This canal proved a success even beyond the expectations of the most sanguine; and a line of commerce was at once established from tide-water to the western chain of lakes, and soon filled the new states with population and their ports with merchandise. And the Ohio protectionist, who had been so fearful of an influx of “pauper labor” and the products of “_foreign industries_,” found his own state, while discussing it, ready to disburse fifteen million dollars for day labor in the construction of internal improvements. And the Squirrel Hunter, whose life was one of education, development, power, and progress, hailed with delight the opportunity to work on the Lake Erie canal, twenty-six dry days of twelve hours each, for the sum of eight dollars. It was the first privilege ever offered in Ohio to obtain so much money in so short time, without encroachment upon his store of squirrel and coon skins. In 1824, the year before the completion of the Erie canal, prices of produce still ranged low: twenty-five cents for wheat and six cents for corn, with no market or demand excepting for making whisky with copper stills. But when the Erie canal was finished and the Ohio and Lake Erie under way, prices on all kinds of produce advanced more than two hundred per cent, with such an unlimited demand that the improvements converted every body into favor with public works. And times became better in Ohio than ever before--corn advanced to forty and fifty cents and wheat to seventy-five and one dollar per bushel; and with the state distribution of millions of money, and her rich and productive soil, she was lifted out of the groove of idle content into the bright sunshine of prosperity and improvement. It soon became manifest that internal improvements increased the demand and prices of the products of the soil, with a diminution in value of most all kinds of manufactured articles used in exchange. The salines of New York killed the salt manufacture in Ohio as effectually as free trade did the business of the wheelwright, the reelwright, the manufacturer of looms, reeds, flyers, hackles, plows, nails, and other “infant industries.” All were ended by the canal; and a man or boy who desired a new hat had, no longer than 1825, to go to a “_hat shop_” and have his head measured with a tape-line, and diagram registered, with full directions of minor matters--material, color, and price--and then wait the making. By means of the New York canal, peddlers were offering for sale almost every thing enjoyed in the East, “at unprecedented low prices;” and even the meridian mark in the south doorway was of no use any longer, except to regulate a Yankee clock. These Connecticut time-pieces were distributed to nearly every resident landholder in the state at sixty dollars or less, on a year’s credit, in the form of a note with six per cent interest--a clock that cost the peddler two dollars and fifty cents at a New England factory.