One ditch across New York state cut shipping costs by 90 percent

Critics mocked DeWitt Clinton's 363-mile canal as 'Clinton's Folly' before it even opened in 1825. Linking the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, it slashed the cost of moving freight from Buffalo to New York City from roughly $100 a ton to about $10, and cut the trip from weeks to days. It made New York the dominant Atlantic port almost overnight.

— Peter L. Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation — 2005
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