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A Note on the Economic Viability of the Erie Canal, 1825-1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Ronald W. Filante
Ronald W. Filante
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Queens College, C. U. N. Y.
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , Spring 1974 , pp. 95 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1974

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References

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.