Wanted: Illinois & Michigan Canal Workers
Information for Engineers
Digging the Canal. Very little has been written on the actual method by which the canal was excavated, but one sentence in the 1840 "Report of the Commissioners" briefly summarizes the entire process: "The mode of conducting the work has been in most cases to excavate to the bottom and then advance by make mining and falling. "In excavating to the bottom the pick and shovel were certainly used in the grubbing of sod and clay; a sledge hammer, chisel and wedge for quarrying stratified rock; and gunpowder for blasting through solid rock. ("Stratified rock" was considered rock that could be quarried without great difficulty.) Costs for the excavation varied according to the material removed: For hard clay, 65¢ to 75¢ per cubic yard; for stratified rock, about $1.55 per cubic yard; and for solid rock, approximately $2.55 per cubic yard.
Once loosened, the soil and clay were loaded into barrows and carried or wheeled out of the excavation. Rock was lifted out by cranes. All was loaded into carts that ran on railroad tracks and hauled from the area by teams of horses or mules. If the blocks of stratified rock were two to six inches thick, they were often used in some form of construction. For more substantial building projects, however, quarries had been opened along the line, where stone of a good quality had been mined. Water lime, or hydraulic cement, also necessary in construction, was found in inexhaustible quantities at Lockport and at several places along the western division.
Where shale was the type of rock to be excavated, contractor Jeremiah Crotty had a novel solution. Using a giant plow of his own design, pulled by four yoke of oxen, he literally plowed-up the solid rock. Running day and night, with two sets of teams and men, he did ten times the amount of work that others did with the same outlay.
Because many of the can contractors had little experience in building or construction, some of their estimates for the work fell short of the actual costs. When such occurred, many of these contractors abandoned the work, suffered a change in their prosecution of the work, sold their contract to another, or took other measures to avoid their obligation. (Other causes of contract abandonment were a failure to begin in the proper period of time, or not having enough capital to commence operations.) Ultimately contracts were awarded only to those firms having previous experience in excavating the canal, and not necessarily on the basis of the lowest bid. In fact, where rock cutting was part of the expected excavation, the commissioners awarded the contracts only to those firms whom they felt could reasonably complete the work at their projected estimate.
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