Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/774

 764 ^- f- GoodzL'iu facture of pianos on a small scale would succeed, ' but it was many years before the West demanded such articles in sufficient quantity to call for the manufacture of them in the Ohio valle}-. x-Vt that time, however, there was not a steam-engine in Cincinnati, and the only power machinery in the Miami Country was an occasional horse-power or ox-power mill, and the grist and fulling mills run by water power on the streams of that region. Even as late as 1814, a saw-pit was in operation and builders were using whip- sawed lumber in Cincinnati.'^ Not until more than a year after the beginning of the War of 1812 was there a conscious efifort to develop manufactures in the JMiami Country ; all industrial development that came was because of the natural demand of the community. Economically the region had not advanced far enough from a colonial condition to take part in any way in the rage for the founding of " infant manufactures " that prevailed in the East after the Embargo of 1807. There was hardly what we today should call a factory, although here and there might be found a proprietor of a shop employing several journey- men and apprentices. The craze for manufactures that arose in the East after the Embargo of 1807 resulted from necessity and patriotism, but, with the exception of Lexington and Pittsburgh, the various colonial centres of the West were hardly old enough to give attention to an extension of industries. It mav be well, at this point, to inquire what industrial develop- ment had taken place in the last-named towns before the War of 1812. Lexington was a manufacturing centre of considerable im- portance before 1808. After the export trade in flour which that section had enjoyed during the early Napoleonic wars was ruined for a time by the peace that followed the treaty of Amiens, Ken- tucky commenced to grow and manufacture hemp and this doubtless stimulated manufacturing interests in the vicinity of Lexington.' At that time the metropolis of the Blue Grass region was by far the most populous and progressive town in the lower Ohio River basin. It then produced annually sixty tons of nails, ten thousand dollars worth of copper and tinware, thirty thousand dollars worth of hats, thirty-six thousand yards of baling cloth, fifteen hundred gallons of linseed oil, seven thousand gallons of whiskey, and three hundred tons of cordage, as the output of forty-two shops and factories, employing two hundred and eighty-five workmen.' iMelish, Travels i„ the Uniled Stales. II. 127. ^Liberty Hall. June 21. 1814. sMcMaster, History of the Peofle of the Ciiited States. III. 498. •Cummings's Tours, in Thwaites's £<7r/v irestent Travels. V. 181-189.