Creative Books

[Footnote:
Quarterly Journal of Economics, XVII., 20; Pitkin, Statistical View
(ed. of 1835), 534-536.] In 1822 three million dollars' worth of
goods was estimated to have passed the Falls of the Ohio on the way
to market, representing much of the surplus of the Ohio Valley. Of
this, pork amounted to $1,000,000 in value; flour to $900,000;
tobacco to $600,000; and whiskey to $500,000. [Footnote: National
Republican, March 7, 1823; cf. National Gazette, September 26, 1823;
Blane, Excursion through the U. S., 119.] The inventory of products
reveals the Mississippi Valley as a vast colonial society, producing
the raw materials of a simple and primitive agriculture. The
beginnings of manufacture in the cities, however, promised to bring
about a movement for industrial independence in the west. In spite
of evidences of growing wealth, there was such a decline in
agricultural prices that, for the farmer who did not live on the
highways of commerce, it was almost unprofitable to raise wheat for
the market.


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