Our prosperity in the preceding period had been due mainly to the European wars. With the return of peace the states of Europe escaped from their commercial dependence on the United States. Our domestic exports of breadstuffs and provisions declined as Europe returned to the policy of protecting the domestic food supply; and our foreign exports declined even more rapidly when we lost our privileged position of the great neutral carrier, and our merchants had to face not only the active competition but also the adverse legislation of other countries. Through most of the period the annual foreign exports of the country were about twenty million dollars in value. Not until near the end of the period did conditions change to our advantage. The repeal of the English Corn Laws in 1846, as was noted in a previous chapter, marked a departure in commercial policy, which offered new openings to American export industries.

614. Absorption of the national energy in territorial expansion.—At home, moreover, the people of the United States were occupied in this period with tasks which turned their thoughts and interests to a large extent away from foreign trade. It was a period of great territorial expansion. A comparison of maps indicating the distribution of population shows that extraordinary changes occurred in the interval between 1810 and 1860. At the former date the people were still gathered mainly along the Atlantic seaboard, face to face with Europe; and most of the territory west of the Appalachian mountains was still left to the Indians. The center of population was not far from Washington, D. C. In 1860, on the other hand, the center of population was near Chillicothe, Ohio. This change indicates an enormous movement of population westward. The country extending west to the Mississippi river had, by 1860, been covered almost continuously with settlements; many people had spread out on the great plains facing the Rocky Mountains; and the population on the Pacific Coast was sufficient to entitle that district to the two States California and Oregon.

615. Relative decline in the importance of foreign trade.—The expansion of population, necessary as it was to the development of the country, proved in its early stages to contribute comparatively little to the growth of foreign commerce. The growth of our trade did not keep pace with the growth of population. While the share of the average inhabitant in foreign trade was over $30 in 1800, it was little over $20 in 1860, and ranged between $10 and $15 through much of the intervening period.

It seems as if the people of the country, after the close of the war of 1812, had turned their gaze away from Europe, the continent which they had for centuries regarded as the source of civilization, and had fixed their attention on their own continent, with the determination to make its resources satisfy their needs, so far as they were able. Many of the settlers in the western country led lives of extreme simplicity, unable to find a market for the surplus which the fertile soil returned to them, and consequently forced to restrict their purchases of foreign goods to the bare minimum.

616. Importance of the problem of transportation in this period.—As the American people expanded and occupied territory far beyond the limits of their original settlements, the question of transportation became one of increasing importance. The early colonists had evaded rather than solved the problem of transportation, by choosing for settlement districts connected with the sea by short water routes, and by renouncing, in large part, the attempt at intercommunication by land. The problem could no longer be set aside, as the people spread out in the great interior valley. The resources of the West could be of no advantage to the people of the East, and could contribute nothing to the foreign commerce of the country, unless means were found to bring the wares to market with a profit.

In the remaining sections of this chapter, therefore, we shall study the development of the means of transportation in this period, that we may be better able to appreciate the details of the export and import trade, described in following chapters.

617. The turnpike era.—Even in the earlier period, following 1789, the condition of the common roads was felt to be intolerable, and a movement for their reform set in. Stock companies were chartered, to improve the more important roads, and were allowed to secure a return on their investment by charging toll on traffic—so much for a one-horse cart, so much for a two-horse wagon, etc. Hundreds of turnpike companies were chartered in the different States, and in Pennsylvania alone over 2,000 miles of improved roads had been constructed by them at the close of the first quarter of the century.

Until better means of transportation were provided the turnpikes were important channels of trade. They united the districts of the interior with the coast and with navigable rivers, and made possible throughout the year a freight traffic which formerly had been restricted to the sleighing season. A great highway, like the Mohawk and Hudson turnpike, running from Schenectady to Albany, was studded so thickly with taverns that the traveler was never out of sight of the swinging sign-boards.

