vast tonnage there were carried on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence river 75,610,690 tons, and on the Mississippi river and its tributaries, 27,856,641 tons, and on other inland waterways 3,944,655 tons. There were transported on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico, 140,512,043 tons, and on the Pacific coast, including Alaska, 17,622,816 tons. Some of the principal commodities transported were: Coal, aggregating 49,109,605 tons; iron ore, 41,524,102 tons; petroleum and other oils, 30,029,513 tons; stone, sand, etc., 14,659,972 tons; lumber, 7,111,144 tons; grain, 5,792,612 tons; cement, brick and lime, 5,165,051 tons. This enormous traffic was carried on in 37,321 vessels, costing $507,973,121, employing 140,929 men, the income of which vessels was $294,854,532, and the wages paid was $71,636,521. There were carried in addition to the freight 366,825,663 passengers over such waterways. The importance and magnitude of transportation by water so impressed the President and Congress of the United States, that the President was authorized and did appoint, on March 14, 1907, a commission to consider the question of the control of the navigable waterways of the United States with a view to their conservation and improvement. That commission made its preliminary report to the President and the Congress of the United States on February 3, 1908, in which, among other things, they recommended "that the Congress be asked to make suitable provision for improving the inland waterways of the United States at a rate commensurate with the needs of the people as determined by competent authority, and the sum of $50,000 was appropriated by Congress for that purpose. XI. RESOURCES AND REVenues. The builders of the Erie and Champlain canals were fully alive to the importance commercially of adequate and economical transportation facilities in this State and surmounted all difficulties as best they could without arousing unnecessary opposition or becoming hopelessly involved in personal animosities or in local jealousies. They knew that they were building for the future as well as their own generation. They subordinated their personal differences for the commonweal and went forward with such light as they had. The engineering problems were not the only ones that troubled them. It was necessary to have available money in large amounts to meet payments for canal construction as the work went on. It became necessary to formulate a fiscal policy that would yield adequate revenue; and in addition to that act of 1817, other measures were devised for this purpose. By the provisions of an act passed April 21, 1818, entitled "An act to improve the funds and to provide for the redemption of the funded debt of this State," the Comptroller was authorized to sell the three per cent. stock of the United States owned by the people of this State and to apply the proceeds to the reduction of the funded debt of the State, bearing seven per cent. interest. By said act he was also authorized to borrow on the credit of the State a million dollars at six per cent., and for that purpose he opened subscriptions for such loan and to issue certificates to subscribers thereto, bearing six per cent. interest, payable quarterly, and the principal to be irredeemable until January 1, 1823; but at the request of the holders redeemable within five years thereafter, and a tax of one mill on each dollar of the property within the State was to be annually imposed to discharge the then existing debt of the State. The act further provides an elaborate scheme for issuing State certificates, purporting in substance as follows: "That the people of the State of New York, owe to the person or body corporate to be named therein, the sum therein expressed, bearing an interest at the rate of six per centum per annum, payable quarterly yearly, on the first days of the months of January, April, July and October, and the principal to be irredeemable until the first day of January, in the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three," and for the required transfer of such certificates a list of the holders of which was transmitted annually to the Comptroller. The Comptroller was also authorized to apply surplus moneys in the Treasury to the purchase of such stock certificates at or below par or nominal value. The aggregate amount of the outstanding State canal debt in the year 1823, was $5,899,500, or 2 2/10 per cent. of the assessed valuation of the property of the State, and in the year 1826 it was $7,737,770, or 2 5/10 per cent. of the assessed valuation of the property of the State. In 1844 it was $20,713,905, or 3 8/10 per cent. of the assessed valuation of the property of the State, the largest per cent. in the history of the State and a much larger per cent. than that to be produced by one hundred and one million outstanding canal bonds. That will not exceed one per cent. of the assessed valuation of the property of the State. In the annual address of Governor Clinton to the Legislature of 1819, he reviews the progress of canal construction to that date and says that before the close of the next season 23 miles of canal, between Whitehall and Fort Edward, will have been completed and that 94 miles of the middle section of the western canal will have been completed, and he