THE PIONEERS OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY 25 



had secured no capital at all. In the settlement of the west 

 and the development of its resources, men were even less 

 inclined to risk their capital. I have found no evidence that 

 any eastern capital was invested in this way before 1815. 

 The settler moved out into the wilderness with his own 

 little stock of household goods, farm implements, and 

 cattle. No merchant with large credit in the east stood ready 

 to advance supplies of food and other necessaries to him, while 

 he devoted his labor to the production of a crop to be sent to 

 market, nor was he assisted to clear his land and prepare 

 it for cultivation by loans of cash from individuals or mort- 

 gage companies. Of course there were banks in the new states ; 

 but most of them were mere paper money machines, with no 

 capital at all, and those that had a real instead of a nominal 

 capital had to depend more upon local than upon eastern 

 supplies. 



After 1815 the situation began to change. As the settle- 

 ment of the west took on a different character with the im- 

 provement of its economic condition, enterprises designed to 

 promote its development received much more attention from 

 the business men of the country. Not only was the utility of 

 such works to the public more clearly perceived, but the 

 possibility of their yielding a profit to the investor appeared 

 less remote; and, as a result, many more such projects came 

 into existence. The commercial cities of the seaboard were 

 the first to be affected. They had long been interested in 

 western trade, and some of them had made efforts to improve 

 their communications with the west; but the trade before 

 1815 was comparatively small, as we have seen, and, with the 

 exception of a canal of little value from the Hudson to Lake 

 Ontario and some little improvement in the roads from Phila- 

 delphia and Baltimore to the Ohio river, nothing had been 

 accomplished. They now took up the matter in earnest. 

 New York was the first to act, and in two years after the 

 close of the war was ready to break ground on a canal to 

 connect the Hudson with Lake Erie, and another to connect 

 it with Lake Champlain. Virginia established a board of 

 internal improvements in 1816, and began the James river 

 & Kanawha canal in 1820; Pennsylvania commenced the 



