^Ls JLisrjD STJLTE B'zisr^isroEs.
REMARKS
OF
ON. ABRAHAM' B. CONGER,
IV
OF ROCKLAND,
ON THE CANALS AND FINANCES OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
Delivered in Convention September 5th, 1867.
REPORTED BY EDWARD F. UNDERHILL.
ALBANY, N. Y. :
WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1867.
,j\
EEMAEK8.
Mr. CONGER—Mr. Chairman, in rising to ad¬
dress you at this time I feel as if I were depart¬
ing from the rule which has been adopted, though
without any formal vote, and which has tlius far
been followed almost spontaneously in this com¬
mittee. We have not only been governed in this
debate by the old adage, audi alteram, partem,
but we have heretofore heard each side in regular
and alternate succession. Yet I am free to say
that I folbw the honorable gentleman from Onon¬
daga [Mr Andrews] who has just,taken his seat,
with great "satisfaction ; because, although he
may seem to have broken the rule of speaking
only on one side, and has adopted the views
of the Finance Committee on the so-called im¬
provement of the canals, and those of the
Canal Committee on matters of finance, yet I
shall, with reference to some of the me¬
chanical and hydraulic problems which con¬
cern enlargement, follow him gladly, because
he has opened up a mode of demonstration
which will make my work easier—my dull ar¬
gument more quick of comprehension. He has,
in a most forcible .and familiar manner, brought
out the great practical stupidity of this measure.
He has shown that it is neither demanded by the
necessities of our inland navigation, nor can it be
sustained by the intelligence of a business com¬
munity. If, after I get through the remarks
which I shall address to the committee, on the
new enlargement as a practicable measure, I may
seem to diUer with him somewhat upon the finan¬
cial question, it shall be mostly by attempting to
explain how it is that he has mistaken the scheme
of the Finance Committee. With regard, then,
to the easy and unembarrassed navigation of the
canals, as now finished in accordance with the
plan originally proposed in 1835, the plan of en¬
largement which was so ardently coveted and so
strongly demanded by the men of that period,
and declared by the amendment of the present
Constitution to be a finality ; I say, on this sub¬
ject of free trade and intercourse on the canals
of this State, uninterrupted by visionary schemes,
and untaxed by enormous expenditures, but, for
some years to come to be operated in harmony with
rules of economy and just laws of trade, Rockland
shakes hands with Onondaga. I am not re¬
strained, as the honorable gentleman said he was,
by the seeming bias of sections, in expressing my
views freely upon this question ; nor have I ever
been so. My people are like their neighbors in
the city of New York, the friends of free, enlarged
and unrestricted commerce, not only with the na¬
tions of this world, but with the sister States of
this country. I had no embarrassment, democrat
as I was, in the Senate of 1852, after bringing in
a report against the lettings under the nine mil¬
lion project of 1851, and showing, if not to the
satisfaction of the Legislature of 1852, at least as
it subsequently appeared, to that of 1853, and
to the people of this State, that all the practices
and schemes which were connected with the plan
of 1851 were fraudulent and void; m subsequently
submitting the first constitutional proposition
since the year 1846 for [the speedy completion
of the canals. This was accepted by the
democracy of the State who had theretofore
pledged themselves in their primary councils
to be in favor of an early and final enlarge¬
ment ; and in 1853, although a different plan
was adopted, yet 1 have to say to you, sir, as
a matter of history, that that democratic Legisla¬
ture, v/ith Mr. Loomis, of Herkimer, at the head
of its joint committee, perfected an amendment
for a constitutional enlargement which was rati¬
fied by the people, aud under which our canals
were prosecuted to completion. 1 hope that no
gentleman will for a moment imagine that in stat¬
ing so much as this, 1 am actuated by any feeling
of egotism as to the part which 1 took in that
great measure. But 1 wish to remind gentlemen
that now, as then, there cannot be any reference
whatever to the old political divisions of this
State upon a measure which is demanded by pub¬
lic necessity, and which is approved by the com¬
mon intelligence of our people. On the other
hand, as has just been demonstrated to this Con¬
vention by my honorable friend from Onondaga,
there can be no hesitation upon the part of those
who have heretofore stood upon other questions
politically opposed, as to a plan which does not
meet the requirements of common sense, which
has not been demanded by the practical men of
the State, and which could only result in forcing
us into an attitude of spendthrift advocacy which
no man upon this floor has yet appeared to as¬
sume, or if he has, has not adequately avowed.
1 propose to examine, in the first place, this
plan for the enlargement of the locks as proposed
4
by the Canal Committee precisely as if the canals
of the State were the property of a private per¬
son or a private corparation ; and as if that per¬
son or that corporation were endowed with all
the intelligence, possessed of all the information,
and gifted with all the power and ability neces¬
sary, first to understand, and next- to carry out
what is demanded by the exigencies of the time ;
and gifted, moreover, with all the prescience pos¬
sible to mortal ken, to know what are to be the
demands of trade in the future, and what in¬
creased patronage will be awarded'to a large out¬
lay and judicious management. In this investi¬
gation I may call upon you to give a patient
hearing to some calculations and some statistics
which I deem to be necessary to a due and in¬
telligent appreciation of the subject. There are
many gentlemen in this Convention to whom this
matter of the canal enlargement is wholly novel,
and who, I suppose, desire to meet the question
with calm deliberation and to come to a dear
conviction of their duty, and who may not be
unwilling that I should detain. them a very few
moments with some preliminary statements in re¬
gard to the canals—the old and the new. I wish
to say that while I shall present this question in
outline, as a question of practical engineering, I
will attempt it in such a way as not to oblige my
audience first to master all the elements of such
a question with the thoroughness of a profes¬
sional study, but to furnish such facts as will
enable them, as men of plain common sense, to
view the subject in a common sense light and in
no other. The old canal had a water level 40 feet
wide on the surface, 28 feet on the bottom, and
it was four feet deep. It had 83 locks, 90 feet
by 15, and it bore upon its surface boats IB feet
long, 14.J feet wide, and permitted to draw-
feet of water. The burden -which those boats
carried was from 80 to 90 tons ; and, according
to the rule which has been given by the engineers,
the proportion of the weight of the cargo to the
whole weight of the boat when loaded, was as
1 to 1.43. The tonnage displacement of water
by the smaller load was 114^ tons, and of the
larger 128f tons, making an average water dis¬
placement of 121 i tons. After the canal was put
in operation, it was discovered that a great mis¬
take had been made in its engineering. The
common impression which is left upon the minds
of those who seek the history of this work only
from authorities which have favored enlargement,
is that the old canal had not sufficient capacity/or
the tonnage that was required to be put upon it.
Although that was so to some extent, that state¬
ment will not convey the whole truth. The fact
was, and I desire to say it in such a way that I
may not seem to affect any special intelligence
upon this subject, or to pass any reflections upon
the integrity of the immortal men who first pro¬
jected and executed the work ; still there remains
the fact that the great difficulty with the old canal
was that in point of engineering it was a failure.
