turnpikes and the old National Road; or, in the case of especially
heavy freight, was carried along the Atlantic coast into the gulf
and up the Mississippi and Ohio by steamboats. The cost of
transportation in the wagon trade from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh
and Baltimore to Wheeling placed a heavy tax upon the consumer.
[Footnote: Niles' Register, XX., 180.] In 1817 the freight charge
from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was sometimes as high as seven to
ten dollars a hundredweight; a few years later it became from four
to six dollars; and in 1823 it had fallen to three dollars. It took
a month to wagon merchandise from Baltimore to central Ohio.
Transportation companies, running four-horse freight wagons,
conducted a regular business on these turn-pikes between the eastern
and western states. In 1820 over three thousand wagons ran between
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, transporting merchandise valued at
about eighteen million dollars annually. [Footnote: Birkbeck,
Journey from Va., 128; Ogden, Letters from the West, 8; Cobbett,
Year's Residence, 337; Evans, Pedestrious Tour, 145; Philadelphia in
1824, 45; Searight, Old Pike, 107, 112; Mills, Treatise on Inland
Navigation (1820), 89, 90, 93, 95-97; Journal of Polit. Econ.,
VIII., 36.]

The construction of the National Road reduced freight rates to
nearly one-half what they were at the close of the War of 1812; and
the introduction of steam navigation from New Orleans up the
Mississippi cut water-rates by that route to one-third of the former
charge. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., I Sess., I., 991; cf.
Fearon, Sketches, 260; Niles' Register, XXV., 95; Cincinnati
Christian Journal, July 27, 1830.] Nevertheless, there was a crying
need for internal improvements, and particularly for canals, to
provide an outlet for the increasing products of the west. "Even in