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Post Civil War

 

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             These new innovations in transportation also had economic effects on America. Water transportation such as the steamboat and canal, and later the railroad played a key role in helping to economically tie the three regions together. Because the three regions had economies that supplemented each other, the different forms of transportation made each region's product easier and cheaper to transport to the other. The West was now the major food producer of the nation and that food needed to be shipped to the Northeast and South. Canals could carry these products to the Great Lakes for shipping on larger vessels or to other canals or railroads. Steamships finally allowed cotton from the South to be moved upriver on the Ohio and Mississippi. This cotton went to the mills of the Northeast to be manufactured into cloth, which was then shipped back out to the South and West via the newly built canals and railroads. Because a greater amount of goods could be shipped in shorter amounts of time, more factories would be needed in the Northeast, more cotton would have to be grown for these factories, and more agricultural products would be needed from the West to support the growing workforce fulfilling the jobs each region was demanding. .
             Besides helping to stimulate job growth in the different economies the railroads and canals catered to, they themselves provided jobs for thousands of people. People were needed to dig the canals, run the boats, lay railroad tracks, and run the trains. The people doing these jobs were all selling their labor and buying goods with the money they earned. This process helped to solidly establish the market economy that was becoming characteristic of the United States by the Civil War. .
             The building of roads, canals, and railroads also had political effects on the country. When the national government built the Ohio Rd. in 1817 the Road Bill hadn't really been passed, which led to controversy over whether or not the national government should be building the road.


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