The men who started that work may not have
anticipated that boats of the size which were sub¬
sequently brought upon it, and laden so heavily as
to sink to within six inches of the bottom, would
ever he put upon it. Perhaps they were not wholly
familiar ■with the laws governing fuch navigation,
which subsequent investigation in this country
confirmed, and to which I shall presently beg to
allude. But you will please to bear in mind this
simple fact that the boats were more than one
foot wider than one-third of the width of. the
canal, and that in that respect they violated the
first law of uniform easy traction in a navigable
stream confined within narrow limits as a canal.
In practice also they drew within six inches of
the canal violating the same law differently ex¬
pressed. When we examine the plan of the
enlargement of the canal, we find the modifica¬
tion which that plan has undergone. The bench-
wall, so much complained of, was part of the
original plan. It was designed for a canal seventy
feet wide, but it was not contemplated at the out¬
set that the bottom should be over forty-two feet
wide ; hence the origin of the bench-wall. They
thought, with the experience they had, that, in
'order to make the canal strong enough to hold
more than three times the quantity of water
which the old canal held, it was necessary to
make the sides firm and strong, and hence the
slope of the original enlargement was'as two to
one, instead of being, as it is at present, as one
and one-quarter to one. Again, it was decided to
shorten the canal, change its route in part, and
diminish the number of the looks. As the canal
now stands you have fifty-seven double and four¬
teen single locks, one hundred and ten by eighteen
feet, with boats ninety-seven feet long and seven¬
teen and a half feet wide, and drawing five to
six feet of water. Here I may say that in such a
canal, in order to satisfy the rules which I shall
presently develop, no boat should be permitted
to draw when loaded over five and a half feet of
water. The burden of ihese boats was from two
hundred and ten to two hundred and forty tons ;
and the proportion of the cargo to the whole
weight of the boat when loaded was less than in
the former case, and was as 1 to 1.20. The ton¬
nage displacement of the boat of two hundred and
ten tons is two hundred and fifty-two tons, and
of the boat of two hundred and forty tons, two
hundred and eighty-eight tons, making an average
of two hundred and seventy tons of water dis¬
placement. Asking your indulgence for the time
taken by these preliminary statements, I am bet¬
ter prepared to answer and ask touching the
plan which is now proposéd by your Canal
Committee. They propose to enlarge the locks,
to make them two hundred and twenty feet long
and twenty-five feet wide. I think that the hon¬
orable gentleman from Ulster [Mr. Schoonmaker]
made a mistake this morning when he said that
it was the plan of the Canal Committee only to make
these locks two hundred feet long. How is it
possible that the lock should be but two hundred
feet long',when the boats about which we have
heard so much, and which are to pass through these
locks, are to be of that length. The honorable
gentleman will find that it is impossible for a boat
of the size proposed to enter into the locks unless
made of the length which has been designated—
two hundred and twenty feet.
Mr. SCHOONMAKER—The looks were to be
of sufficient size to admit boats two hundred feet
long. They were to be two hundred feet long
between the ends of tlie look.
5
Mr. CONGER—Not so, sir; but if the boat is
to be two hundred feet long, how is it possible to
enter or advance the boat into the lock? Let me
draw the attention of the committee and of the
honorable gentleman to the fact that on the for¬
mer canal, with looks ninety feet long, the boats
were seventy-eight feet long, allowing twelve feet
of space ; with locks one hundred and ten feet
long, the boats were ninety-seven feet long, allow¬
ing thirteen feet. Is it too much to allow twenty
feet for a boat that is to be two hundred feet
long, especially when wo remember the testimony
brought before the Canal Committee? Mr. Stu¬
art, State Engineer and Surveyor in 1848 or 1849,
and United States consulting engineer, appointed
by the President to inquire into the coustruction
of gunboat locks on our trunk canals, in 1863,
after deprecating the economy sought to be prac¬
ticed by your commttteé in using rough blocks
instead of smooth facing in the contemplated
looks, and stating that though ten per cent might
be saved in cost, that the locks would be dam¬
aged very much more than that by the boats
knocking against them, and that the stone must be
very solid as well as smooth, or that boats carry¬
ing five or six hundred tons would Booii knock
the lock to pieces—Mr. Stuart, I say, testified that
while boats of the present size, carrying two hun¬
dred tons, give a blow equal to ten tons either on
the sides or the 'gates of the locks, that one of
these large boats would strike the gates with
forty tons of pressure, or four times as much. I
think, therefore, that it is necessary to give these
boats some room on entering the locks. But
aside from these views, the honorable gentleman
from the Canal Committee will find that the facts
and figures correspond precisely with what I said,
that by the report these locks are to be two hun¬
dred and twenty feet Jong. Now, what do they
propose ? To put on these boats a cargo of five
hundred tons; others say of six hundred tons.
If these boats can be built in such a way as to
sustain this weight, without very much increasing
the proportion of the weight of the cargo to the
weight of the boat when loaded, we may take the
statement of the engineer, that with a cargo of
five hundred tons there will be a displacement of
water of six hundred and eighty-four tons; and
if you enlarge the .tonnage to six hundred tons
there will be a water displacement in the canal
of' eight hundred and forty tons. Besides this,
those gentlemen who have caught the figures, and
the ratios between the width of canal and boats
which I have given, will not have failed to per¬
ceive that the Canal Committee of this Conven¬
tion propose to go back and commit over again
the blunder of the old Erie canal, only making
the blunder worse. They propose now, upon a
canal which is to be seventy feet wide upon the
surface, to give you boats twenty-three feet
wide. In other words, they propose that
the width of the boat should be to the
width of the canal as I to 3.04 ; while on the old.
canal the ratio was as 1 to 2.75, and at this
time on the present enlarged canal, as 1 to 4
precisely. In addition to this they aim to
triplicate the tonnage. I shall not undertake
to say exactly what would be the effect of the
large excess of tonnage displacement, but
the committee will remember that upon the
old canal it was about one hundred and twenty
tons, and on the present canal two hundred and
seventy tons, while it is now sought to effect
an average tonnage displacement of over seven
hundred and fifty tons of water. I will not stop
now to inquire what power it would be necessary
to use, instead of that now used, which by prac¬
tice has been discovered to be the most profitable
ever employed in the State. I do not desire now
to ascertain how much extra power will be re¬
quired to move one of these boats through a canal
of this width. We may arrive at an adequate
solution of these questions in some other way. I
think, Mr. Chairman, that it is deeply to be re¬
gretted that the Canal Committee should have
reported with but feeble modifications the wild
and visionary schemes of engineers employed in
the still more wild and visionary scheme of put¬
ting gunboats upon the canal in order to main¬
tain proper relations between this country and
Great Britain. For my own part I never heard
that question broached without wondering at the
amazing arrogance or ignorance of the men who
conceived it. Did they remember the terms of
the treaty with Great Britain in regard to the
placing of boats suitable to be used for war pur¬
poses upon the lakes, upon either side ? It seems
to me that they would have seen that a resolu¬
tion on the part of this government during the
rebellion to put gunboats upon the canals, or to
commence work with that end in view, would
have been accepted by Great Britain upon the
spotms a coatis belli ; because a negotiation for a
contract with a State or its citizens, to do a thing
which would inevitably result in violating existing
treaties, would have been just as much a cause of
war as would have been the actual realization of
this delusive conception, and the entering of the
pet monitors of that day upon our frontier lakes.
