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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2012
Professor Filante examines data on the patterns of trade and revenues on the Erie Canal during its first thirty-five years of operation.
This paper will take the following form:
a) a brief discussion of Erie Canal operations in the period 1825–1835, when neither rails nor other canals were competitors.
b) a discussion of the period 1835–1860 with specific attention turned to the sources and destinations of freight shipments, the composition of those shipments, and changes in the canal itself.
c) a discussion of rail-canal competition centering on the division of the market between the two along value of product and length of shipment criteria.
1 Auditor of the Canal Department, Annual Report on Tolls, etc., 1860, 26. The reversal in the normal pattern of Albany-Buffalo vs. Buffalo-Albany rates by 1860 may reveal a “back haulage” problem created by the loss of westbound passenger and merchandise traffic to the rails.
2 This discussion will be renewed in the last section of the paper.
3 Whitford, Noble E., History of the Canal System of the State of New York (Albany, 1906), 1062–1068Google Scholar.
4 Auditor of the Canal Dept., Annual Report for 1860. The 80 per cent figure assumes that merchandise exports at Buffalo and Oswego originated at Tidewater.
5 Export figures for Great Lakes cities are available on request from the author.
6 Auditor of the Canal Dept., Annual Report 1860, 227.
7 Although the term “vegetable food” connotes perishable in everyday usage, the canal department used the term to describe wheat, corn, flour, and dried fruits, making the class of shipment non-perishable.
8 Auditor of the Canal Department, Annual Report 1860.
