Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology of construction for main canals
- Abbreviations
- Map: Main canals of the North American Canal Era, 1780–1860
- Introduction
- 1 Early canals, 1780–1812
- 2 “As low as labor and capital can afford”: the contracting system, 1817–1840
- 3 “Human labor, physical and intelligent”
- 4 Payment “fit for labouring people”
- 5 The greatest quantity of labour
- 6 “Canawlers and citizens”
- 7 “Guerilla war”: labour conflict in the 1830s
- 8 “This new order of things”: the 1840s–1850s
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Tables 1–16
- Appendix 2 Tables 17–18
- Index
1 - Early canals, 1780–1812
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology of construction for main canals
- Abbreviations
- Map: Main canals of the North American Canal Era, 1780–1860
- Introduction
- 1 Early canals, 1780–1812
- 2 “As low as labor and capital can afford”: the contracting system, 1817–1840
- 3 “Human labor, physical and intelligent”
- 4 Payment “fit for labouring people”
- 5 The greatest quantity of labour
- 6 “Canawlers and citizens”
- 7 “Guerilla war”: labour conflict in the 1830s
- 8 “This new order of things”: the 1840s–1850s
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Tables 1–16
- Appendix 2 Tables 17–18
- Index
Summary
Here smooth CANALS, across th' extended plain
Stretch their long arms to join the distant main.
The Sons of Toil, with many a weary stroke,
Scoop the hard bosom of the solid rock;
Resistless through the stiff, opposing clay,
With steady patience, work their gradual way;
Compel the Genius of th' unwilling flood,
Through the brown horrors of the aged wood;
Cross the lone waste the silver urn they pour,
And cheer the barren heath, or sullen moor.…
The ductile streams obey the guiding hand,
And social Plenty crowns the HAPPY LAND!
“Rivers are ungovernable Things, especially in Hilly Countries: Canals are quiet and very manageable,” Benjamin Franklin assured the Mayor of Philadelphia in 1772. Franklin's comment would have been wildly off the mark had he not been writing before there were any canals in North America and referring to finished improvements rather than their construction. The building of the first artificial waterways was anything but easy, being plagued with capital and labour problems that eventually brought most projects to a premature end, evidence of the dangers involved in mounting large-scale industry in an essentially commercial world and a forewarning of what canal construction could expect for years to come.
As some of the earliest ventures in big business, requiring heavy investment, a large workforce and a managerial apparatus to oversee their dispersed construction process, the canals and lockage systems of the late eighteenth century faced numerous problems. For this was an era of merchant not industrial capital.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Common LabourWorkers and the Digging of North American Canals 1780–1860, pp. 18 - 46Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993