Now, your committee, in taking up these engi-
neers and the plans which our national government
declined, did not stop to inquire as to the feasi¬
bility of thejr project or its general adaptation to
commercial purposes. Had they gone back, sir,
to the good old times of 1835, had they been
willing to avail themselves of the wisdom which
was presented to the Legislature that year in the
reports m.ade by the canal commissioners, when
such men as Bouck and Van Reusselaer had over¬
sight and such men as Jervis were the experts
employed in the service of the State, they would
have received some enlightenment on the merits
of the enlargement they have espoused. They
would have seen in the reports which I hold in
my hand reference to certain experiments made
nearly one-half of a century before that
time, and discovered that having been origi¬
nally started under the patronage of the
French government, they were approved by the
government of this State, and that the rule was
laid down, based on ingenious researches made
by the Chevalier De Buat, and first published in
this country in the American edition of the Edin¬
burgh Encyclopedia, that the ratio of the width of
the boat and the width of a caual should never
be more than one to four and forty-six hundredths
of a decimal. In other words, in order to navi¬
gate a stream like a canal, whose waters are shut
6
in and pent up within narrow and sloping sides,
with the same easy traction that you would attain
in navigating a river without a current, or in nav¬
igating an indefinite expanse of water, as the
phrase goes, you must have your boat no wider,
with reference to the width of your canal, than
one-fourth, the exact ratio being one ' to four
and forty-six hundredths. They would also
have discovered that the section of the
boat should bear to the section of the
canal the proportion of one to six and forty-
six hundredths, and they would have seen that
in order to secure a navigation of a canal with
ease and consequent profit to those who navigate
it, they should not attempt to build or use a boat
wider than one-fourth of the canal, or, if they
decreed that the boats should be 2B feet wide,
then, following the true ratio, they should have
announced to the Convention and proclaimed to
the people of this State that, in obedience to those
laws, it was necessary to make a canal 10.S|- feet
wide. Moreover, sir, they would not have spoken
to you in such strong and bold anticipation of
the future as to the possibility of naviga¬
ting these boats with such heavy loads
upon them, sinking thenj to within six inches or a
foot of the bottom of the canal, for they would
have discovered in applying this formula that no
boat should sink lower when loaded than five
and a half feet on a oanal that was seventy feet
wide and seven feet deep, and if either the proposed
enlarged boat or any new boat were to
conform to the rule, as long as the
width of the canal was to remain
as it is now, they should not have proposed any
boat or locks wider than the present structures in
nse, the mathematical proportion for this canal re¬
quiring fifteen and seven-tenths feet width of
boat. I will detain you just to add that in tliat report,
formula and tables are given which state the ex¬
act relation of the width of a boat, to the width of
canal, the depth of draught, the length of boat, the
loss in rake of bow and stern, the burden ex¬
clusive of the boat, the tractile power required,
the relative cost of navigating the boat, the
transportation per ton, and the length of lock-
chambers on a canal properly proportioned and
navigated. All these things were carefully spread
out before the Legislature of 1835, and the canal
commissioners, headed by Governor Bouck, ac¬
cepted the plan of enlargement. Moreover, our
committee would have discovered that in¬
creasing a boat eighty-eight feet long and thir¬
teen and a half wide, only one foot in width, allow¬
ing it to sink into the canal two feet deeper, in all
five feet deep, adding to the length of it fifteeu
feet and ¡,10 the loss in rake to bow or
stern one foot, the burden, exclusive of the boat,
would be as one hundred and thirty to sixty-two,
or more than double ; the tractile power would be
forty-six per cent greater ; the cost of uiivigating
the boat would be near y fifty per cent more, and
the relative cost of transportation would only have
been reduced twenty-one per cent, the additional
length of the lock required being fifteen feet
and the rates of the transverse area of boat and
canal being increased from 1 4.84 to 1 7.06,
Now, sir, tbo.se were the proportions wliich science,
guided and tested by experimental observation,
established, and which should have controlled the
Judgment of our committee before they had under¬
taken to say to this Convention that they would
recommend the passage of an article amending
the Constitution securing the establishment of
these enlarged looks and the navigation of the
present canal by boats 23 feet wide. I say, sir,
that if they had intelligently investigated this
part of the subject, I have no doubt they would
have come to the conclusion, that in order to get
boats of that size, no matter what the cost would
be for the enlargement of the looks, they would
have had to announce to the people that the Erie
canal must hereafter be enlarged throughout its
entire length, to be at least 100 feet wide on its
water surface. But we are told by the commit¬
tee that by this plan of enlarging the' boat, we
are to obtain great advantage in increased speed,
and great economy of time in navigating the
canal, and of cost in transporting tonnage. I
shall not delay you very long ou this subject, al¬
though I may have to allude very briefly to some
authorities which I think this Convention and the
people of this State should be possessed of. Mr.
Chairman, the chief experiments which I have
been able to reach on this subject of increased
velocity, were those made by James Walker,
Esq., and published in the transactions of the
Royal Society of London for the year 1828.
Those who are curious to look will find it at page
15 of that volume. Now, sir, he admits that by
the old theory, the resistance of the fluid per se
increased in the duplicate ratio of the velocity ;
that is as the square of the velocity. But he
insists that this is true only in the abstract, and
that there are other elements of resistance
caused by viscidity, by friction, by the accumula¬
tion of the water in front, and its depression
toward the stern of the boat, in regard to which
our ignorance of the laws which govern the in¬
ternal motion of the fluid has prevented
any correct theory from being suggested.
He then adverts to the experiments made under
the supervision of the French academicians as
far back as 1776 to 1778 conducted by Bossut
and others with D'Alembert at tlieir head, where
boxes six feet long and one foot wide were em¬
ployed ; and although I cannot assert with the
positiveness of a thorough, invesiigation, yet as
near as I can ascertain, the rate of speed which
was adopted as the standard velocity in those
experiments, was only 1 85-100 of a mile. Our
engineers in 1835 in ignorance of this rule sup¬
posed the French academicians had a.ssumed the
velocity of easy and ordinary navigation to be
two and a half miles, but our experience shows
that you could not navigate a boat on the old canal
when its load was properly proportioned at a
rate equal to two miles an hour without a severe
drag upon the power employed ; and the expe¬
rience of those who navigate loaded boats now
istbat it is impossible with economy of power
■exerted by a good and siiiSoient team to attain
more than a mile and a half. I should have added
that the French academicians also employed mod¬
els of ships of the same length of the boxes I
have referred to nineteen inches wide, depth of
immersion varying from seven to sixteen inches.
