The land that these men had to clear in order to build the canal was basically thick forests. They had to clear the land to make the soil soft enough for men to dig. There where three major labor saving devices that where made for the construction on the Erie Canal.
- The first invention made it possible for one mane to fell a tree without using an ax or saw. "The worker would secure one end of a cable to the trunk of a tree some sixty feet above ground and the other end to a roller turned by a gear with a crank. After anchoring the apparatus to the ground one hundred feet from base of the tree, the worker would turn the crank. The tremendous leverage obtained by fastening the cable so high up made it only a matter of time and exertion before the tree crashed to the ground."
- The second invention was made to remove the stumps left behind. "It rested on two huge wheels sixteen feet in diameter joined by an axle almost two feet thick and thirty feet long. Mid way along the axle-tree was a smaller wheel, fourteen feet in diameter, with its spokes firmly united to the axle barrel. A rope was fastened to the rim of this middle wheel, wound around it several times, and its loose end attached to a yoke of draft animals. The middle wheel was positioned over the stump, the two larger wheels braced, and a chain made fast to both the thick axle and the stump. When the oxen pulled on the rope, the rotation of the wheel made the entire axle turn, winding the chain around it, eventually ripping up the stump." This machine enabled seven men and a pair of horses to pull thirty to forty stumps in a day.
- The third invention was a special plow. It had a heavy piece of iron attached to it; when the draft animal pulled the plow, the plate traveled below the ground cutting roots as thick as two inches so they could be scraped away.
The preceding quotes came from an article entitled "Engineering the Canal" written by John Tarkov. The article can be found in American Heritage of Invention and Technology, the summer issue of 1986, on pages 50 through 57.