The Mastery of the Rivers
It would perhaps have been well, in the light of later difficulties and
failures, if the men who at Washington's call undertook to master the
capricious rivers of the seaboard had studied a stately Spanish decree
which declared that, since God had not made the rivers of Spain
navigable, it were sacrilege for mortals to attempt to do so. Even
before the Revolution, Mayor Rhodes of Philadelphia was in
correspondence with Franklin in London concerning the experiences of
European engineers in harnessing foreign streams. That sage philosopher,
writing to Rhodes in 1772, uttered a clear word of warning: "rivers are
ungovernable things," he had said, and English engineers "seldom or
never use a River where it can be avoided." But it was the birthright of
New World democracy to make its own mistakes and in so doing to prove
for itself the errors of the Old World.
As energetic men all along the Atlantic Plain now took up the problem of
improving the inland rivers, they faced a storm of criticism and
ridicule that would have daunted any but such as Washington and Johnson
of Virginia or White and Hazard of Pennsylvania or Morris and Watson of
New York. Every imaginable objection to such projects was advanced--from
the inefficiency of the science of engineering to the probable
destruction of all the fish in the streams. In spite of these
discouragements, however, various men set themselves to form in rapid
succession the Potomac Company in 1785, the Society for Promoting the
Improvement of Inland Navigation in 1791, the Western Inland Lock
Navigation Company in 1792, and the Lehigh Coal Mine Company in 1793. A
brief review of these various enterprises will give a clear if not a
complete view of the first era of inland water commerce in America.
The Potomac Company, authorized in 1785 by the legislatures of Maryland
and Virginia, received an appropriation of $6666 from each State for
opening a road from the headwaters of the Potomac to either the Cheat or
the Monongahela, "as commissioners ... shall find most convenient and
beneficial to the Western settlers." This was the only public aid which
the enterprise received; and the stipulated purpose clearly indicates
the fact that, in the minds of its promoters, the transcontinental
character of the undertaking appeared to be vital. The remainder of the
money required for the work was raised by public subscription in the
principal cities of the two States. In this way £40,300 was subscribed,
Virginia men taking 266 shares and Maryland men 137 shares. The
stockholders elected George Washington as president of the company, at a
salary of thirty shillings a year, with four directors to aid him, and
they chose as general manager James Rumsey, the boat mechanician. These
men then proceeded to attack the chief impediments in the Potomac--the
Great Falls above Washington, the Seneca Falls at the mouth of Seneca
Creek, and the Shenandoah Falls at Harper's Ferry. But, as they had
difficulty in obtaining workmen and sufficient liquor to cheer them in
their herculean tasks, they made such slow progress that subscribers,
doubting Washington's optimistic prophecy that the stock would increase
in value twenty per cent, paid their assessments only after much
deliberation or not at all. Thirty-six years later, though $729,380 had
been spent and lock canals had been opened about the unnavigable
stretches of the Potomac River, a commission appointed to examine the
affairs of the company reported "that the floods and freshets
nevertheless gave the only navigation that was enjoyed." As for the road
between the Potomac and the Cheat or the Monongahela, the records at
hand do not show that the money voted for that enterprise had been used.
The Potomac Company nevertheless had accomplished something: it had
acquired an asset of the greatest value--a right of way up the strategic
Potomac Valley; and it had furnished an object lesson to men in other
States who were struggling with a similar problem. When, as will soon be
apparent, New York men undertook the improvement of the Mohawk waterway
there was no pattern of canal construction for them to follow in America
except the inadequate wooden locks erected along the Potomac. It is
interesting to know that Elkanah Watson, prominent in inland navigation
to the North, went down from New York in order to study these wooden
locks and that New Yorkers adopted them as models, though they changed
the material to brick and finally to stone.
Pennsylvania had been foremost among the colonies in canal building, for
it had surveyed as early as 1762 the first lock canal in America, from
near Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna. Work,
however, had to be suspended when Pontiac's Rebellion threw the inland
country into a panic. But the enterprise of Maryland and Virginia in
1785 in developing the Potomac aroused the Pennsylvanians to renewed
activity. The Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland
Navigation set forth a programme that was as broad as the Keystone State
itself. Their ultimate object was to capture the trade of the Great
Lakes. "If we turn our view," read the memorial which the Society
presented to the Legislature, "to the immense territories connected with
the Ohio and Mississippi waters, and bordering on the Great Lakes, it
will appear ... that our communication with those vast countries
(considering Fort Pitt as the port of entrance upon them) is as easy and
may be rendered as cheap, as to any other port on the Atlantic tide
waters."
