The Railway Library, 1909. Various
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an important place among the transportation routes of the colonies. It was, however, little more than a narrow wagon path until after the Revolution, and so indistinct was it that travelers frequently wandered off the route. A curious stone post marks the place near the national armory at Springfield, where in 1763 a western Massachusetts merchant lost his way, and set up a guide for other travelers. Even as late as 1795 there were but two stages between Boston and New York, and a week was required for the journey. John Bernard, the English actor, thus described a typical New England road in 1797: "Though far better than in any other quarter of the Union, the frequent jolts and plunges of the vehicle brought it into sad comparison with the bowling-greens of England. Very often we surprised a family of pigs taking a bath in a gully of sufficient compass to admit the coach. As often, such chasms were filled with piles of stones that, at a distance, looked like Indian tumuli. The driver's skill in steering was eminent. I found there were two evils to be dreaded in New England traveling—a clayey soil in wet weather, which, unqualified with gravel, made the road a canal; and a sandy one in summer, which might emphatically be called an enormous insect preserve." Such testimony makes real the difficulties which attended travel over the important routes, and enables one to understand how it could have required Washington nearly two weeks to make the trip from Philadelphia to Cambridge at the outbreak of the Revolution.
AFTER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.
Before the Revolution the subject of road improvement was seldom considered in public assemblies, and the early laws contain few provisions even for common roads. Those who proposed measures for general improvement met with little encouragement. As early as 1690 William Penn suggested the practicability of a waterway from the Schuylkill to the Susquehanna. In 1762 David Rittenhouse of Philadelphia, and Provost Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, proposed a similar project, and made surveys of the route by the Swatara and the Tulpehocken; in 1769 the American Philosophical Society interested itself in a canal survey between Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware, recommending the enterprise to the public. In 1768 Governor Moore of New York projected a canal around the Canajoharie Falls of the Mohawk. But to none of these suggestions was there any active response, for the time was not ripe for such undertakings.
Contributing to the road-making impulse immediately after the war of independence was a newly awakened community interest. At the time of the adoption of the constitution there were two distinct classes in the United States: a highly localized class of the seaboard and of the inland trade routes, and a widely distributed agricultural class. American commerce was largely confined to American products. England, France and Holland monopolized the trade of their colonies, and in other ways favored their own merchantmen in foreign trade. Such being the condition, our commercial advantage lay in the development of our own resources. The settlement of the Middle Atlantic states and of the valleys of the interior only served to strengthen the interdependence of the people, who found a common interest in internal improvements. To the agriculturist, cheap conveyance to market was a prerequisite to profitable industry. To the commercial class on the seaboard and on the leading trade routes, inland improvement was at that time no less important.
FIRST ERA OF ROAD MAKING.
There was a notable change in the popular attitude toward road making after the war, and all public-spirited men now saw in better means of communication an instrument for the establishing of American supremacy over the western continent. Legislatures made generous appropriations for highways. An active migration set in from New York and northern Pennsylvania to the West. In 1738 the first regular mail service was established between Albany and Schenectady. In 1793 the horse path from Albany to the Connecticut valley was widened to a wagon road. Like activity in road making was shown throughout southern and western New York, middle Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
In 1785 Pennsylvania appropriated $10,000 to lay out a road from a point near the mouth of the Juanita to Pittsburgh. In 1786 an act was passed appropriating $1,500 "to view and open a road from Lehigh Water Gap to Wyoming," which was the first road into that valley from the Delaware. In 1787 another road was authorized between the Susquehanna and the Delaware. Activity in opening communication with the interior increased until by 1791 the movement had assumed proportions to be styled a "mania." By a single act over $150,000 was appropriated for the improvement of eleven rivers and over a score of roads in different parts of the state. Other acts were passed at the same session, granting charters and appropriations for various transportation enterprises. New York in 1797 authorized the raising by lotteries of $45,000 for the improvement of various roads throughout the state. As if by common impulse, all the states now became interested in road improvement, and congress was asked to aid by this means the opening up of the resources of the interior.
BEGINNING OF THE CANALS AND PIKES.
The low cost of water transportation had early directed popular attention to canals as a means of overcoming obstructions in natural water courses, thereby serving the needs of the inland population, and also providing the means for diverting trade from one seaport to another. The Revolutionary war was hardly over when Charles Carroll organized a company to open a canal about the obstructions in the lower Susquehanna.
Those who took the most active interest in canal construction at this time were men who, like Washington, viewed the future with patriotic interest. This interest, however, was one which did not appeal to the private investor. An enterprise based upon such public consideration required government support.
This period also marked the beginning of turnpike construction. The first turnpike road in this country of which we have a record was built between Alexandria and the Lower Shenandoah. It was begun in 1785–6, and its completion was the cause of great satisfaction to Jefferson and other public-spirited men of Virginia, who had labored in the cause of a "broader national life." Alexandria was at that time an important competitor of the other seaboard cities. Across the Maryland peninsula on the Chesapeake lay Baltimore, a commercial rival of both Alexandria and Philadelphia. In 1787 the grand jury sitting at Baltimore called attention to the deplorable condition of the roads leading to that city, and urged the authorities to take immediate action. As a result, the county government ordered the old Frederick, Reistertown and York roads turnpiked at public expense. To the west of Philadelphia lay the Susquehanna valley. The natural outlet of this growing region was down the Chesapeake to Baltimore. To attract traffic to the Quaker City a company was organized in Philadelphia in 1792 to build the Lancaster pike, which was the first turnpike in this country built by voluntary subscription.
EFFECT OF EUROPEAN WARS ON AMERICAN SITUATION.
The outbreak of the European wars in 1793 was followed by a marked change in the American industrial situation. The immediate effect upon the grain growing of the West was to increase the demand for wheat. Prices of cereals rose to twice their former height. The average price of flour during the seven years from 1785 to 1793 had been about $5.40 a barrel; the average price from 1793 to 1806 (the two years of peace, 1802 and 1803, excluded) was $9.12. Such was the inducement to grain growing during this period.
Back from the North Atlantic coast radiated rich valleys—large tracts of agricultural lands which were well adapted to grain growing. A rush set in for the unclaimed resources of New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and for a time the tide of migration moved to the westward along the Ohio, and the border of the Great Lakes. Those who cultivated lands near the coast shared in the increased prosperity due to the European disturbance, but unless they could obtain better means of transportation, those who had located inland soon found that they could profit little. Grain as compared with cotton and tobacco was a low priced product. At best, the cost of transportation was ten dollars a ton for each hundred-mile haul; in many places it was much higher.
AMERICANS TURN TO HOME MARKETS.
Before 1807 the country had come to be divided into three sections: the commercial, shipbuilding East, the cotton and tobacco exporting South, and the isolated grain growing interior, linked with which was a languishing manufacturing interest on or near the seaboard. Beyond a limited range the producing proportion of our population could not participate in the profits of the European trade. The grain growers demanded a market, and the manufacturers saw their profits swept away by an influx of foreign goods. These were the interests which suffered from the diversion of capital to shipbuilding and foreign trade. Both