482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



eral culture must be reckoned among the assets of this state ; its dozens 

 of small colleges made it possible for thousands to obtain a training 

 they otherwise would not have received. This inheritance of the better 

 eastern culture, which was stimulated and nurtured by the natural ad- 

 vantages of the region their ancestors were geographically guided into 

 for settlement, accounts for the position won by Ohioans in public life 

 as well as in arts and letters. 



The geographical development of any state is usually a complicated 

 problem. Some light, however, is generally thrown on the question by 

 accounting for its particular city that leads all other centers of popula- 

 tion. Sometimes the metropolis shifts ; if so, a geographic law is always 

 involved. For several decades Ohio was an agricultural community, 

 pure and simple. Wealth increased slowly because there were no ready 

 markets for disposing of products. The first important outlet for farm 

 products came with the introduction of steamboats on the Ohio River 

 in 1810. Naturally the river town that was the most accessible to the 

 agricultural areas became the shipping port. Cincinnati was the earliest 

 clearing house for products that Ohio had to sell. Buying and selling 

 are correlative transactions. A ready market stimulated a desire for 

 things that were counted luxuries in the primitive days, consequently 

 Cincinnati became a manufacturing town, and ever since it has been the 

 leading manufacturing city of Ohio. 



Until recent years there has never been any doubt as to which city 

 was the metropolis of Ohio. In the vicinity of what is now Cincinnati 

 a settlement, the second in the state, was made in Nov ember, 1788; the 

 next month another handful of men built their cabins on the north 

 bank of the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Licking; this became Cin- 

 cinnati, whose location assured its growth; on the river, the shipping 

 facilities were considered excellent, and, buttressed by the river flats, 

 the farming lands of the Miami valleys, their development into a city of 

 trade and manufacturing, was speedy and permanent. Before the mid- 

 dle of last century it was stated that : 



The trade of Cincinnati embraces the country from the Ohio to the lake, 

 north and south; and from the Scioto to the Wabash, east and west. The 

 Ohio River line, in Kentucky for fifty miles down, and as far up as the Virginia 

 line, make their purchases here. Its manufactures are sent into the upper and 

 lower Mississippi country. 2 



Cincinnati attained city rank in 1820; during the next decade it 

 became the eighth city in size in the union; from 1830 to 1850 it 

 ranked sixth; by 1880 it had dropped again to eighth place, and at the 

 last census to the tenth place. 



The greatness of Cincinnati and the assurance of even marvelous 

 progress in the years to come was prophesied by the editor of the 

 Toledo Blade, in 1841 : 



2 Henry Howe, "Historical Collections of Ohio," Cincinnati, 1847, p. 221. 