Pennsylvania, lying between Virginia and New York, occupied a peculiar
position. Her Susquehanna Valley stretched northwest--not so directly
west as did the Potomac on the south and the Mohawk on the north. This
more northerly trend led these early Pennsylvania promoters to believe
that, while they might "only have a share in the trade of those [the
Ohio] waters," they could absolutely secure for themselves the trade of
the Great Lakes, "taking Presq'Isle [Erie, Pennsylvania] which is within
our own State, as the great mart or place of embarkation."
The plan which the Society proposed involved the improvement of water
and land routes by way of the Delaware to Lake Ontario and Lake Otsego,
and of eight routes by the Susquehanna drainage, north, northwest, and
west. A bill which passed the Legislature on April 13, 1791,
appropriated money for these improvements. Work was begun immediately on
the Schuylkill-Susquehanna Canal, but only four miles had been completed
by 1794, when the Lancaster Turnpike directed men's attention to
improved highways as an alternative more likely than canals to provide
the desired facilities for inland transportation. The work on the canal
was renewed, however, in 1821, when the rival Erie Canal was nearing
completion, and was finished in 1827. It became known as the Union Canal
and formed a link in the Pennsylvania canal system, the development of
which will be described in a later chapter.
In New York State, throughout the period of the Old French and the
Revolutionary wars, barges and keel boats had plied the Mohawk, Wood
Creek, and the Oswego to Lake Ontario. Around such obstructions as
Cohoes Falls, Little Falls, and the portage at Rome to Wood Creek,
wagons, sleds, and pack-horses had transferred the cargoes. To avoid
this labor and delay men soon conceived of conquering these obstacles by
locks and canals. As early as 1777 the brilliant Gouverneur Morris had a
vision of the economic development of his State when "the waters of the
great western inland seas would, by the aid of man, break through their
barriers and mingle with those of the Hudson."
Elkanah Watson was in many ways the Washington of New York. He had the
foresight, patience, and persistence of the Virginia planter. His
Journal of a tour up the Mohawk in 1788 and a pamphlet which he
published in 1791 may be said to be the ultimate sources in any history
of the internal commerce of New York. As a result, a company known as
"The President, Directors, and Company of the Western Inland Lock
Navigation in the State of New York," with a capital stock of $25,000,
was authorized by act of legislature in March, 1792, and the State
subscribed for $12,500 in stock. Many singular provisions were inserted
in this charter, but none more remarkable than one which stipulated that
all profits over fifteen per cent should revert to the State Treasury.
This hint concerning surplus profits, however, did not cause a stampede
when the books were opened for subscriptions in New York and Albany. In
later years, when the Erie Canal gave promise of a new era in American
inland commerce, Elkanah Watson recalled with a grim satisfaction the
efforts of these early days. The subscription books at the old Coffee
House in New York, he tells us, lay open three days without an entry,
and at Lewis's tavern in Albany, where the books were opened for a
similar period, "no mortal" had subscribed for more than two shares.
The system proposed for the improvement of the waterways of New York was
similar to that projected for the Potomac. A canal was to be cut from
the Mohawk to the Hudson in order to avoid Cohoes Falls; a canal with
locks would overcome the forty-foot drop at Little Falls; another canal
over five thousand feet in length was to connect the Mohawk and Wood
Creek at Rome; minor improvements were to be made between Schenectady
and the mouth of the Schoharie; and finally the Oswego Falls at
Rochester were to be circumvented also by canal. All the objections,
difficulties, and discouragements which had attended efforts to improve
waterways elsewhere in America confronted these New York promoters. They
began in 1793 at Little Falls but were soon forced to cease owing to the
failure of funds. Under the encouraging spur of a state subscription to
two hundred shares of stock, they renewed their efforts in 1794 but were
again forced to abandon the work before the year had passed. By
November, 1795, however, they had completed the canal and in thirty days
had received toll to the amount of about four hundred dollars.
The total actual work done is not clearly shown by the documents, but it
is evident that the measure of success achieved was not equaled
elsewhere on similar improvements on a large scale. From 1796 to 1804
the tolls received at Rome amounted to over fifteen thousand dollars,
and at Little Falls to over fifty-eight thousand dollars--a sum which
exceeded the original cost of construction. Dividends had crept up from
three per cent in 1798 to five and a half per cent in 1817, the year in
which work was begun on the Erie Canal.
