Large amounts of labor were employed in operating and maintaining the old tools and methods, and there was great appeal in protecting old technology in the name of preserving jobs. Consider this letter, written in 1829 by Martin Van Buren, then governor of New York, to President Andrew Jackson. If canal boats are supplanted by railroads, serious unemployment will result. Captains, cooks, drivers, hostlers, repairmen and lock tenders will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for horses. Boat builders would suffer and towline, whip and harness makers would be left destitute.
Canal boats are absolutely essential to the defense of the United States.
In the event of expected trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we could ever move the supplies so vital to waging modern war. As you may well know, Mr. President, railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by engines which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed. But this is the effect of innovation, what economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. No new technology is possible that does not make obsolete an existing technology.