. It was then found that the value of the goods manufactured in the
United States in 1810 was $173,000,000.

%283. Internal Improvements: Roads; Canals; Steamboats.%--But there
was yet another great change for the better which took place between
1790 and 1815. We have seen how during this quarter of a century our
country grew in area, how the people increased in number, how new states
and territories were made, how agriculture and commerce prospered, and
how manufactures arose. It is now time to see how the people improved
the means of interstate commerce and communication.

You will remember that in 1790 there were no bridges over the great
rivers of the country, that the roads were very bad, that all journeys
were made on horseback or in stagecoaches or in boats, and that it was
not then possible to go as far in ten hours as we can now go in one. You
will remember, also, that the people were moving westward in
great numbers.

As the people thus year by year went further and further westward, a
demand arose for good roads to connect them with the East. The merchants
on the seaboard wanted to send them hardware, clothing, household goods,
farming implements, and bring back to the seaports the potash, lumber,
flour, skins, and grain with which the settlers paid for these things.
If they were too costly, frontiersmen could not buy them. If the roads
were bad, the difficulty of getting merchandise to the frontier would
make them too costly. People living in the towns and cities along the
seaboard were no longer content with the old-fashioned slow way of
travel. They wanted to get their letters more often, make their journeys
and have their freight carried more quickly.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's _History of the People of the United States,_
Vol. III., pp. 462-465.]

About 1805, therefore, men began to think of reviving the old idea of
canals, which had been abandoned in 1793, and one of these canal
companies, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, applied to Congress for
aid. This brought up the question of a system of internal improvements
at national expense, and Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury,
was asked to send a plan for such a system to Congress, which he did.
Congress never approved it.

%284. The National Pike.%--Public sentiment, however, led to the
commencement of a highway to the West known as the National Pike, or the
Cumberland Road. When Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state in
1803,