Creative Books

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[Footnote: View of the Grand Canal (N. Y., 1825), 20.]
Sanguine as were Clinton's expectations, the event more than
justified his confidence. By 1825 the great canal system, reaching
by way of Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, and by way of the
Mohawk and the lakes of central New York to Lake Erie, was opened
for traffic throughout its whole length. The decrease in
transportation charges brought prosperity and a tide of population
into western New York; villages sprang up along the whole line of
the canal; the water-power was utilized for manufactures; land
values in the western part of the state doubled and in many cases
quadrupled; farm produce more than doubled in value. Buffalo and
Rochester became cities. [Footnote: J. Winden, Influence of the Erie
Canal (MS. Thesis, University of Wisconsin); U. S. Census of 1900,
Population, I., 430, 432; Callender, in Quarterly Journal of
Economics, XVII., 22; Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIV., chap. v.]
The raw products of the disappearing forests of western New York--
lumber, staves, pot and pearl ashes, etc.


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