Now, sir, Walker made his experiments in the
7
East ladia improvement dock, which was five
hundred and sixty feet wide and twenty-four feet
deep, so that there was no possible resistance to
the boats that he employed, either from the sides
or from the bottom of the dock. His first exper¬
iment was in a boat whose length on the surface
of the water was eighteen feet and six inches;
the breadth six feet, the depth of immersion two
feet; the greatest immersed cross-section being
nine feet. Remember that his boat was of a model
altogether different from that of an ordinary
canal-boat, and of course the resistance or
the power required to draw it through
the water w;as a great deal less than that neces¬
sary to draw a boat of the same cross-section, but
of the shape of a modern canal-boat. His load was
two tons and 200 pounds gross (4,880 pounds),
besides the weight of three men who made the
observation. How, sir, at a speed of two and a
half miles per hour he found the actual resistance
to be eleven pounds. At a speed of four and
twenty-three oue-hundredths of a mile per hour, not
quite double the speed, he found the resistance to
be thirty-nine and one-half pounds, the resistance
as calculated by ordinary formulœ being only thir¬
ty-two pounds. Taking the average of all his ex¬
periments before mé, but which I have not time
to recite, it is perfectly safe to affirm that increas¬
ing the velocity after you have once, with a boat
of good model for ease of traction, reached two
and one-half miles per hour, at a ratio less than
two to one, you have an actual resistance quad¬
rupled in value. These are his concluding obser¬
vations, and I think they will commend them¬
selves to gentlemen who can see what is to be
the terrible coat of this most fatuitous project of
trying to navigate these canals economically with
steam so as to gain three or more miles speed per
hour. Mr. Walker says :
" If with a speed of two and one-half miles an
hour thirty tons on a canal be equal to seven and
one-half tons on a level railroad, a speed of five
miles per hour would, on the principle of the
square, bring the railroad and the canal to an
equality; while the result of the experiments
makes the two modes of conveyance equal, con¬
siderably under four miles an hour, and gives the
railroad the decided preference at all higher ve¬
locities."
But I can elucidate this subject, perhaps, Mr.
Chairman, very satisfactorily to those who are
present and have had some familiarity with the
old navigation of the canal. A canal packet after
the year 1836 was built eleven feet wide, draw¬
ing, when light, eighteen inches, and when load¬
ed, two and one-half feet. Its speed never over¬
ran five miles an hour, and this was all that could
be attained by three horses, driven to their utmost
power of endurance; Now, sir, it required fifteen
extra horses, as I am credibly informed, to get an
extra speed of one mile an hour. But, sir, the
gentlemen of the committee of the last Legisla¬
ture who prepared a report on that subject, which
was put on our tables when we were first con¬
vened here, have alluded to the Delaware and
Raritan canal, and they tell you, on page sixteen
of that report, that " steamers from one hundred
and fifty to two hundred feet long, and, say,
twenty-three feet wide, have been in successful
operation on that canal for the last twelve or
fifteen years, their average speed, including lock¬
ages, being three miles per hour, at which they
are limited by the regulations upon the canal."
But they fail to tell the Legislature and to inform
this Convention that the same boats in an open
river, with the same or nearly the same amount
of steam, attain a speed of from twelve to fifteen
miles an hour. Now, to one who looks at this as
a problem in dynamics, the question occurs, do
not those boats lose from three-fourths to four-fifths
of their power in navigating the narrow canal,
and would not that be the invariable rule of loss
for all persons engaged in—
Mr. HARDENBUKGH — Tou have been some¬
what misled, I think, in the practical operation of
that canal. No boats run there now that carry
tonnage larger than one hundred and fifty tons.
They can run boats of five hundred and six hun¬
dred tons burden, but they do not in the practi¬
cal operation of the canal transport goods in
boats of larger capacity, with the exception of
eight or nine boats, of tonnage higher than one
hundred and fifty tons.
Mr. CONGER—I have no doubt the statement
of the case made by the honorable gentleman, who
has, I believe, investigated this subject, is perfectly
correct, but, in giving the statement as made, it
was simply my desire to draw the attention of this
committee to the attempt made at this time to in¬
veigle us into the belief that with steam you could
force a wide boat through a narrow canal at a
rate of speed equal to three miles an hour, and
further, to show that such a project, if realized,
involved a loss in power of at least four-fifths to
three-fourths of the whole power employed. But
with regard to the facts and points just sug¬
gested, I believe that my honorable friend from
Ulster will be able to give this committee all the
particulars of the navigation of that canal, and
will confirm practically the position which I
seek now for the present to advocate in regard to
the gross waste of power that is to be employed
in such a futile, absurd and frantic attempt to
force a wide and heavy boat through a narrow and
crimped channel at a speed of three miles an hour.
If it be necessary to supplement these views as
to the excessive waste of power resulting from
this forlorn hope of getting up speed beyond a
certain limit, I beg to call your attention to one
fact which I desire to make historical, and to
which I now very briefly refer. There is in ex¬
istence at this time, Mr. Chairman, a steam packet
on the Erie and Oswego canals about thirteen
feet wide and forty-five feet long, and sharp built.
In the canal the utmost that boat can effect in
the way of speed is five miles an hour; on the
Oswego river, with the same steam, it can run
ten miles an hour with ease. That is evidence
that in the canal, in a navigable medium which
is restricted by sides so closely put together,
there is a loss under the most favorable circum¬
stances of build and lightness of boat, of half the
power in undertaking the same rate of speed as
might be gained in an indefinite expanse of water
free from currents, and the experiment has been
pushed as far as this : where steam has been in¬
creased from sixty to one hundred pounds it has
been found that this boat could not be driven any
8
faster. This is owing, Mr. Chairman, to the'
theory of the wave, which is more definite and
more marked when a high rate of speed is sought
in a navigable medium, like the canal, than it is
upon the rivers. And I wi)l dwell on this thought
now for the purpose of suggesting to the commit¬
tee how it was that I, so ignorant practically of
canal navigation, found myself impelled to the
investigation of this branch of the subject from
facts that had come within my own observation.
There is not a person who navigates the North
river, or who wends his way from the city of New
York through the bays of the lower Hudson, who
does not notice that as the boat comes in at dif¬
ferent stopping places or goes over what is called
the flats, if the tide is low the engineer has
to cut off nearly all his steam ; and even then,
when the speed is reduced more than one-third,
the action of the waves is so great that it seems
to a novice to be dangerous, and would in fact be,
if the boat were propelled at ordinary speed. In
the agitation of the water the difference between
the wave that is in front and the wave that is be¬
hind would almost make the boat touch the bot¬
tom. And having noticed this I felt that it was
perfectly impossible to carry out this theory of
getting a high rate of speed on the Erie canal
with a boat laboring so heavily that it comes
within a foot or a half of a foot of the bottom.
