190 Singing Valleys 



on the richness of the soil, but on the distance to the nearest 

 mill, or to a canal which led to one. 



It was the urgent need to get the corn to the mills that set 

 Ohio to digging a network of canals. What effect these had on 

 the development of the state is shown by the fact that during 

 the decade between 1840 and 1850 the population of those 

 counties through which the canals passed increased 400 per- 

 cent. The Ohio canals turned the tide of Ohio corn to New 

 York, and away from New Orleans. 



The drivers of the Conestoga wagons who had made big 

 profits carting eastern goods to the western market and bring- 

 ing farm produce from the midwest over the Alleghenies to 

 the towns in the east, cursed the canals and the men who dug 

 them. At the taverns on the roads they passed the jug of 

 Monongahela whiskey around the table and drank 



Bad luck to the man who invented the plan, 

 And beggared us waggoners, and every other man. 



It seems impossible to tell the story of the rise of the Amer- 

 ican people without referring again and again to that Scotch- 

 Irish strain which stiffened the national backbone. 



An Ulster immigrant, Thomas McCormick by name, set- 

 tled in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in 1735. His son, 

 Robert, took the trail southward into the Valley of Virginia. 

 His son, another Robert, born in Rockbridge County, was a 

 blacksmith with a turn for invention. He made at his forge 

 several devices for use in grist mills, and worked at a crude 

 threshing machine and a horse-drawn reaper. On the last two 

 he was helped by his son, Cyrus Hall McCormick. Together, 

 on their two-thousand-acre farm, father and son dreamed of 

 machinery which would supplement manpower. Machinery 

 which would enable man to conquer more and more acres 

 of the waiting wild land, and which would pile up golden 

 harvests to be made into bread. 



A little more than ten years after Jethro Wood patented 

 his iron plow, Cyrus Hall McCormick came along with a 



