What I'm Reading This Month
By Nadine Holder
September 2006


Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation by Peter L. Bernstein. (Continued) This book is so packed with information that I will skip over the building of the canal except for the fact that there were no engineers involved. It was built by surveyors and common laborers. The ingenuity of these men was such that several inventions came from the canal work and started America on the way to the industrial revolution.

There were several notable points about the canal:
  1. It was a state funded project supervised by squabbling politicians and not only was it successful it came in close to budget and started very soon to pay the interest on the bonds. By 1829 the Canal Fund had revenue vastly in excess of operating costs and interest payments and began to loan money to New York banks. George Washington had a vision for a privately funded canal through Virginia but it failed miserably despite the application of some of the best minds in America to the project.

  2. It was more instrumental than the creation of the New York Stock Exchange (also 1825) in building New York into a great city. There were other viable sea ports on the east coast but none were backed up by a huge supply of goods from the interior of the nation, as New York was almost as soon as the canal began operation and settlers began moving west.

  3. The effect became global. Until the mid-1800’s Britain taxed grain imports so heavily that they were essentially blocked off but as Britain began to industrialize available grain to feed the working class was essential; the tax was overridden and cheap imports from the American west flowed in and allowed the industrialization of the nation. The same effect soon followed in Europe. From this small beginning America became settled all across the country and became the world power that it is today, with the primary center still New York City.

  4. A side effect was the creation of a dark and boisterous side of life as the canal towns became virtual seaports including a profusion of grog shops. By 1831 it was proposed it should be renamed “the Big Ditch of Iniquity.” The result was the beginning of a wave of revivalism and evangelism as church congregations railed against the iniquity.
The author is an economist and the book is written from that standpoint but it is a totally fascinating story. Was almost sorry when it ended!


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