Hence it was that a few days ago I set out to
make these investigations and found some few
authorities in the State library ; and the docu¬
ments on file in your library, to which I have
already referred. Those who are curious to con¬
tinue this investigation may find the whole the¬
ory of the wave on navigable rivers and a canal
of restricted dimensions, illustrated in an investi¬
gation made by Scott Russell, Esq. and published
in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. xiv.
Mr. TILDEN—Made when ?
Mr. CONGER—Made in 1834 ^and 1835.
Moreover, it should not pass unnoticed, that your
ordinary boatmen have compassed this subject
practically and to this extent, at least, that they un¬
derstand that in attempting a much higher rate
of speed than. ' ordinarily attained, the power of
the wave which is raised at the prow, is fell
principally at the stern, and the boat, instead of
riding on the wave, is to be propelled against
the power of the wave it has created
and is said to ride against this stern wave.
Now, Mr. Chairman, it does seem almost superflu¬
ous to bring up and seek to solve such questions
as these in this committee. I would not wonder
should I be thought to be like one that dreams
or raves in supposing that gentlemen would give
me a careful and continuous attention in going over
such details. The natural impression would be that
we ought to get the requisite testimony from
practical men. But gentlemen will please to re¬
member that this committee had a special convo¬
cation of those whom they call canal experts.
They brought up here six civil engineers, all of
whom but one had been in the employ of the
State. They brought a canal commissioner and a
superintendent and two forwarders in order to
prove that this canal could be just as easily nav¬
igated with boats twenty-three feet wide as it can
now with boats seventeen and a half feet wide.
I then, in order to show you that in the first in¬
stance this testimony is not to be relied upon, if
it is there, advance the conclusions of the men
who preceded these men of the present age in
this business of advising the State on the great
questions of practical engineering for an enlarged
canal, I bring forward the conclusions and proofs
of science to show how utterly fallacious the
proposition is. But I am not content to rest the
case_there. Go down with me, sir, to-day in im¬
agination to the boatmen that navigate your canal,
and ask them what the difficulty is, and what the
remedy is. Why, sir, those men, as I am well
advised, will wax warm and grow eloquent in the
commendations they give in favor of the canals.
They have got a true, honest and natural canal
spirit as against the competitive power of the
railroads. They will tell you to a man that if you
give them a canal that is thoroughly in repair, where
they are not vexed by delays (and I may allude
hereafter to the kind of delays I mean), that they
can double the tonnage power of the canal in one
year, if the freights offer to do it. They will tell
you that the Erie canal has no chance now as
against a railroad, merely because it is kept in
such horrible condition. You ask your present
State Engineer, and what does he tell you. [See
Document No. 90, p. 44.] That there are not
seven feet deep of water in the Erie canal east of
the Montezuma level. It is filled up. The boat¬
men know this. They know how it interferes
with the propulsion of their loaded boats. They
know how much more power it requires to
drag large boats over the gurface of the mud
that lies in the bottom of the canal ; how much
more power of horse-flesh ; how much more
time it consumes, and how much more money
they are out of pocket. They will tell you as
practical men tp give them the canal in repair
and they will run the risk, if freight offers, of
doubling the tonnage of your canal. They will
run the risk of all these trials about lockages,
except, perhaps, should the freight of the Oswego
and the Erie canal be duplicated, they might tell
my honorable friend from Onondaga [Mr. An¬
drews] that another pair of double locks at Syra¬
cuse would remedy the difficulty and make the
whole canal as navigable from one end to the
other as if there was no interference whatever
from the trade of the Oswego. Now, Mr. Chair¬
man, we have some other evidence on this sub¬
ject which is worth considering. The auditor
teUs you how many boats are on the canal or have
been built. There were 3,721 boats built sinoe
1860, and only a fraction over one-quarter of these
boats was buUt of 200 tons burden. In 1866 211
boats were built from 200 up to 240 tons, only
68 being of 200 tons and 8 only of 240. Now,
all the boats that were built' last year were 485
in number and of 154 tons of average capacity
for cargo. You will also find that the largest
amount of tonnage delivered at tide-water and
coming from Buffalo for the whole period from
the year 1844 down to the year 1866, inclusive,
was in 1862, and that the average cargoes of
those boats in that year was 167 tons. So much,
sir, has been said about lockages and the
difficulties connected therewith, that without
going over what has been said, I will draw th
:MAP o£ ERIE CANAL
at It est Kn d of
UPPER MOHAWK aqueduct
Srofe JO/t.. to nn
LitK of "We Ç A. Parson s _ & Co.
9
attention of the committee simply to the tabula¬
tions which they will find in the report of the
auditor, on pa!j;e 50. The average days' time be¬
tween BuOfalo and Albany from 1854 down to 1862
inclusive, was eight and a half days, while
many gentlemen on this floor endeavor to impress
you with the belief that it requires almost double
that time to corne from Buffalo to Albany now.
And you will discover, sir. that the average
cargo of the boat that made that short time in
those years did not exceed one hundred and
tsventy-five tons. In 1863, at an expense of half
a day longer In getting from Buffalo to Albany,
the tonnage of the boat exceeded that of 1862 by
ten tons. Since that time, sir, the average ton¬
nage has decreased. Now, I take this to be
prima facie evidence that in the practical judg¬
ment of the boatmen who navigate this canal a
boat of moderate tonnage is a great deal more
economically managed on the present canal than
any other. We understand, sir, that even in re¬
gard to vessels navigating the ocean there is a
limit to their size. The Great Eastern is con¬
demned as a failure, and the question comes to
you as one for your practical sagacity, is there
not a limit to the size of a boat for the tonnage
that is to be put upon it in navigating your
canals, economy being taken into consideration ?
