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.