Even the trade in manufactured goods
which she had formerly sent to the western rivers was now menaced
from two quarters: the development of steam navigation on the
Mississippi enabled New Orleans to compete for this trade; and the
construction of the Erie Canal, with the projected system of
tributary canals in Ohio, made it plain to Pennsylvania that New
York was about to wrest from her the markets of the west. It had
taken thirty days and cost five dollars a hundred pounds to
transport goods from Philadelphia to Columbus, Ohio; the same
articles could be brought in twenty days from New York, by the Erie
Canal, at a cost of two dollars and a half a hundred. [Footnote:
McMaster, United States, V., 136.] To Pennsylvania the control of
the western market, always an important interest, had led in 1800 to
the construction of a system of turnpikes to connect Philadelphia
with Pittsburgh over the mountains, which developed a great wagon
trade. But the days of this wagon trade were now numbered, for the
National Road, joining the Ohio and the Potomac and passing south of
Pittsburgh, diverted a large share of this overland trade to
Baltimore.
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