In economic strength, however, these Jackson States and communities were much weaker. They were isolated. Their surplus crops had no value save as they were produced within reach of navigable rivers. Of these the 5,500,000 people living in the region drained by the Mississippi and the other streams which fall into the Gulf of Mexico, exported about $17,800,000 worth of commodities in 1830, a _per capita_ value of less than $4. And most of this surplus output came from the cotton counties of the lower South, where only a small proportion of the population of the West dwelt. Still, the herds of cattle and droves of swine that were driven southward to the cotton communities or over the mountains to Eastern cities, and the large quantities of grain which, after 1825, found its way to market through the Erie Canal, added greatly to and perhaps doubled the income of the West from exports down the Mississippi. When all is told, however, these isolated people were in the main very poor, as the narratives of travelers and the journals of preachers attest on every page. Yet every year added thousands to the numbers of Eastern men who migrated West to enjoy some of the liberty of a region where lands were cheap and the social life unconventional; every decade added new voices and able leaders to the Western group in Congress, who clamored unceasingly for the enactment of laws aimed at the rapid development of that section. New England, where the rise of industrial towns necessitated an increasing number of laborers, took fright, or had never ceased to be alarmed, at the westward movement of population; and Eastern members of Congress, under one pretext or another, opposed every demand which came up from the West, every petition of the "squatters" on the public domain. In the Middle States the building of numerous canals, turnpikes, and railways called for both skilled and unskilled laborers. But if everybody ran off to the West when wages were unsatisfactory, these improvements could not be made and the old communities would languish and decay.