618. Failure of the turnpikes to meet the country’s demands.—The success of the turnpikes stimulated the national government to construct a road from Cumberland, on the Potomac River in the western part of Maryland, to Wheeling on the Ohio River. This road was designed to furnish the connection, that was so keenly desired, between the districts lying on either side of the mountains; and was for many years an important route for passenger travel. The expense of wagon transportation, however, prevented a great growth of freight traffic on this or on other land routes of considerable length. The cost of moving freight over the roads of this period has been estimated roughly at ten cents per ton-mile, and this cost prohibited the movement of ordinary freight to a great distance. The turnpike, therefore, did not solve the problem of transportation for the country, and turnpikes declined as better means of transportation were brought into use. About the middle of the century the idea of building roads of wood took strong hold of the minds of men, and plank roads were constructed with great vigor for a few years; but the idea proved impracticable and led to no important results.

619. Importance of the western waterways.—Vastly more important in its effects on the internal and foreign commerce of the country was the development of the means of water transportation. It has been said of North America that no other continent, with perhaps the exception of South America, offers such excellent natural facilities for intercommunication as is furnished by the system of rivers and lakes lying east of the Rocky Mountains. Early in the history of our western settlements traders used the rivers flowing into the Mississippi to secure connection with the market at New Orleans, then under Spanish rule; and the Louisiana purchase of 1803 gave the United States control of the river route from source to mouth. A line of packet boats plying between Pittsburg and Cincinnati was started in 1794, and many flatboats were employed to float cargoes down the Mississippi. The swift current of that river, however, made ascending navigation difficult. The crews of the flatboats had to return home by land, going generally on foot through nearly a thousand miles of wilderness, and using about six months on the round trip. The stream could be ascended only in small boats propelled by poles and sails. Though the freight rate down the river was as low as one cent per ton-mile, the charge in the other direction was about six times as much. The need of some better means of propelling boats against the current was strongly felt; and long before the steamboat had been made a practical success the prediction was common that it would be developed to serve the needs of commerce on our western rivers.

620. Invention and application of the steamboat.—The steamboat, like many other instruments of technical progress, was not the invention of a single man, but was developed by contributions from several different sources. Before the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1789) Fitch and Rumsey had constructed steamboats which maintained a speed of four to seven miles an hour against the current of the Potomac and Delaware rivers; and these successful experiments were followed by many others in this country and in Europe. Robert Fulton, therefore, scarcely deserves the credit commonly accorded him for invention, but his service was not the less important. He combined the ideas and inventions of others, and transferred the steamboat from the sphere of technical experiment to that of practical business operation. The Clermont, which started from New York August 7, 1807, and arrived in Albany, 150 miles distant, in 32 hours, was the first steamboat in the world which maintained a regular and continuous traffic in the public service.

621. Development of river transportation.—Within a few years of Fulton’s success steamboats were introduced on the western rivers, and after an interval of trial proved their capacity for meeting the conditions. In ten years (1817) a steamboat made the trip from New Orleans to Louisville in 25 days instead of the three months consumed by barges; after another ten years (1827) a steamboat made the trip in little over a week. The steamboats did more at first to reduce the time of voyages than to reduce the rates of transportation, but the cost of carriage declined gradually as the means of transportation were improved. The following figures, giving the number of steamboats employed on the rivers of the West, show how rapidly steam navigation increased in importance: 1818, 20; 1829, 200; 1842, 450; 1848, 1,200. Size and carrying capacity were growing also, and it is said that in 1847 the steam tonnage of the Mississippi Valley exceeded that of the whole British Empire. “Pittsburg city, the Pennsylvania great western emporium,” as it was styled in a book published in 1830, grew great by steamer traffic, and other cities, as Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, flourished under the same influence. The most obvious effect of the extension of steam navigation was the growth of internal trade, especially that between North and South. This trade, however, was indirectly of great importance to our foreign commerce, for it enabled the people of the South to apply themselves almost exclusively to the growth of export products, like cotton, relying on other parts of the country for food and manufactures.

