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 692 Cotton. Steam navigation. Land. [isog- to the Atlantic States; but in the next decade the continued foreign demand led to that great increase in production which was to afford an unique instance in history of a great region entirely dependent on a single crop, and the world dependent on that region for its supply; it also led to that rapid settlement of the South-west which was to increase so greatly the area of slave labour and the power of the slave- holding class. By 1820 the river valleys of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi were already well settled ; and the population of the three States had risen to over 350,000. This extension of cotton culture was of immense importance to the West, since it built up the much-needed market at the end of river navigation. And that navigation was itself immensely facilitated at the same time by the successful introduction of the steamboat on the Ohio. Only two years after the Clermont made her famous voyage from New York to Albany in 1809, a steamboat started on the long voyage from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. It was not, however, till some years later that the steam navigation of the western rivers became commercially important. Under these new conditions the real develop- ment of the West began. The towns along the Ohio and Mississippi flourished as never before. Pittsburgh became the distributing centre for merchandise to the West, and New Orleans the great receiving port for western corn and provisions, since more than ever the Cotton States devoted their whole energies to the one great staple. About the same time the land policy of the United States began to adopt the character which it has subsequently maintained, and which has been of great importance to the country's progress. The course of this policy and the growth of the public domain have been described elsewhere in this volume ; and it is only necessary here to point out the manner in which the new tendencies co-operated for the stimulation of national development. The early theory regarding the public domain was that it should be used as a vast government property for fiscal purposes. The idea of some European historians, that the policy of Hamilton was adopted under the conscious influence of capitalistic interests, in order to prevent the labourers from acquiring farms and thus keep the price of labour high, is simply a fanciful interpretation of the facts, due to the effort to reduce all history to some arbitrary theory of class struggle. There was doubtless a feeling in some quarters that the development of the country might be retarded by encouraging a continuous decentralisation of the population ; but the land policy that was actually carried out was dictated by purely fiscal motives. The change to a more liberal policy was due to the popular demand for land, and showed the growing influence of the West. By 1820 the minimum unit of purchase had been reduced to eighty acres; and the price was in that year reduced to $1*25 per acre. In the following years the preemption idea was becoming practically operative ; and the