24 G. S. CALLENDER 



this capital from being secured and applied to the various 

 projects of the time by the ordinary agency of private enter- 

 prise, the corporation. We will take up each of these matters 

 in turn. 



The effect which the economic changes described above 

 had upon the demand for capital may best be shown by com- 

 paring the chief enterprises in which capital was invested before 

 1815 with those that arose after that date. Demand for capi- 

 tal in any community means the existence of numerous oppor- 

 tunities for its profitable investment. Such opportunities had 

 always existed in America in sufficient numbers to absorb all 

 the capital that could be obtained, and interest had been high; 

 but these opportunities had been confined for the most part to 

 enterprises connected with commerce, to mercantile transac- 

 tions, banking, insurance, shipping, and, to a small extent, 

 manufactures. The people had not found it profitable to risk 

 much capital in enterprises designed to promote the settlement 

 of the country and the exploitation of its resources. The prin- 

 cipal ways in which capital is applied to a new country for this 

 purpose is in constructing works of transportation, canals or 

 railroads, and in supplying advances of goods through com- 

 mercial credit or making loans of cash to settlers to enable 

 them to clear and cultivate the land. In Pennsylvania and 

 the states north of it considerable progress had been made in 

 building turnpike roads during the ten or fifteen years prior 

 to the war. But the improvement of rivers and building of 

 canals, which alone could enable remote regions to send their 

 produce to market, had been almost entirely neglected. 

 Numerous efforts had been made to induce capital to take up 

 this work, but with very little success. Two small canals, one 

 in Massachusetts to connect Boston with the Merrimac river, 

 the other in South Carolina to connect Charleston harbor with 

 the Santee river, were all that had been completed. An im- 

 perfect canal navigation had been opened from the Hudson 

 to Lake Ontario, and the navigation of the Susquehanna, 

 Potomac, and James rivers slightly improved. The capital for 

 these works had been secured with great difficulty ; and many 

 similar projects, like the Delaware & Chesapeake, the Dela- 

 ware & Schuylkill, and the Schuylkill & Susquehanna canals, 



