From: Anonymous Four
Date: 3/14/00
Time: 9:35:17 AM
Remote Name: 152.163.195.208
The transportation revolution was a major breakthrough in terms of shipping, importing and exporting. This breakthrough allowed for internal improvements, which was binding the nation together with roads and canals. The forms of transportation went from building roads, the flatboat, the steamboat, and canals. These transportaion routes were at times failures, but at other times very successful. These routes were successful because it allowed farmers to have access to more products and more goods. The failure is that sometimes the demand for the low cost of transportation was not met. This meant that investors would not get paid and no type of profit could be made from using the roads and the tolls. The flatboat was somewhat of a help in trading but also a failure. The flatboat helped because it made the downriver journey easy and allowed more access to rich agricultural areas, the failure would be because after you have made that trip down the river, you had no way of getting up the river, unless you travelled on foot. Thanks to a man by the name of Robert Fulton the steamboat was well on it's way. The Steamboat was a great boost for the farmers and the merchants, because it reduced the costs, and allowed for an increase in moving goods and a two way trading system on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Even though they could be failures at times by blowing up, they were still a major factor in trading. The building of canals was also beneficial to the trading industry. The most famous canal would be erie. The erie canal which was 364 miles, allowed for shipping to occur in areas that could not normally be reached with in the time span needed. The ideas of canals were successful because again the cost of moving goods was reduced, and caused a sharper decline in prices from the east by the west. The most important factor relevant to today is that as a result New York is the commercial capital of the world. The failure in the steamboat was the fact that their was not an adequate return on the money invested in them. Freedom occurs through all these breakthroughs. With out these developments farmers, and merchants would not have been able to trade cross country, or just down the stream. These breakthroughs allowed farming families to produce products and sell them, rather than just producing for the use of the home. This in return freed them because now they were plugged into what is called a commercial network, which provided credit for these farmers and put a stop to the need of these farmers doing their own selling. This is the freedom that these people encountered due to the transportation revolution