year of the completion of the canal, it was fifty million dollars.
This was an exceptional year, however, and in 1830 the value of the
imports was thirty-six million dollars. In 1821 New York had thirty-
eight per cent. of the total value of imports into the United
States; in 1825, over fifty per cent.; and this proportion she
maintained during our period. In the exports of domestic origin, New
York was surpassed in 1819 by Louisiana, and in 1820 by South
Carolina, but thereafter the state took and held the lead.
[Footnote: Compiled from Pitkin, Statistical View.] In 1823 the
amount of flour sent from the western portion of New York by the
Erie Canal equaled the whole amount which reached New Orleans from
the Mississippi Valley in that year. [Footnote: Based on statistics
in Report on Internal Commerce, 1887, p. 196; Canal Commissioners of
N. Y., Annual Report (February 20, 1824), 33.] The state of New York
had by a stroke achieved economic unity, and its metropolis at once
became the leading city of the country.

Philadelphia lost power as New York City gained it. Though the
counties tributary to Philadelphia constituted the old center of
population and political power, the significant fact of growth in
Pennsylvania was the increasing importance of Pittsburgh at the
gateway to the Ohio Valley. In the Great Valley beyond the Blue
Ridge lived the descendants of those early Germans and Scotch-
Irishmen who early occupied the broad and level fields of this
fertile zone, the granary of Pennsylvania. Beyond this rock-walled
valley lay the mountains in the west and north of the state, their
little valleys occupied by farmers, but already giving promise of
the rich yield of iron and coal on which the future greatness of the
state was to rest. The anthracite mines of the northeastern corner
of the state, which have given to their later possessors such