Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/771

 THE RISE OF AIAXUFACTURES IX THE MIAMI COUXTRY The rapid advance in the development of manufactures between the date of the Embargo, 1807, and the close of the War of 1812, was one of the results of our strained foreign relations in the early period of our national existence. In the beginning, this industrial expansion was confined to the Atlantic States, but by the close of the period the movement had extended to the West, and it was well under way before the steamboat introduced a new economic factor by furnishing cheap transportation for the imports and ex- ports of the Mississippi valley. The rise of industries in the West, however, was based on conditions different from those that ex- isted in the East ; and, in spite of the conscious effort to imitate the East, their development proceeded along lines peculiar to the needs of the Westerners. It is the purpose of this article to point out the difference between conditions in the West and those in the East, and to present the growth of industries in the Miami Country during this early period as an illustration of the development of manufactures under primitive conditions in the West. The Miami Country, it may be explained, is the region drained by the Great Miami and Little Miami Rivers, and includes an area of about 5000 square miles most of which is within southwestern Ohio. Our study will extend to 1817, when Captain Shreve's steamboat IVash- iiigton made the trip from X'ew Orleans to Louisville in twenty-five days and thus ushered in the steamboat era. With the possible exception of the settlement at the headwaters of the Tennessee, the motive that impelled emigration to the West was economic, and in every instance the basis of development was agricultural. Four centres of settlement in the Ohio valley — the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, the ^luskingum valley, the ]Iiami Country, and the Scioto valley, — were selected by the pioneers because of their productiveness and general desirability from an agricultural standpoint. A fifth centre, Pittsburgh, at the con- fluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, became impor- tant at an early day because its situation made it the chief point of debarkation for the farther West. The early economic development of each of these centres of population was distinctly colonial ; hunt- 761