frightful sacrifices of property were incurred by forced sales under execution." Prices, Thus another period of reckless speculation was brought to a sudden close. The discredited bank notes depreciated in value. Prices shrank to a hard money level. Factories Wages and and workshops, organized on a boom basis, closed in an- 269-275. ticipation of a falling market. Thousands of operatives were discharged, and the cities were crowded with the unemployed. All classes curtailed expenditure, and the demand for goods was thus further reduced. Seeing the market overstocked, entrepreneurs were slow to take risks, and capitalists declined to loan money on any terms. The country underwent five years of financial depression. Specie payment was generally resumed in 1838, but the relief was short-lived. Seven hundred and fifty-nine banks closed their doors the following year, and the business world was not again in working order until 1842. In the interval the circulating medium had been contracted from $149,000,000 to $83,000,000. Imports fell off, and hence the customs revenue declined. Sales of public lands shrank from $24,877,000 in 1836 to $898,000 in 1843. The sharp reduction in revenue placed the United States government, which had distributed a surplus of $37,000,000 in 1837, under necessity of declaring a deficit of $42,900,000 for the seven years of the industrial depression. Some of the newer state governments were on the verge of bankruptcy. Mississippi and Florida repudiated their bonded indebtedness. Internal Improvements McMaster, IV, Ch. XXXIII. In the first fifty years of our national history the growth of population, both by natural increase and by immigration, III, 459-495; had been phenomenal. The 4,000,000 inhabitants registered in the census of 1790 grew to 17,000,000 by 1840. The most rapid advances were made in the Mississippi valley. The 5000 settlers north of the Ohio in 1790 increased to 3,000,000 in the next fifty years. The The population of the states south of the Ohio had multiplied three hundred times in the same interval. westward movement still followed the river courses. The valleys of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee were first taken up. In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio were fully occupied by a farming population. With occasional intervals, the lands along both banks of the Mississippi River from Prairie du Chien to New Orleans had been made over to settlers. Population had crept up the Missouri River to its junction with the Kansas, up the Arkansas River to Fort Smith, and up the Red River to the Mexican boundary. The navigable streams flowing to the Gulf of Mexico the Pearl, Tombigbee, Alabama, and Chattahoochee- furnished the sole means of getting cotton to market, and so determined the course of settlement. Lakes Erie and Ontario were a no less important transportation medium to the wheat farmers of western New York and Ohio. The Clermont's successful trip on the Hudson (1807) had revolutionized inland navigation. Steam Ch. II, VIII. rapidly superseded oar and sail and greatly reduced the time and cost of water transportation. A line of steamboats had been established on the Hudson in 1808 and on the Ohio in 1811. The first steamer ran from Pittsburg to New Orleans in 1812. Abbot, Annals of Congress, 1810, 1385-1401. Needs. When the supply of lands within reach of navigable water was exhausted, and settlers were forced back into the interior, there arose an insistent demand for transportation facilities by which farm products might be got to market and supplies forwarded to the interior settlements at reasonable cost. A New York congressman, Peter Buell Porter, proposed (1810) the appropriation of some portion of the proceeds of land sales to the building of a canal along the Mohawk to the Hudson and by way of the Allegheny River to Pittsburg, in order that the salt manufactured at Syracuse might have a cheaper outlet. He urged that the price of this necessity would be reduced to consumers by fifty per cent. Salt was then Am. State cellaneous, I, 724-921. selling at the works for twenty-five and thirty cents per Gallatin's Plan.- Impressed by the necessity of openPapers, Mis- ing up the interior, and convinced that private enterprise was inadequate to the task, Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, submitted to Congress (1808) a comprehensive scheme of internal improvements which he proposed should be undertaken in whole or in part by the national government. The succession of peninsulas jutting out into the Atlantic from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras interrupted coastwise navigation and offered vexing obstacles to commerce. They should be cut by a series of canals large enough for ocean vessels. The dangerous outside passage from Boston to New York could be avoided by a canal across the narrow neck of land between Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay. Water communication between Delaware and Chesapeake bays would do away with a long roundabout voyage. A canal between Norfolk and Elizabeth City, Virginia, would facilitate commerce between the Chesapeake and Albemarle Sound. The last two enterprises were already undertaken by private companies, but the work should be carried to completion by national appropriation. Other local improvements, such as the canalizing of the Merrimac River, the Middlesex Canal connecting Boston with Lowell, the Schuylkill and Delaware, the Schuylkill and Susquehanna canals, were projects worthy of national aid. Canal communication should be established from the Hudson River to Lake Champlain and to Lake Ontario, and between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain at New Orleans. The series of turnpikes connecting Boston with New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington should be improved and extended so that a great post road running from Maine to Georgia might insure transportation between the principal seaports. Communication between the seaboard and the Western states should be furthered by the improvement of the Santee, James, Potomac, and Susquehanna rivers, and by the building of post roads to connect the headwaters of navigation on the eastward flowing streams with the corresponding western rivers-the Tennessee, Kanawha, Monongahela, and Allegheny. Water transportation in the Mississippi Valley should be bettered by canals around the Falls of the Ohio and the Niagara rivers. The pioneer roads radiating from Pittsburg to Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans must be taken over by the national government, since local resources were insufficient to their satisfactory completion. Improvements. Achievements.— Gallatin's scheme of internal improvements was frustrated by preoccupation in the war with England, but the most important of his projects were later accomplished. The National Turnpike from the Potomac Tanner, to the Mississippi, undertaken in 1806, was being steadily prosecuted and reached its western terminus in 1838. The road was one thousand miles in length and cost the government $10,000,000 in the building. The income from tolls during the fifty years of its greatest usefulness amounted to little more than $1,000,000, but the overland route to St. Louis performed an inestimable service in the development of the Northwest. U.S. Census, 1880, IV, Rept. on I-34. Canals, During the same period an enterprise of even greater magnitude and importance was undertaken and successfully completed under private auspices. The Erie Canal Hulbert, was carried (1817-1825) from Albany to Buffalo through Great Am. the break in the Alleghany Range made by the Mohawk River. It followed the Mohawk to Rome, and thence, utilizing the water of numerous small lakes and streams, entered Lake Frie by the Tonawanda and Niagara rivers. The shorter route, via the Oswego to Lake Ontario, was |