eigners coming steadily to Americas shores, and most without prospect of work, many took up work on the Erie Canal to fill their immediate job needs (Sheriff, p. 41). One might think that an abundance of jobs equals progress, but here it must be noted that even though canal work paid comparatively well, laborers found to their disappointment that their earnings did not buy them a better way of life (Sheriff, p. 43). The Erie Canal then was a provider, although what little it did provide to the poor and working class was often not enough for them to advance themselves in society. Complimenting the vast need for common laborers to build the canal was a need for the boat captains, horse pullers, lock tenders, and repair workers who did the everyday work on the canal. These people, unlike the canal diggers who moved on after the work was done, became part of the towns that bordered the Erie Canal. Originally, canal supporters repeatedly reassured the population at large that economic development need not result in the class divisions that plagued Europe (Sheriff, p. 26). However, before the canal was even completed, these common workers and laborers were already being noted as lower class citizens. This was in part the result of the view in nineteenth century America that canal work merited the use of the most degraded unfree labor(Sheriff, p. 40), but there was also something more. Most of the thousands of men, women, and children involved with the running of the canal did not fit the ideal of a republican free man. To be considered a republican free man one could not work for wages or be subordinate to someone else. Thus these semiskilled workers that operated the Erie Canal for the good of the republican free men, were viewed in much the same way as the canal diggers they replaced (as lower class citizens). By the late 1830s, it became obvious that the artificial waterway had helped bring into being a more divided society (Sh...