You remember that your canal-boats have to stop
and start frequently. They have got to be han¬
dled in locks and m crowds of other boats. With
so many delays, could not six hundred tons be
transported as cheaply on three boats as well as
on one ? That is the question which I think the
forwarders and the boatmen would answer with¬
out any sort of equivocation. I shall not allude,
except to notice what was most eloquently adverted
to by the gentleman who preceded me, that the
plan of tills committee involves the absurd con¬
ception of taking out of the Erie canal double
locks and putting in their place single locks made
longer. All I wish to say on that subject
(for I have no doubt that it will be thoroughly
canvassed before we get through by gentlemen
better able to discuss it than I am), is that it as¬
tonishes me that the same witness, the same au¬
thority that is reponsible for the report made to
the Committee on Canals (and I allude to no less
erudite a gentleman than Mr. Littlejnhn), should
have, while advocating those enlarged locks (I will
not say single tier, for I do not think that ever
came within his conception, either as a thing of
present practicability or ultimate relief ), told you
that after the present enlargement was started
and they got the enlarged double locks east of the
Seneca river, the same sized boats that had trav¬
ersed the canal before in 1845 and delivered less
than a million tons, brought down in the year
1855 nearly double that quantity. (See report to
Legislature of 1867, page 4 ) , I may further al¬
lude to a question that arises, as to the manner
and the time when this work is to be proceeded
with. All the engineers tell you that this work,
in order that navigation may not be interfered
with or suspended, must be done in the winter
season, that it has to be hurried within a short
space of time at greater expense of labor, at
greater risk of getting the large stones out of the
present locks unbroken, at much greater danger
2
of damage to the security of the work and its
finish by reason of using water-lime in the winter
season, and if you take the sura of the whole tes¬
timony on this subject you may state in plain
English that if you could build these locks out¬
side of the present canal in t'ne summer, you could
build them more cheaply, and connect them after¬
ward with the caual at less expense than you
could take up the present locks and substitute
larger ones. And further, inasmuch as the cost
of tearing the present locks apart, and the dam¬
age done to their materials fully equal the cost
of new stone, you could build locks of entirely
new masonry, as cheaply as you could amend the
present ones ; a conclusion worthy of note, and
to be connected with another more important one
presently to be ascertained. But, Mr. Chairman,
I must take up another topic. The old proverb is,
that " seeing is believing." I was not wholly
content to trust myself with a mere detailed
statement of other mechanical difficulties that
embarrassed this work, I thought it would be
better to delineate before the committee the exact
position of two of these boats in the canal. To
this end I have procured a map to Tee made,
which gives you by protraction, on an exact
scale, a portion of the canal at the west end of the
upper Mohawk aqueduct, where the canal goes
round a curve with an approximate radius of 270
feet. The canal in the outer lines of width is put
down at seventy feet, its upper water level. The
inner lines indicate the bottom, fifty-two feet
wide. Then L have two boats of the modern
plan, two hundred feet long and twenty-
three feet wide, and approaching each
other to pass to this curve. Now, sir, in looking
at these delineations would you imagine that these
were conceptions naturally developed in a time
of peace, or would you conclude that those
who vaunted such a practical hoax had bor¬
rowed in fancy from the pictures of the olden
times when men made war with other wea¬
pons than cannon Î I should hesitate to say
that they did not look like two floating battering-
rams, two aquatic catapults approaching each
other in deadly encounter, the interesting query
being whether they will destroy each other or
destroy the sides of the caual. But gentleman
say, " Oh, we propose to enlarge those curves."
Will the gentlemen tell me how wide they have
to make the canal at that curve in order that
those two boats will easily pass? Is there an
engineer that has plotted it out for them or that
is willing to do this and other like work within
estimates? Will one hundred feet width of canal
effect it? No, sir; I doubt if they had pro¬
tracted the altered channel whether you could
make the channel at that curve less than one
hundred and fifty féet wide to get those two boats
past each other without either interfering with
the sides of the canal or clashing with each other.
But I wish the committee to look lower down on
the map at the cross section. That represents two
boats passing each other in the canal in a straight
line.
Mr. CHESEBRO—I would like to inquire by
whom that map was made ?
Mr. CONGER—This map was made in the
State Engineer's office at my special request.
10
The State Engineer is not responsible for it. I
sought it, and got it as a matter of personal con¬
venience to myself.
Mr. CHKSÊBRO—I understand it was made
from his directions.
Mr. COMGER—It was made from a map in
possession of the department. It is an exact
copy of the map which gives you that curve at
that part of the canal, and if any gentleman doubts
the accuracy of the protraction of the boats as
placed therein, he can for himself take seventy
feet of space, the width of tlie canal as laid down,
then three times that, and see how much this
measure goes beyond the length of those boats.
Perhaps I had better say just here that I sought
to know of the State Engineer how many of
those curves there were. He could not give me
all the information I wanted, for he had only the
books of the eastern division. But how many
curves of similar kind do you think there are.
Mr. Chairman ? Say, for the first hundred miles,
how many do you think there are which would
have to be modified, more or less, to let these two
modern battering rams pass each other without
dashing the canal or their own sides to pieces?
I ask tlie gentlemen of the committee, have they
any conception how many of those curves need
to be altered ? Has any inquiry been made ?
Sir, I have the information that, from a careful
examination of the maps, there are within the
space between Albany and Frankfort, a distance
of one hundred miles, two hundred and twenty-
three curves. That is to say, for every mile there
are two curves and a quarter, and these gentle¬
men propose not to remodel the whole canal, not
frankly to tell the people what those experiments
of large boats mean, but they tell you that they
will alter the curves, and widen at the curve.s.
Here, say they widen at one hundred and fifty
feet, and in another place at one hundred and
twenty feet, and at another place at one hundred
feet. It would be wise in advance to know how
much more it would cost to do that work and to do
it in tlie winter season, than it would do to start
fair and square ou a bran new canal in the sum¬
mer season, and build a new canal all the way
from Albany to Frankfort lock, one hundred miles.
Now, sir, ihai is a cro.ss section. Suppose your ca¬
nal had fifty miles of straight level without a curve,
could you navigate a canal with two such boats
as that ? I made, this morning, a computation to
see what it all means. Now, a cross section of
your canal, seveuty feet wide, fifty-two feet
at the bottom and seven feet deep, has two
hundred and tweniy-.seven square feet. Here,
between the boats, yon have a space that is
seven feet wide, and these boats are supposed
to siuk, you perceive, about six feet in tlie
canal. . The wliole displacement of the whole
vertical section of tlie canal in water, four
hundred and twenty-seven feet, has to go
around the sides of these boats against the sides
of the canal or through the middle. Now, sir,
the capacity of this middle section for the water
to get through is 7x7=49 superficial feet. On
tlie other side of it you observe the ends of these
boats are brought a little over the bottom line of
the canal, and as far apart as to give them a good
berth and safe navigation, so that these triangular
sections of water are about eight and a half feet
wide at the top and six feet deep, and the capac¬
ity of both is fifty-one feet. In other words
they have exactly one hundred superficial
feet of water in your canal when tliese two
boats are alongside in it, and all else you
have left for the displacement of water that
is to be affected by these boats passing or crowd¬
ing eaoli other is what is in the foot or six
inches that is on tlie bottorii of the canal fifty-
two feet wide. Now, sir, I do not want an en¬
gineer to come liere and be sworn to tell me tliat
this is good navigation ; I would not insult the
judgment of any gentleman present by asking
him if he thouglit it was. All that is necessary
is to show that map and that is the end.
The hour of two o'clock having arrived, the
PRESIDENT resumed the chair, under the stand¬
ing order, and the Convention took a recess until
seven o'clock, p. m.
Evening Session.
The Convention re-assembled at seven o'clock,
when the proceedings were resumed.
Mr. BELL—I ask unanimous consent to offer a
resolution at this time.
Mr. CHURCH—I object.
The Convention again resolved itself into Com¬
mittee of the Whole on the reports of the Commit¬
tees on the Finances of the State and, the Canals,
Mr. SMITH, of Fulton, in the chair.
