WHM- The Blackstone Canal - Economic Impact

Highway of Commerce: The Blackstone Canal
Industrial Worcester

Economic Impact

Trade boom
The canal had an immediate and enormous impact on trade and commerce. On November 8, 1828, a month after the Lady Carrington first arrival, six boats each carrying 30-to-40 tons of cargo arrived in Worcester. They carried plaster, grindstones, shingles, iron, lead, grain, bales of cotton, molasses, salt, oil, flour, and groceries. Local merchants ran newspaper advertisements to announce the arrival of new merchandise. For the first time, stores offered a lot of choices in a wide variety of consumer goods and manufacturing supplies. New boat companies, which operated in competition with the Blackstone Canal Company, soon opened their own stores to maximize profits on canal-transported cargoes. In the spring of 1829, an average of 75-to-80 boats arrived and departed each month. The increased commercial activity led to more taverns, warehouses, and factories along the canal route.

Toll revenues
The Blackstone Canal Company charged a per-ton/per-mile toll for shipping plus a toll for use of the waterway. The original charter called for a charge of 6 cents per ton/mile. However, Agent Anthony Chase's freight record book (1829-1831) indicates the actual toll charged for most goods was 3 cents per ton/mile. In 1829, the first full season of operation, he collected $8,606 in tolls. The amount increased annually until 1832, when it peaked at nearly $19,000. List of toll charges

Freight
Agent Chase most often entered "frt" for freight, given in pounds for calculating tolls. When he itemized, cargo lists included large quantities of casks of lime (a fertilizer), barrels of beer, bales of cotton, and barrels of flour. Also bale goods, molasses, oil, wool cards, barrels of rum, gin, maize, oats, and soap, bolts of fabric, cases of nails, paint, and more. Worcester & Brookfield Furnace Company paid whopping freight of $54.12 on shells. Items shipped out included machinery, bricks, lasts and wagons, mill stones, underpinning and building stones, planks and other building lumber, fancy goods, and potatoes. In the northern part of the county, the timber-rich towns of Gardner, Sterling, and Templeton annually manufactured over half a million wooden chairs for export. The canal brought the wider world to the doorstep of the "port" of Worcester, and vice versa. It was a potent time.

Conflict
As more and more mills crowded along the Blackstone, to take advantage of the canal's cheap transport, competition for the finite water power available escalated. Tensions mounted. Mill owners resorted to dumping rocks into canal locks at night to prevent their operation. Arson threats from canal men forced factory owners to higher guards. In 1833 a group of factory owners sued the canal company for abusing water rights and in 1837 won a judgment of $8,450 - a sum greater than annual profits by that date. Lawsuits and petitions filed by unhappy mill owners plagued the company until it closed.

Local businessmen & the canal company
Local relationships between businessmen and the Blackstone Canal Company were sometimes cooperative, sometimes not. In 1835, the two sides arrived at what they considered a mutually beneficial agreement. When the company's reservoir at North Pond proved inadequate, George T. Rice, Stephen Salisbury, William B. Fox & Company, and Benjamin Goddard 2nd advanced the cost of raising the water level 4 feet, to be reimbursed when revenues allowed. But the next year, unnamed land owners around North Pond filed a suit against the company for property damage. William B. Fox, whose mill complex was in the lower part of town, was cited in the minutes of town meeting in 1847 for improperly raising the dam on his mill pond, a direct response to the canal company's earlier degradation of water flow to his factory.

In Worcester
Between 1825 and 1835 Worcester's population nearly doubled, from 3,650 to 6,624, and growth continued to accelerate. After the canal opened, development pushed eastward to Summer Street, creating a triangle of economic enterprise in the center of town. A comparison of the 1829 village map, published by Clarendon Harris, and H. Stebbins' 1833 lithograph of the same area shows a thickening of settlement not only on Summer Street but on the east-west streets connecting Main and Summer. Town officials laid out Central Street in 1833, to facilitate development.

Encoding civility
In response to Worcester's growing density of buildings and people, town officials wrote new bylaws to encode the rules of civilized society. In 1829 nude bathing in the Blackstone Canal and other waterways was banned during the canal's hours of operation, violators subject to fines of $2-to-$10. In 1833, disposal of dead animal carcasses in the canal and other waterways was banned, under penalty of $5-to-$10. That year officials also passed prohibitions on sledding in the streets, using sidewalks for anything other than walking, driving carriages at an "immoderate gait" in the streets, polluting public wells, and obstructing public roads without permission. In 1835, officials established a fire department and encoded a ream of fire regulations.

Town to City
In 1848, the year the canal closed, Worcester became a city. It had grown from a population of 2,411 and a valuation of less than $1,000,000 in 1800, to a population of 17,049 and a valuation of over $11,000,000 in 1850 - a 7-fold increase in people and an 11-fold increase in wealth. In his 1851 mayoral address, Peter C. Bacon attributed this remarkable growth to three factors: the canal, the building of the Insane Asylum (1831), and the railroads.

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