continued from part 3. "Excavation of the canal was begun in 1824 in Rhode Island, and two years later in Massachusetts at the Thomas Street end. This gave a lot of employment to Rhode Islanders and stimulated Providence business to a very considerable extent. About 500 men from Providence were engaged in the work at one time, and North Water Street (later called Canal Street) was transformed into a busy business center. New warehouses were built along it with wharves facing on the canal. And general business throughout the city increased proportionately. There were forty-nine locks in all between Worcester and Providence, all of them heavily constructed out of granite at a cost of $4000 each. As for the canal itself, it was 32 feet wide at the top with sloping banks that made it only 18 feet wide at the bottom. Water was kept at a depth of 3 1/2 feet. But the canal was actually only dug nine-tenths of the way between the two towns. For the rest the engineers depended upon slack water navigation, making use of the ponds along the way. They did not figure on such things as drought in the summer and ice in the winter, and consequently the loaded canal boats frequently became stranded for days and weeks at a time for lack of navigable water. This was of course ruinous, both to the canal company operating the boats and to the merchants who used them for shipping goods. As a matter of fact the Blackstone Canal was always of more value to the public than to its stockholders. The latter received only decreasing dividends from the start of the project, but the former had the advantages resulting from the reservoirs which had been built along the route to hold back spring flood water in the ponds. More water flowed in the Blackstone River and there was enough increased hydraulic power to encourage the building of many manufacturing plants along the canal." continued in part 5.