A. L. Bishop — Tlie State Worhs of Pennsylvania. 169 



But what was even more significant was the fact that the spread 

 of cotton culture into the southwest had now given to the states 

 of the northwest their first important market. These two events 

 happening about the same time furnished the necessary conditions 

 for a speedy development. A lively trade now sprang up between 

 the farmers of the northwest and the southern cotton planters. 

 The absence of complete aud reliable statistics makes it impossible 

 accurately to determine its extent, but they are sufficient to estab- 

 lish the belief that it was large, and also that it grew up almost 

 entirely after 1815.* 



The states on the Atlantic seaboard were soon engaged in a keen 

 rivalry for the trade of the West. Since commercial expansion or 

 obliteration depended upon success or failure in this contest, their 

 capital cities entered upon the struggle with tenacity of purpose. It 

 is scarcely necessary to mention the fact that the outcome must 

 depend upon the question as to which one of these states could 

 provide the quickest and cheapest route of transportation. Hence 

 those who had long advocated such improvements soon found them- 

 selves in the midst of a popular movement for better transporta- 

 tion facilities to the "West. New York took the lead and on July 

 4th, 1817, the first excavations were made for a canal between 

 Eome and Utica. In October, 1825, the through line was com- 

 pleted and the city of 'New York was united with the Great 

 Lakes by a stretch of navigable waters via the Hudson river and 

 the Erie canal. f 



its tributaiy waters, and of the immediate advantages to be derived to us by 

 connecting those waters with the Susquehanna, by means of the Allegheny 

 river, I will state that there will be thirty steamboats this year [1818] on 

 the Mississippi and its tributary streams: 594 flat-bottomed boats and 

 300 barges arrived at New Orleans from the upper country in the year end- 

 ing October 1st, 1816; 1500 flat-bottomed boats and 500 barges, ditto, in the 

 year to October 1, 1817. A large proportion of this came from the waters 

 which could be miited with the Susquehanna, and of course would come to 

 the Philadelphia market." — Breck, Sketch of Internal Improvements already 

 made by Pennsylvania, p. 76. 



* Callender, State Enterprise and Corporations, in Q. J. Ec, xvii, 1902-03, 

 p. 128. 



f Soon after the completion of the Erie canal the state supplemented it 

 with an extensive system of canals reaching many parts of the state. Note 

 that in New York the through line to the West was built first. 



