Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/727

-i860] Rapid settlement of the West. 695 of railroads to their commercial progress ; and demands for State aid received an ail-too ready response. Almost every State in the Union made grants for the support of railroad companies, while Pennsylvania and Georgia built some State roads outright. The former State built at an early date the so-called Portage railroad over the Alleghany mountains, which, connecting with its system of canals and railroads, made a direct communication with the Ohio ; but, though it was justly considered a great feat of engineering, the actual portage of canal boats over the mountains never proved commercially practicable. Large as were the sums somewhat recklessly advanced for the development of railroads, they did not reach the amount which had been expended on canals, nor were the financial consequences by any means so disastrous. The speculation connected with the great investments of capital on internal improvements, combined with the reckless banking and currency inflation of the period, led to the severe panic of 1837, from which industry did not recover for some years. The panic did not however greatly affect railroad expansion ; and the railroads became the most important factors in the period of prosperity that followed. The years from 1840 to 1860 were years of rapid growth, with no serious reverses till the panic of 1857. The westward movement continued with in- creasing rapidity. As we have seen, the period 1800-20 was marked by the settlement of the Ohio valley, while the period 1820-40 saw the settlement of the south-western Cotton States, and the continuous increase in the States tributary to the Ohio, such as Illinois and Indiana. The period from 1840 to 1860 is that of the settlement of the Mississippi valley above the cotton-belt. East of the Mississippi the population of Michigan and Wisconsin increased from 233,000, of whom only 31,000 were in Wisconsin, to over 1,500,000, of whom Wisconsin claimed the larger share. At the same time, Illinois and Indiana increased from less than 1,200,000 to over 3,000,000. The west bank of the Mississippi was settled from north to south. While the movement had only just begun in Minnesota, Iowa increased from 43,000 to 675,000; Missouri from 383,000 to 1,182,000, and Arkansas from 97,000 to 435,000. The area of improved farm-land increased by fifty per cent, between 1850 and 1860, and the value of farm property by one hundred per cent. An important factor in this rapid growth of the West was the appli- cation of new agricultural implements to the production of grain. Improvements of various kinds were made during these years; but the revolutionary change was the introduction throughout the new territory of the reapers invented by McCormick and Hussey in the early thirties. The " complete harvester " of to-day represents a great advance on these earlier machines ; but all the main inventions were made before 1860, and the reaper had come into general use. It is hardly too much to say that this application of machinery to harvesting was as important in the development of western agriculture as the extent and fertility of CH. XXII.