estimates that the whole canal system will be completed within six years from that time. The predictions were fulfilled. He called attention to the fact that the work was being carried forward within the estimates and that sections of the canal would be completed, so that they could be put into operation and a revenue derived from the traffic thereon. He stated that the existing charges on a ton of commodities from Buffalo to Albany by land was $100 and to Montreal, principally by water, was but $25; "hence it is obvious," he said, "that the whole of the vast region to the west of that flourishing village (Buffalo) and the greater part of the extensive and fertile country east of it, are prevented from sending their productions to our commercial emporium, and that they must either resort to the precarious markets of Canada, or to places more distant, less accessible, or less advantageous. When the great western canal is finished, the expense of transportation from Buffalo to Albany will not exceed ten dollars a ton. . . . If half a million of tons are, at the present period, transported on the waters of the Hudson river, it is reasonable to suppose that the time is not distant when the commodities conveyed on the canals will be equal in amount. A small transit duty will consequently produce an immense income, applicable to the speedy extinguishment of the debt contracted for the canals, and to the prosecution of other important improvements. In these works, then, we behold the operation of a powerful engine of finance, and of a prolific source of revenue. I look forward with pleasure to the speedy arrival of the time, when the State will be able to improve the navigation of the Susquehannah, the Allegheny, the Genesee and the St. Lawrence to assist in connecting the waters of the Great Lakes and of the Mississippi-to form a junction between the western canal and Lake Ontario, by the Oswego river, and to promote the laudable intention of Pennsylvania to unite the Seneca lake with the head-waters of the Susquehannah. The reduction of the expense of the transportation of a ton of merchandise from Buffalo to Albany from $100, the then existing rate, to $10, the predicted reduced rate, is to us of the present day in view of what followed, an interesting matter. Such were some of the benefits which the people of that day expected to derive from the construction of the Erie canal, and appeared to Governor Clinton to be one of the controlling reasons justifying the expenditure of the money necessary to accomplish that result. This is still more interesting to us in view of the further reduced rate, as predicted by Colonel Thomas W. Symons, of transportation of a ton over the new barge canal from Buffalo to tidewater, at 26 cents, or at the ratio of 52/100 of a mill per ton per mile. The predictions of Governor Clinton in regard to the tonnage were fulfilled within a very few years and that tonnage continued to increase over the enlarged and lateral canals until the year 1872, when the aggregate tonnage on all the canals of the State was 6,673,370 tons, which paid in tolls to the State that year $3,720,411 and in freights $7,576,300, or an aggregate revenue to the State of $10,648,711, -more than the entire cost of the original Erie, Champlain and Oswego canals. The revenues derived from the operation of completed sections of the Erie aggregated as follows: In 1820 the tolls on the Erie were.....$ 5,437-34 .... 23,000.00 In 1823 the tolls on the Erie were. 105,037.35 .... In 1824 the tolls on the Erie were..... These receipts were a substantial gain to the then limited resources of the State and materially aided the Canal Commissioners in carrying forward the work without resorting to sources of revenue other than those provided for in the original and supplemental acts authorizing and directing the prosecution of canal construction. In 1819 the Assembly made formal answer to Governor Clinton's speech through the chairman of the committee, Mr. J. V. N. Yates, in which among other things the committee reported: "The benefits resulting from an extended inland navigation, successfully conducted, are incalculably great. Whether they are considered in a moral, political, commercial or agricultural point of view, they are alike essential to our national character and glory. We rejoice, therefore, to learn, that those great works, begun and continued under the most favorable auspices, promise to realize our warmest expectations; and, it will be an object of the first importance, to hasten their complete execution by every suitable means consistent with the ability of the State. ... Future generations may, perhaps, form some estimate of their value, and prize them among the noblest monuments of human skill and perseverance; and, when the fugitive scenes of the present times shall have long since perished in oblivion, these works will remain to declare the glory of our country, and to pronounce the best eulogium upon the memory of their founders and patrons." In the Senate a somewhat similar response was given to the Governor's speech through the chairman of the committee, Henry Yates, Jr. Both of these clearly reveal the awakened interest in the construction of internal waterways through the State and the broad comprehensive view entertained by those identified with the project. |