the Ohio country which the South desired
Flour, salt, iron, cider and peach brandy were staple products of
the Ohio country which the South desired. In return they shipped
molasses, sugar, coffee, lead, and hides upon the few keel boats
which crept upstream or the blundering barges which were
propelled northward by means of oar, sail, and cordelle. It was
not, however, until the nineteenth century that the young West
was producing any considerable quantity of manufactured goods.
Though the town of Pittsburgh had been laid out in 1764, by the
end of the Revolution it was still little more than a collection
of huts about a fort. A notable amount of local trade was carried
on, but the expense of transportation was very high even after
wagons began crossing the Alleghanies. For example, the cost from
Philadelphia and Baltimore was given by Arthur Lee, a member of
Congress, in 1784 as forty-five shillings a hundredweight, and a
few months later it is quoted at sixpence a pound when Johann D.
Schoph crossed the mountains in a chaise–a feat ‘which till now
had been considered quite impossible.’ Opinions differed widely
as to the future of the little town of five hundred inhabitants.
The important product of the region at first was Monongahela
flour which long held a high place in the New Orleans market.
Coal was being mined as early as 1796 and was worth locally
threepence halfpenny a bushel, though within seven years it was
being sold at Philadelphia at thirty-seven and a half cents a
bushel. The fur trade with the Illinois country grew less
important as the century came to its close, but Maynard and
Morrison, cooperating with Guy Bryan at Philadelphia, sent a
barge laden with merchandise to Illinois annually between 1790
and 1796, which returned each season with a cargo of skins and
furs. Pittsburgh was thus a distributing center of some
importance; but the fact that no drayman or warehouse was to be
found in the town at this time is a significant commentary on the
undeveloped state of its commerce and manufacture.
