The WORKERS

Somehow these amateurs overcame enormous obstacles of engineering, learning as they went. "Innovations multiplied along the Erie line, often created by the contractors themselves to maximize efficiency and improve what were often slender profit margins" (Encyclopedia of the New American Nation, 2005).

Despite having no previous experience, Clinton DeWitt's team of self-taught engineers showed the American people how technological problems could be solved with a "can-do" attitude towards hard work.

The Canal Commission began construction with an unskilled workforce, but by the time the canal was completed in 1825, these same workers were considered some of America's premiere engineers.

DeWitt Clinton was nationally celebrated for his political prowess, but it was really the hard work of his contractors, local residents, and new immigrants that made Clinton's vision a reality. After all, thousands of laborers were needed to build Clinton's "Big Ditch"!

Lured by the image of America as the promised land of opportunity, the manpower that went into building the Erie Canal consisted largely of immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Most of the workers were escaping poverty and unemployment in their homelands.

They came to America in hope of employment, cheap land and a better quality of life, but were disappointed upon their arrival because the working conditions were so bad. Historians found evidence of many laborers writing home to advise their brothers and friends not to come to America. Nonetheless, there were many willing workers who contributed to the growth and development of the United States of America.

IRISH DIGGERS

The New York State Canal System is not only rich in history, but also culture. Many immigrants worked long and hard on "Clinton’s Ditch" to create this magnificent waterway.

A potato famine in Ireland led to a mass migration of Irish citizens to America. Many of them found themselves working on building the Erie Canal for as little as 37 cents a day and a promise of all the meat they could eat. That sounded good to many Irishmen, especially to those who just arrived to America.

GERMAN MASONS

Hundreds of migrant German masons were hired to build the stonework for the 34 locks needed to raise the boats up 565 feet -- the elevation difference between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Where the canal had to cross valleys and water barriers, the masons built eighteen aqueducts to carry the boats above them.

From sunrise to sunset, workers cleared forests, dug ditches, diverted streams or chipped away at mountains. The work of clearing a path and digging a 4-foot-deep-by-40-foot-wide ditch hundreds of miles long was completed mostly by unskilled workers, who did not have any particular kind of professional training or on-the-job coaching. The "backbreaking" work of digging was done with primitive tools, such as pick axes and shovels, and workers had to invent new ways to cut down trees, blast through mountains and haul rocks. Machine technology had yet to be invented so all 363 miles of the canal were carved with nothing but the muscle power of men and workhorses.

Not only did the immigrant workers meet many natural obstacles along the way; epidemics were a huge problem and contributed significantly to the death of many workers. Workers suffered from extensive cholera outbreaks from unclean drinking water, lived in dirty, cramped wooden shantytowns and experienced great hunger and thirst. Many fell ill from mosquito-borne diseases, like malaria and yellow fever while digging at Montezuma Marsh. Hundreds of workers also died from drowning, falls from great heights, canal collapses, and explosions involving gunpowder. By the time the canal was completed in 1825, at least 1,000 workers had lost their lives on the job.

Most canal workers labored seasonally, with unpaid breaks during inclement weather. Those who could not afford to take time off worked in the bitter cold, intense heat and deep mud. They usually got Sundays off but worked every other day, with barely anything left to send home to their families.

Unfortunately, working conditions for immigrants and day laborers did not improve with the success of the Erie Canal. The need for workers to do dangerous and deadly work in the United States only grew as the Industrial Revolution transformed the nation -- in factories, on plantations, and on the Transcontinental Railroad!