carried; and the time of transit from 20 to 8 days, Wheat at that time
was worth only $33 a ton in western New York, and it did not pay to send
it by land to New York. When sent to market at all, it was floated down
the Susquehanna to Baltimore, as being the cheapest and best market.
The canal changed that. It now became possible to send to market a wide
variety of agricultural produce--fruit, grain, vegetables, etc.--which,
before the canal was built, either had no value at all, or which could
be disposed of to no good advantage. It is claimed by the original
promoters of the Erie Canal, who lived to see its beneficial effects
experienced by the people of the country, that their work, costing less
than $8.000,000 and paying its whole cost of construction in a very
few years, added $100,000,000 to the value of the farms of New York by
opening up good and ready markets for their products. The canal had
another result. It made New York city the commercial metropolis of the
country. An old letter, written by a resident of Newport, R. I., in that
age, has lately been discovered, which speaks of New York city, and
says: "If we do not look out, New York will get ahead of us." Newport
was then one of the principal seaports of the country; it had once been
the first. New York city certainly did "get ahead of us" after the Erie
Canal was built. It got ahead of every other commercial city on the
coast. Freight, which had previously gone overland from Ohio and the
West to Pittsburg, and thence to Philadelphia, costing $120 a ton
between the two cities named, now went to New York by way of the Hudson
River and the Erie Canal and the lakes. Manufactures and groceries
returned to the West by the same route, and New York became a
flourishing and growing emporium immediately. The Erie Canal was
enlarged in 1835, so as to permit the passage of boats of 100 tons
burden, and the result was a still further reduction of the cost of
freighting, expansion of traffic, and an increase of the general
benefits conferred by the canal. The Champlain Canal had an effect upon