Making the Connection

Making the Connection. . The first canal engineers came from England, Wales, or Holland. By the late 1790's these European engineers had trained a small cadre of engineers, mostly concentrated in the New York area. The New York engineers worked to design canals and to train younger engineers who fanned out through Pennsylvania and Ohio. By 1860 there were more than 4000 miles of canals in the United States, mostly dug by immigrants, a large number of whom were Irish., Irish imigrants [sic] did most of the physical labor. In 1818 over 3,000 Irish laborers were employed on the Erie Canal. By 1826 around 5,000 were working on four separate canal projects. One journalist commented: "There are several kinds of power working at the fabric of the republic - water-power, steam-power and Irish-power. The last works hardest of all." There were many people prejudiced against the Irish, who in the South were sometimes considered less valuable than slaves. Have we learned our lesson about prejudices involving immigrant groups?, (caption) Cheap Irish labor gave way to cheap Chinese labor even as the canals gave way to the railroads., (caption) Owning a team of horses of mules would be a sign of wealth, (caption) Canals were a welcome sight and at first more valuable than the early railroads