The CHAIRMAN announced tlie pending ques¬
tion to be on the amendment, offered by Mr. Ver-
planok.
Mr. CONGER—When we took our recess I had
advanced so far in the investigation of the prob¬
lem appertaining to the navigation of tlie present
Erie and Oswego canals by enlarged boats as to
demonstrate the dilBculty and Impracticability of
bringing two such boats of the proposed length
around any of the ordinary curves m the caual.
I stated tliat they were two hundred and twenty-
three in number in the first cue hundred miles in
length of the canals, or about nine curves to every
four miles.
Mr. SCHOONMAK.ER — In mentioning the
number of curves tliat were on the canal, ycu
have stated that there were some two hiuidred
and twenty-three curves to be an impediment. I
desire to call your attention to the testimony of
James P. Goodsell, the State Engineer, to be
found on page 50 ;
" Q. My question is general ; if the locks on
tlie canal were made of this enlarged size, so as
to admit such boats as we named, and tlie wall-
benches were removed, would there be any ob¬
struction to navigation except the one you have
mentioned of the short levels? A. Well, therôé
are probably one or two points on the canal that
would need relief; the shortest curve on the caual
tiiat I know of is getting iuto the lower Mohawk
aqueduct; probably there are one or two points
that would need to be improved."
He makes it one or two instead of a hundred.
Mr. CONGER—I will respond to the gentle¬
man's suggestion by telling him, in the first place,
that the map which is now on the wall exhibits
an exact conliguratiou of the very curve to which
Mr. Goodsell alluded in his testimony on page 50;
11
and I have but little doubt that it is one of the
worst curves to be found in the 100 miles spoken
of. It was not selected frptn the mass of curves
found ou the maps in the Engineer's office merely
to show the worst case that might be presented,
but simply because this was the very curve to
which his attention had been directed. I do noi
know the accuracy with which all this evidence
has been taken. I do not wish to speak disre¬
spectfully of the gentlemen that sat on the com¬
mittee hearing and taking this testimony, but J
beg to say—
Mr. SCHOONMAKER—It was taken in short¬
hand by a .stenographer.
Mr. COSGEK—I understand it was so taken;
but I beg leave to say of it that if there evei
was any testimony which showed the precise
intentiou of the interrogatories by the extreme
dexterity manifested in avoiding the possibility
of untoward answer.«, this is a most excellent
specimen. And this may account for the report
of Mr. Goodsell's testimony, that there might be
" one or two points on the canal that would need
relief." No further question was put. So it is
to be presumed that he meant one or two as bad
as the one he had particularly noticed in his tes¬
timony and pictured on that map. I did not go ti¬
the State Engineer's office for the purpose of
placing Mr Goodsell on his oath ; 1 did not go to
interrogate him or to pervert or prevent h s testi
mony in any form or shape ; but I went there a."-
a member of this Convention, desiring permission
to look over the maps and to know what was the
exact state of tlie case. As I could not pursue
the inquiry, I left it to be prosecuted in thai
office, and I hold in my hand a letter received
from the State Engineer this morning, and dated
this 5th day of September:
" Sir : The whole number of curves on the
Erie canal between Albany and the Erankfort
lock (distance 100 mile«) is 223.
" Very truly yours,
'•JAMES P. GOODSELL,
" State Engineer and Surveyor."
Mr. SOSOGMAKER—1 do not care about that.
There may be short curves or long curves; I do
not care about the size.
Mr. CONGER—I think I was very frank in
stating that it must not be understood that all
these curves were of this radius, for it is figured
on tlie map that ihe approximate radius of curva¬
ture is two hundred and seventy feet. But the
greatest of tlie dangers to be met with in this
sort of navigation, supposing the curves are all
flattened, are yet tobe pointed out. Suppose you
have an injury to a boat in the position indicated
in one of these curves, what will be the danger
as a ennsequence to the navigation by way of
delay? ■ Now. sir. as the honorable gentleman
from Ulster [Mr. Sohoonmaker] has brought me
a little out of the course of suggestion.« I pro¬
posed to make in these early hours of the evening
to look at the testimony that has been presented.
I beg to remitid him and the committee of the re¬
marks submitted by the gentleman from Onondaga
[Mr. Alvord], who I regret not to see in his seat.
Sir, you will remember the very mild reproof that
he addressed to the honorable gentleman from
Orleans [Mr. Churcli], insinuating that that hon¬
orable gentleman had selected some parts of the
testimony of Mr. Breed to match Iiis special
pleading. I was very much amused as tlie hon¬
orable gentlemau from Onondaga [Mr. Alvord]
undertook to supply the portions iu that testimony
which ray honorable friend from Orleans [Mr.
Church] had, as he said, omitted. I would have
suggested the hiatus he himself left open at tlie
time, but there seemed to be no immediate neces¬
sity for interrupting him. After following the
poiuts to which the attention of the committee
was first directed by the honorable gentleman
from Orleans [Mr. Church], and giving two or
three interrogatories with their answers, the liou-
orable gentleman from Onondaga [Mr. Alvord]
had the good fortune or the fair intention to omit
die following question and answer, on page 29
of document No. 90 :
"Q. How was it last fall? (This with refer¬
ence to the previous questions that have been
asked in regard to the delays in tlie navigation on
the canal.) A, There was a crowd last fall, but
that perhaps did not grow so much out of the
incapacity of the canal as a sunken boat and the
loss of a gate ; I liave not any doubt but what
there would iiave been a surplus of boats, owing
to the break west ; there was a break west, and
at the same time a large shipment from Oswego
arriving at Syracuse; then the detention of the
sinking of this boat and loss of the gate, which
kept upa detention until these boats fjom Oswego
had passed."
Now, it is a specimen of admirable dexterity in
the honorable gentleman from Onondaga [Mr.
Alvord], in passing by this very important answer
of Mr. Breed, as to the cause of detention in the
navigation of that year; but I wondered very
much that after having reminded the honorable
gentleman from Orleans [Mr. Church] that he had
exercised peculiar professional skill in tlie selec¬
tion of the answers which he had read, my honor¬
able friend—who professed indeed to ignore his
profession—should have shown himself so profes¬
sionally ready and competent, at so short a notice,
to revamp the old tricks of his trade. It is a mat¬
ter which should not escape our attention, Mr.
Chairman, that these sunken boats and these
breaks in the canal are tlie principal causes of
detention of tiiis navigation ; and if the detention,
by reason of the sinking of an ordlnjiry boat is so
great, I desire to know what will be the detem
tion when a boat two hundred and twenty feet
long is sunken on the bottom of the canal—may¬
hap in such a curve as this. The time aud the
labor which is required to get rid of an ordinary
sunken boat would be multiplied ten-fold in case
of an accident to a boat of this description. My
time forbids more than a passing allusion to the
alterations that maybe required on the thirty-two
aqueducts on the Erie canal, having an aggregate
length of about four and two-third miles, the
longest near Schenectady, being 1,130 feet in
length, and like its neighbor only forty feet wide.
