Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T06:32:53.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.