No struggle for the mastery of an American river matches in certain
respects the effort of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to bridle
the Lehigh and make it play its part in the commercial development of
Pennsylvania. The failures and trials of the promoters of this company
were no less remarkable than was the great success that eventually
crowned the effort. In 1793 the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was organized
and purchased some ten thousand acres in the Mauch Chunk anthracite
region, nine miles from the Lehigh River. It then appropriated a sum of
money to build a road from the mines to the river in the expectation
that the State would improve the navigation of the waterway, for which,
it has already been noted, an appropriation had been made in 1791, in
accordance with the programme of the Society for Promoting the
Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation. Nothing was done, however,
to improve the river, and the company, after various attempts at
shipping coal to Philadelphia, gave up the effort and allowed the
property, which was worth millions, to lie idle. In 1807 the Lehigh Coal
Mine Company, in another effort to get its wares before the public,
granted to Rowland and Butland, a private firm, free right to operate
one of its veins of coal; but this operation also resulted in failure.
In 1813 the company made a third attempt and granted to a private
concern a lease of the entire property on the condition that ten
thousand bushels of coal should be taken to market annually.
Difficulties immediately made themselves apparent. No contractor could
be found who would haul the output to the Lehigh River for less than
four dollars a ton, and the man who accepted those terms lost money. Of
five barges filled at Mauch Chunk three went to pieces on the way to
Philadelphia. Although the contents of the other two sold for twenty
dollars a ton, the proceeds failed to meet expenses, and the operating
company threw up the lease.
But it happened that White and Hazard, the wire manufacturers who
purchased this Lehigh coal, were greatly pleased with its quality.
Believing that coal could be obtained more cheaply from Mauch Chunk than
from the mines along the Schuylkill, White, Hauto, and Hazard formed a
company, entered into negotiation with the owners of the Lehigh mines,
and obtained the lease of their properties for a period of twenty years
at an annual rental of one ear of corn. The company agreed, moreover, to
ship every year at least forty thousand bushels of coal to Philadelphia
for its own consumption, to prove the value of the property.
White and his partners immediately applied to the Legislature for
permission to improve the navigation of the Lehigh, stating the purpose
of the improvement and citing the fact that their efforts would tend to
serve as a model for the improvement of other Pennsylvania streams. The
desired opportunity "to ruin themselves," as one member of the
Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818. The
various powers applied for, and granted, embraced the whole range of
tried and untried methods for securing "a navigation downward once in
three days for boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons." The
State kept its weather eye open in this matter, however, for a small
minority felt that these men would not ruin themselves. Accordingly, the
act of grant reserved to the commonwealth the right to compel the
adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to
Stoddartsville if the service given by the company did not meet "the
wants of the country."
Capital was subscribed by a patriotic public on condition that a
committee of stockholders should go over the ground and pass judgment on
the probable success of the effort. The report was favorable, so far as
the improvement of the river was concerned; but the nine-mile road to
the mines was unanimously voted impracticable. "To give you an idea of
the country over which the road is to pass," wrote one of the
commissioners, "I need only tell you that I considered it quite an
easement when the wheel of my carriage struck a stump instead of a
stone." The public mind was divided. Some held that the attempt to
operate the coal mine was farcical, but that the improvement of the
Lehigh River was an undertaking of great value and of probable profit to
investors. Others were just as positive that the river improvement would
follow the fate of so many similar enterprises but that a fortune was in
store for those who invested in the Lehigh mines.
The direct result of the examiners' report and of the public debate it
provoked was the organization of the first interlocking companies in the
commercial history of America. The Lehigh Navigation Company was formed
with a capital stock of $150,000 and the Lehigh Coal Company with a
capital stock of $55,000. This incident forms one of the most striking
illustrations in American history of the dependence of a commercial
venture upon methods of inland transportation. The Lehigh Navigation
Company proceeded to build its dams and walls while the Lehigh Coal
Company constructed the first roadway in America built on the
principle--later adopted by the railways--of dividing the total distance
by the total descent in order to determine the grade. Not to be outdone
in point of ingenuity, the Lehigh Navigation Company, then suffering
from an unprecedented dearth of water, adopted White's invention of
sluice gates connecting with pools which could be filled with reserve
water to be drawn upon as navigation required. By 1819 the necessary
depth of water between Mauch Chunk and Easton was obtained. The two
companies were immediately amalgamated under the title of the Lehigh
Coal and Navigation Company and by 1823 had sent over two thousand tons
of coal to market.
As most of the efforts to improve the rivers, however, met with
indifferent success and many failures were recorded, the pendulum of
public confidence in this aid to inland commerce swung away, and highway
improvement by means of stone roads and toll road companies came into
favor in the interval between the nation's two eras of river improvement
and canal building.