622. Demand for canals in this period.—While the river system offered great opportunities for developing the resources of the West, it was necessarily incomplete in the connections it afforded with other parts of the country. It left gaps, to be filled by other means of transportation, between three important sections of country, drained respectively by the Mississippi and its tributaries, by the Great Lakes, and by the rivers flowing into the Atlantic. The need of bridging these gaps in the transportation system was felt acutely in the second quarter of the century, as population spread in the interior of the country, and was first met, with some degree of adequacy, by the construction of canals.

There had been many projects for canals in the colonial period, and some short stretches were constructed before 1800. People contented themselves in general, however, with the natural waterways, and sought merely to regulate their channels and to regulate the flow of water by means of dams. The era of activity in canal construction began after the close of the second war with England, in 1815.

623. The Erie Canal (1825), and others.—The easiest route by which a canal might be carried through the Appalachian mountain ridge lay in the State of New York, along the valley of the Mohawk River. The advantages of this route were recognized in the colonial period, and the advisability of utilizing them was felt especially during and after the war of 1812, when the political danger of leaving the country without means of intercommunication became apparent. The construction of a canal along this route was begun in 1817, and in 1825 the first boat passed from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. Other canals were constructed to connect Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario with the Erie Canal, and further south, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania especially, the people entered actively into the work of canal building.

Further west, canals were constructed to unite Lake Erie with the Ohio River, and Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River (1848), and just before the close of the period which we are studying the St. Mary’s Falls Canal (1855) opened the passage from Lake Superior to the other lakes to boats with a draft of twelve feet.

624. Commercial benefit of the canals.—The canals effected a reduction in transportation charges which placed trade on an entirely new footing along the lines that they covered. In contrast with the cost of ten cents per ton-mile, on the turnpikes, we find a cost of movement of about one cent, and tolls which brought the total charge to about three cents. The tolls varied on different articles and were not the same on different canals, but the total charges represented a great saving in transportation even in the early days of the canals, and tended to grow less with the passage of time. The crops which grew in abundance on the fertile lands of western New York had gone begging before the construction of the Erie Canal, and the inhabitants had been able to purchase few manufactured or foreign articles. A letter from the Genesee country (east of Buffalo), written in 1799, said that grain was so low in price as to be scarcely worth the raising, while European goods were very dear; it took the produce of one acre to buy a pair of breeches. Conditions had improved somewhat before 1825, with the extension of turnpikes and with the increase in the navigation of the Susquehanna River, but the Erie Canal brought nevertheless a new era of prosperity to this district, and first made its rich resources available for consumption in the New York market and for extensive export.

625. Canals less important than rivers for distant shipments.—Important as were the canals, their influence in this period was local rather than national. Managers were slow to adopt the practice of reducing rates on a long haul, to stimulate distant traffic, and the canals served mainly local needs. We read, it is true, of cotton being carried from Alabama to Philadelphia by canal, and of wheat reaching New York over the Erie route from Ohio and Indiana. It is noteworthy, however, that even in 1840 only one seventh of the freight carried on New York canals came from outside the State. The river system of the Mississippi proved still to be the most valuable outlet for the products of the great interior valley, and about 1850 the value of the wares which it carried to the coast was double that reaching the seaboard by the Hudson River and its canals. A line drawn east and west through the center of Ohio marked the commercial watershed between the competing routes; north of that line practically all goods were shipped by lake and canal, while south of it only articles like tobacco, wool, and manufactured wares were sent by that route, and most products were shipped by way of the Mississippi. Indiana and Illinois showed a still more decided tendency to the river route. In the reverse direction, however, the northern route, by canal and lake, had the advantage, and the movement to the interior by this route was double that ascending the Mississippi.

