That the importance of the steamboat to the commerce of New Orleans was clearly recognized as early as 1815, is shown by the following newspaper article. "We have had undoubted proofs of the good effects of the steamboat navigation between this city (New Orleans) and Natchez, and why not extend its beneficial effects to the Ohio and to the different navigable streams emplying into that river. The want of public spirit, properly directed has retarded the salutary object so long. If enterprising men would propose and form associations and companies for building steamboats on the different navigable waters west of the Allegheny mountains it is reasonable to suppose that few men of capital would withhold their support ... surely interest most clearly points out something like the foregoing plan to immediately operate in favor of the trade of the rivers Ohio and Mississippi. The steamboats now in use cannot carry one twentieth part of the goods that might be in demand from this city.... Experience alone will establish what size of boats, or draught of water will be best for the navigation of both rivers ... it appears very reasonable, however, to suppose that the boats of small draught of water would be best calculated for the Ohio, taking into consideration the different stages of the water and how subject that river is to fall very low.... To the commercial interest of New Orleans the steam navigation is of immense consideration, the vast sums of money annually paid in Philadelphia and Baltimore for goods, and carried over the mountains in wagons, would concentrate here. View the course of trade. The merchants of Cincinnati, Lexington, Nashville, and the small towns in the western states, after the extreme labor, anxiety and expense of getting their goods carried from the seaboard by land, are obliged to receive produce in payment, which is floated down to this city, and converted into money for the coffers of the New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore importers--whereas, if the steamboats were in complete operation, the whole western states could be supplied with every kind of goods here, and on better terms than they now are from Philadelphia and Baltimore ... but certainly it is not chimerical to say that if exertions are not made by individuals, or companies through views of gain or otherwise to bring more steamboat tonnage into use for the western trade, it would have been better (as it relates to that trade) that the steam boats had never been in operation--then the old laborious, tedious barging would have continued in full vigor."[261]