In 1823 Charles A. Goodrich, of Hartford, Conn., wrote: “Until within a few years agriculture, both as a science and art, is receiving much of that attention which its acknowledged importance demands. It is beginning to be regarded, as it should be, not only as the basis of subsistence and population, but as the parent of individual and national opulence.” At this date corn was selling to feeders at six cents per bushel in Ohio, and wheat at twenty-five cents. But a few years later agriculture in the North-west was beginning to be regarded as the “basis of subsistence and parent of individual and national opulence,” also. The idea of a prospective market for the products of the soil, that would well remunerate the labor of production, was already being felt, and creating an enthusiasm and preparation for farming on a larger scale. Labor was plenty and wages fair, and the work of destruction of timber and increasing the acreage for cultivation went on rapidly. Large areas were deadened to facilitate the removal, and the sunshine in many places found its way to earth, where it had been excluded for ages. And the common squirrel hunter soon underwent an expansion of character that led on to eminence in agriculture, art, science, commerce, courts, congress, and cabinet. The things said and done caused the legislature, in 1822, to pass an act authorizing the employment of engineers to examine and report the “practicability of making a canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio river;” and in 1825, after four years of the most arduous labor and discussion, the work was determined upon, and Governor De Witt Clinton and others, among whom were Solomon Van Rensselaer, of Albany, and United States Judge Conkling and Mr. Lord, of New York, were invited to be present at the commencement of the great work, which was to have its beginning three miles west of Newark, July 4, 1825. The people of the entire state were under high excitement at the new era which seemed approaching so rapidly, and acted quite differently from what they likely would at the present day on the commencement of a public enterprise. Then many thousands assembled to see “The Father of Internal Improvements,” and to hear what “the best-looking man the nation had ever produced” had to say on the subject of which he was the reputed father.