626. Demand for further improvement met by railroads.—Reviewing the substance of preceding sections, we find that of the new means of transportation adopted to develop the resources of the country and to make them available in internal trade and foreign commerce, none had yet proved adequate to meet the conditions. Transportation on the turnpikes was too expensive to permit the carriage of bulky freight over great distances. River navigation, valuable as it was in opening the interior to commerce, still was tied fast to channels cut by nature; the rivers must at least be supplemented by feeders and by connections across the country. Canals were of great service as supplements to the rivers, but they too, were restricted in their course by the conditions set by nature, and, like the rivers, could be used in northern districts during only part of the year. What the country needed was a means of transportation available throughout the year, free to follow the paths toward which the interests of merchants most inclined, and cheap enough to encourage the exchange of common articles between points widely separated. The need was met, in the course of time, by the development of railroads.

627. Early American railroads little used for freight traffic.—The operation of steam railroads began in this country and in England at almost the same time; the Baltimore and Ohio railroad was in course of construction in 1830, when the Liverpool and Manchester line was opened. In this early period, however, the railroad was a much more valuable instrument in the Old World than in the New. In England and other European countries the railroad found great manufacturing and shipping centers already established, with large volumes of valuable freight to be carried short distances; the task before it was comparatively easy. Conditions were somewhat similar along our eastern seaboard, but in the United States in general the railroad was wanted to develop agricultural districts with a comparatively sparse population, separated from industrial and shipping centers by hundreds of miles. The traffic offered by these districts could not bear the high charges imposed by railroads in their early period; these charges greatly exceeded those paid for canal transportation and seem in some cases to have equaled those paid for carriage on turnpikes. Aside from coal and cotton the early American railroads carried comparatively little freight; and they played but a slight part in the development of commerce.

628. Extension of the railroad system in the West after 1850.—In 1850 there were still few railroads west of the Allegheny Mountains. In contrast with nearly seven thousand miles of line in the States along the eastern coast the States of the upper Mississippi Valley could show little over one thousand. Not a mile of railroad had been built in Iowa and Minnesota, and there was no railroad connection with the East in all the country west of the Mississippi and north of the State of Missouri.

Conditions were ready at last for the extension of the railroad system through the interior of the country and the West saw many thousand miles of line constructed in its territory in the decade ending in 1860. The New York Central, the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and other lines united the roads of the interior with the East; many roads were built from Lakes Erie and Michigan to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers; while another set of roads extended north from the Gulf of Mexico, aiming to attract the traffic of the great valley southwards.

629. Effect of the improvements in transportation, especially marked in the following period.—The commerce of the country got the full benefit of the railroad system only after 1860, when various improvements led to a great reduction in freight rates, and stimulated an immense increase of traffic. The period before the Civil War must be regarded as one of preparation for the great commercial expansion in the period following; the lines were laid, in large part, but men had not learned to make the best use of them. Even before 1860, however, the railroad had become an indispensable instrument to the commerce of the country. While it did not displace other means of transportation, it forced them to improvement, and gave service in forms which they could not supply. There will be little space in the two following chapters to refer to the development of the means of transportation described here, but the student must bear in mind this factor, as contributing always and in very important measure to the growth of the country’s commerce. We may close this summary of the subject by giving an illustration of the effect of transportation on the value of the resources of Ohio; the price of farm produce in that State rose 50 per cent after the completion of the canals, while the railroads appear to have doubled the price of flour, trebled the price of pork, and quadrupled the price of corn.

630. Prosperity of the American merchant marine.—The period from 1815 to 1860, in which the country first grappled successfully with the problem of internal transportation, was also the period in which the American merchant marine reached the pitch of its prosperity. Even after the conclusion of peace in Europe in 1815, which subjected our ships again to the competition of foreign carriers and to the restrictions of other countries, American ship-builders and sailors were able to hold their own; and the period is marked by a great increase in our merchant tonnage. Down to about 1850 the wooden sailing ship was still supreme in its control of the ocean carrying trade. American builders developed the ship to its highest type, the clipper, and led the world in the art of naval construction. Their skill, and the cheapness of good ship timber, more than offset the higher prices which the tariff forced them to pay for materials and equipment such as iron, copper, cordage, and sail-cloth. The officers and crews of American vessels enjoyed an international reputation for their efficiency.

