Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/53

Rh impress his personality and influence upon the financial life of the city.

It is interesting to consider the conditions that existed in Philadelphia during the decade in which Isaiah Williamson rose to the position of the city's foremost drygoods merchant, and to speak of other men with whom he began to come into contact in the business life of the city.

Isaiah Williamson was already well on the way to outstanding success in the city of his choice before railroads connected it with New York and Baltimore, and before the new form of transportation began to bring the west into contact with the Atlantic seaboard. The mails, as well as passengers and good, went by steamboat, stage coach and wagon. The revolution in the economic life of the nation through steampower applied to transportation on land and sea was just ahead.

Philadelphia was still lighted by oil lamps—some sixteen hundred under the care of night guards. Gas lighting came in 1835, the year after Williamson and Burroughs formed their partnership. But Philadelphia, compared with other cities, was a metropolis, and