ign market for their surplus, they resolved to _create_ a home
market. If England would not buy food products from the United States,
the United States must refuse to buy manufactures from England, and
must, by the establishment of manufacturing industries at home, give
rise to a non-agricultural population that would consume the redundant
supplies of meat and grain. The problem of attracting capital to
manufacturing enterprises, the farmers proposed to solve by the
creation of a system of protective tariffs that would check
importations and encourage investment in mills and factories at home.
Manufacturing industries already in existence were in no apparent need
of protection and the shipping interests of Boston and New York and the
cotton planters of the South strenuously opposed the protective policy.
But the agricultural interests were not to be denied. Under the
leadership of Henry Clay, the tariff of 1824 was enacted and the
"American System" was inaugurated. In 1828, in response to an appeal,
emanating from the woolen manufacturers and seconded by the
agricultural interests, still further encouragement was given to home
manufactures.

While the country was being agitated by the tariff controversy and
exceptionally bitter political contests, the New York canals were
opened for traffic throughout their entire length (October, 1825). No
other single work in the United States has ever had a more beneficial
effect on the prosperity of internal trade. The opening of the canals
brought to an end what had been the bane of internal commerce for half
a century--the excessive cost of freight transportation. Freight rates
between Albany and Buffalo were at once reduced 90 per cent and the day
of the freighter on the Genesee road was ended. The new canal wrought a
complete change in all the rural districts of western New York. Lumber,
staves, ashes, grain and vegetables, hitherto unmarketable, were now
shipped to the markets of the East; farm values doubted and quadrupled;
a stream of people poured into the fertile farming regions around Lake
Erie. Not less valuable was the new waterway to the district at its
eastern terminus. The laboring population of the growing manufacturing
towns reaped immense benefits from the cheaper and better means of
subsistence they could now secure, while the shipments of merchandise
westward on the canal exceeded in value the receipts of raw produce at
tide-water. New York had achieved economic