r others or to
rent land from others. Each was himself a small landed proprietor, who
cleared only the ground that he could himself cultivate. Workmen were
scarce and labor dear. It was almost impossible to get men fit to work
as mill hands, or to do high-class labor in forges even by importing
them from Pennsylvania or Maryland. [Footnote: Clay MSS., Letter to
George Nicholas, Baltimore, Sept. 3, 1796.] Even in the few towns the
inhabitants preferred that their children should follow agriculture
rather than become handicraftsmen; and skilled workmen such as
carpenters and smiths made a great deal of money, so much so that they
could live a week on one day's wage. [Footnote: Michaux, pp. 96, 152.]

The River Trade.

In addition to farming there was a big trade along the river. Land
transportation was very difficult indeed, and the frontiersman's whole
life was one long struggle with the forest and with poor roads. The
waterways were consequently of very great importance, and the
flatboatmen on the Mississippi and Ohio became a numerous and noteworthy
class. The rivers were covered with their craft. There was a driving
trade between Pittsburgh and New Orleans, the goods being drawn to
Pittsburgh from the seacoast cities by great four-horse wagons, and
being exported in ships from New Orleans to all parts of the earth. Not
only did the Westerners build river craft, but they even went into
shipbuilding; and on the upper Ohio, at Pittsburgh, and near Marietta,
at the beginning of the present century, seagoing ships were built and
launched to go down the Ohio and Mississippi, and thence across the
ocean to any foreign port. [Footnote: Thompson Mason Harris, "Journal of
Tour," etc., 1803, p. 140; Michaux, p. 77.] There was, however, much
risk in this trade; for the demand for commodities at Natchez and New
Orleans was uncertain, while the waters of the Gulf swarmed with British
and French cruisers, always ready to pounce like pirates on the ships of
neutral powers. [Footnote: Clay MSS., W. H. Turner to Thomas Hart,
Natchez, May 27, 1797.]

Small Size of the Towns.
Natchez.

Yet the river trade was but the handmaid of frontier agriculture. The
Westerners were a farmer folk who lived on the clearings their own hands
had made in the great woods, and who owned the land they tilled. Towns
were few and small. At the end of the century there were some four
hundred thousand people in the West; yet the largest town wa