631. Position and prospects of the merchant marine in 1860.—In 1855 the tonnage built in the United States was greater than ever before or since; the California gold discoveries had caused a great increase in the demand for transportation to the Pacific Coast, from which the government excluded foreign vessels, and the Crimean War forced European governments to charter many American vessels for transport service. At the close of the period (1861) the tonnage of the United States, including that engaged in domestic trade, was not far from one third of the total tonnage of the world; the British Empire had slightly over one third; and the tonnage of all other countries grouped together was but little more than our own. Our merchant fleet exceeded by half the amount necessary for the carriage of all our exports and imports, and earned a large revenue from the foreign countries which sought its service.

In one important point, however, the prospects of the American merchant marine were not bright. We were not keeping pace with the peoples of Europe in the construction of steamers for ocean service, and of iron vessels in general. American steamers were not able to win a place of any importance in the foreign carrying trade; and before 1860 a slackening of activity in the building of wooden sailing ships was noticeable.

632. Navigation policy: reforms and restrictions.—The period was marked by the removal of many of the restrictions on foreign shipping which had been a regular feature of government policy in previous centuries. Our ships were burdened at first by heavy dues or by prohibitions in foreign ports, and it was but natural that our government retaliated by taxing foreign ships entering our ports. The disadvantages of this system became apparent as commerce grew in the nineteenth century, and a series of reciprocity treaties removed the former discrimination, and put the ships of all nations on substantially the same footing. The United States held fast, however, to certain features of the old navigation policy. The coastwise trade, which was interpreted to include the trade to the Pacific coast by way of the Isthmus of Panama or around Cape Horn, was reserved absolutely to American vessels; and no vessel could secure American registry unless it had been built in this country. Ships built abroad could not sail under the American flag even though they had been purchased and were owned by citizens of the United States.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. McGregor, *Commercial statistics; J. S. Homans, *Cyclopedia; J. D. B. DeBow, *Industrial resources.

Special Topics.—Hulbert, Historic highways, and more briefly in The paths of inland commerce, New Haven, 1920; E. R. Johnson, Amer. railway, (with references); A. T. Hadley, Railroad trans.; C. F. Adams, Jr., Railroads; U. B. Phillips, History of transportation in the eastern cotton belt to 1860, N. Y., 1908. Shipping: Samuel E. Morison, **Maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860, Boston, 1921; R. D. Paine, *The old merchant marine, New Haven, 1920; A. H. Clark, The clipper ship era, 1843-1869, N. Y., 1910; A. T. Verrill, The real story of the whaler, N. Y., 1916; John H. Morison, History of American steam navigation, N. Y., 1903. River navigation: H. W. Dickinson, Robert Fulton, London, 1913; D. L. Buckman, Old steamboat days, N. Y., 1907; W. E. Verplanck and M. W. Collyer, The sloops of the Hudson, N. Y., 1908; H. M. Chittenden, History of early steamboat navigation on the Missouri River, N. Y., 1903. Canals: H. W. Hill, Historical review of waterways and canal construction in New York State, Buffalo, 1908, (Buffalo Hist. Soc., vol. 12); N. E. Whitford, History of the canal system of the State of New York, Albany, 1906, 2 vol., (Supplement to Rep. of State Engineer for 1904-05); E. J. Benton, The Wabash trade route in the development of the Old Northwest, Baltimore, 1903. The West: K. Coman, ** Economic beginnings of the Far West, 2 vol., N. Y., 1912; R. G. Thwaites, The fur trade in Wisconsin, 1812-1825, Madison, Wisc., 1912; I. Lippincott, History of manufactures in the Ohio valley to 1860, N. Y., 1914.