Page:Evolution of American Agriculture (Woodruff).djvu/43

Rh were severely limited by the lack of transportation. In Western Pennsylvania the farmers turned their corn into a paying crop of whisky and the "Whisky Insurrection" came as the result of a tax laid on their enterprise which took all its profit away. The Ohio Valley used the river as an outlet and traded largely with the South, which grew cotton and had the money to pay for pork and corn.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made a great change in the agricultural world. The tide of immigration swung Northward and following the line of the Canal and the Great Lakes, settled North Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Wheat was easier to raise in these Northern latitudes and, as it stood transportation better than corn, became the money crop of that region. The traffic generated by this new avenue of transportation flowing through New York City, caused that place to advance ahead of Baltimore and Philadelphia and become the leading city of the country.

On the whole it was a splendid period, when every white man was his own master, and the conquest of the wilderness developed qualities that, though they may become perverted, must ever compel our admiration.