Steamboats drove American commerce until 1960. This book, from tape recordings in the 1950s, immortalizes men and women who spent their lives on steamboats, packets and towboats. African-Americans did the hard labor of loading boats from 1800 to 1960 for little pay. Captains, pilots, boat owners, show boaters, night watchmen, roustabouts, cooks, and musicians, were interviewed in this riverboat history. "In the early 1950s, I was a producer director for WCET, Cincinnati's educational TV station. In the Queen City, if you drove along the bluffs you could see the Ohio River below and also see the river commerce, and as it happened the last of the steam-driven packets and tows. Stern and sidewheel river boats were called packets because for years they carried the mail. I suggested the station might do a series of programs involving those that were engaged in that river commerce. Given the go ahead for my suggestion, I contacted a friend who worked on the landing. From there I was able to contact interview and record on my big box recorder some 70 men who worked on the river.Whatever other rewards there were for working on the river, for most men the wages were low. The clerk could make four dollars a day on a run such as the one just described, but more than likely it was less than this, and on the last boats that ran freight and passenger service the wage dropped as low as .60 a day for a twenty-four hour day. In the middle thirties, after the building of good roads liberated the back counties from dependence on the river for supplies and trucks could move quickly among big towns, making storedoor deliveries. There were other reasons for the decline of the packets. The despoliation of hardwood timberlands made it impossible to repair hulls, wheels, and to build new boats. Insurance rates were high. The cost of coal became a prohibitive factor with diminishing returns of the trade. These things broke enthusiasm, the price was too high, and the age of steam was allowed to run itself out." John Knoepfle