production and consumption. 
9 
and rapidly settle the central and western portions of the state, but 
that it would stimulate the settlement and growth of the great 
west, and he declared in a speech at a jollification after the canal, 
^as completed, that within 50 years from that date Buffalo (which 
was then but an Indian trading station), and Chicago (which was 
then but a fort), would contain a population each of 100,000 
souls. • This was the subject of newspaper squibs at the time, 
wherein Clinton was styled an enthusiast and zealot, yet that pre¬ 
diction was more than fulfilled within 40 years. 
The bare undertaking of the work so stimulated industry and 
diffused population, as well as encouraged emigration, that New 
York arose from the third in rank to the first, five years before 
water was let into the canal. The progress of New York after that 
event, was simply magical. She had secured for all time the 
monopoly of western commerce. She had put herself commer¬ 
cially en rapport with the already prepared farms of the great 
west, and sent her sons out to till them. 
Where the center of trade and commerce is, there will also be the 
center of dollars , and when the two are combined, the magnetic at¬ 
traction becomes too strong for resistance. Boston, Philadelphia 
and Baltimore, all the strong competitors of New York in the bid 
for commercial power, were not long in discovering the fact that the 
ancient Dutch town' at the mouth of the Hudson, had secured 
advantages, which they must duplicate, or forever resign their 
pretensions. Each one of these towns had the same ocean to 
float its foreign commerce. Boston had by far the most tonnage 
afloat. Philadelphia and Baltimore enjoyed more productive 
adjacent farming lands, and their closer proximity to the coal 
fields of Pennsylvania and the Cumberland, gave them hopes for 
better facilities for manufacturing, but still the great fact existed 
that the Alleghanies and the Cumberland mountains stood mena¬ 
cingly as alpine barriers between the Quaker and the Monu¬ 
mental cities and the Ohio and Mississippi basin. Philadelphia 
lavished her millions, with the commonwealth of Pennsylvania at 
her back, in the vain endeavor to lift her commerce with the west 
over the Alleghanies by canal; but she was compelled to yield, 
as the dilapidated ditch along the banks of the Susquehanna and 
Juniata sadly testifies. For long years she was compelled to ship 