Neither can I more than glance at the Rochester
aqueduct, whose parapet walls are ten feet thick
at top on both sides, whose width is only forty-
live feet, and the entrance to which, at one end,
is at a right angle, leaving a worse curve in such
immense masonry to be altered than the one you
12
have before y(Jb on the map. But it is time,
Mr. Chairman, that I should pass to another
branch of this subject. Supposing that the work
is to be undertaken, the next question that pre¬
sents itself Is as to its cost. I propose to inves¬
tigate very briefly this question of cost, which
was so admirably opened by the honorable gen¬
tleman from Onondaga [Mr. Andrews] who pre¬
ceded me, and who has saved me the trouble of
going into many of the details which are pre¬
sented by the various statements of engineers in
the reports that have been laid before us. But I
beg to call your attention to the fact that when
the old canal was to have been built, its estimated
cost was $4,900,000; its actual cost was
$7,100,000; the proportion between the cost, as
per estimate, and the actual cost of its comple¬
tion being as seven to ten, minus a fraction.
When we come to the new canal, the estimate of
its cost was about $23,000,000; its actual cost
exceeded $39,000,000 ; and it was not flnished
at that, for the wall-benches of the eastern 75
miles were not taken out; or, if this work was
not included in the estimates, it is d(>monstrable
that the canal was hardly left with a full seven
foot bottom all the way through; and moreover,
there are thirteen locks yet to be enlarged, and
some other matters, so tliat it has been estimated
that there is over $170,000 yet to be expended on
the western division, according to the original
plan of the enlargement. But take it at these
figures—the estimate being $23,000,000, and
the cost $39.000,000—the ratio is as seven to
twelve. Now, on the supposition that by the
force of the great ingenuity which this com¬
mittee brings to bear upon this proposed
work of tearing down and building up, they could
possibly compass some saving in the labor, we will
suppose that the ratio is as seven to eleven, which
is the mean between the ratios on the old canal
and the new, of the estimated and the actual cost.
When then we come to these enlarged locks, as they
were originally represented, at a cost of thirteen
millions of dollars, after this ratio the cost would
be over twenty millions of dollars. By the plan
which proposes to dispense with the rubble mason¬
ries, and to avoid deepening or cleaning out the
canals, the estimates are reduced to ten millions
of dollars; then apply your ratio, and the actual
cost would .be sixteen millions of dollars
nearly ; on the other hand, if you accept the esti¬
mate of the committee; eight millions of dollars,
tne actual cost rises to twelve millions and five
hundred thousand dollars. But you will remem¬
ber, sir, that there is no adequate provision in this
plan for the real cost of altering these curves all
the way through the canal ; and if the suggestion
that I made in regard to the independent set of
locks is worth pushing any further at
this time, it is within ' probabilities to
assert that the cost of enlarging the
canal at these curves would be so great, for it must
be remembered that the work would have to be
done in the winter season—that a new canal one
hundred feet wide could be built in the summer
season at very little more cost than the work
which is now proposed, and the work which must
sign manual to it and indorse it before the coun¬
try. Why, sir, when they came to examine Mr.
Litllejohn, who is, above all others, facilis prin¬
ceps m the attempt to effect this chea p transpor¬
tation through large boats, what did he say to
that committee? After alluding to the necessity
for the enlarged boats and for having enlarged
locks, he says : " I do not wish to stultify mysdf
by the supposition that it would not be necessary
to enlarge the prism of the canal immediately."
He seemed to think that this would follow as a
matter of course ; and in that respect Mr. Little-
John was perfectly consistent. But I think our
Committee on Canals, unfortunately for them¬
selves and the State, failed to see the absolute
necessity, when this plan was once started, of
the consequences that would follow, and the
expense, toil, trouble, hindrances and snares to
the people of this State of a newly enlarged
canal. But, Mr. Chairman, supposing that this
plan should be abandoned, suppose some other
plan could be suggested by which we could effect
the transportation of the freight that ofiered, for
the purpose of getting cheaper carriers' charges
and a larger amount of the products of the great
West and North carried to tide-water—supposing
than an economical and practicable scheme could
be presented, the next question that occurs to a
thoughtful mind would be this: What is the work
which is to be done ? What is the work which
is now done, and what is that which is to be
done ill the future ? The statement of the auditor
in regard to the tonnage, the value of the prop¬
erty and the tolls paid for transportation on all
the canals of the State for the year
1866 may be summed up under 'this
general classification — first, of the products
of the forest; next, of vegetable food; and, next,
of manufactures, merchandise and other articles. I
only call attention to the prominent items. It is a
remarkable fact that, in a tonnage which exceeded
five and three-quarter millions, the products of
the forest, vegetable food, and " other articles "
not enumerated—as merchandise and manufac¬
tures—each exceeded thirty per cent, by a very
small fraction, so that, for practical purposes,
we may say that the tonnage of these three sev¬
eral classes of freight, on the canal was the same
in amount. I will stop a moment to say, that
under the designation of " other articles " are in¬
cluded anthracite and bituminous coal, of which
there were 1, 136,000 tons; stone, lime and gyp¬
sum 295,000 tons; copper and iron ore, 186,000
tons, as the leading items. Now, when you come
to the tabulations of the vaines, you find that,
although the products of the forest were a trifle
over ten per cent, vegetable food was a fraction
under thirty per cent, the merchandise was over
thirty-six per cent and the other articles fell just
a little below fourteen per cent. But, what is
most instructive, and moat material for us with
reference to the questions that have been raised,
is that, when you come to the tabulations of tolls,
you find those paid on the products of
the forest to be twenty-one per cent;
those on vegetable food fifty-six per cent ; those
on merchandise, scant three percent; on man-
ufactures, less than three-and-a-half percent; on all
other articles, less than ten and a half per cent ; so
that the vegetable food paid over one-half of all
the tolls that were collected by the State, to wit.
13
ûfty-six and sixty-three hundredths per cent, or
over two and a half millions of dollars. I pro¬
pose, in further prosecution of this subject, to
leave out of .consideratiou statistics which are
connected with the other classes of items just
specified, and to confine your attention to those
which give the tonnage of vegetable food. But I
must prepare you for the statement tliat will fol¬
low, as to the future development in vegetable
food ; and ask you to look at the tables and
estimates of the future products that are to come
over our canals, especially from thd Vv''estern
States. The rate of increase over all the canals,
from 1837 to 1866, being assumed at a fixed per
centage, which as a test is chimerical, you are led
to a quasi prophetic study of most fabulous ton¬
nage of food to weigh down your boats and over¬
tax your canals. Sir, I must call your attention
to the false philosophy applied to statistical ta¬
bles, which underlies all these calculations, made
by the committees whose reports are before us.
I have to show you how utterly delusive they
are. I do not take the table which the the au¬
ditor gives, so as to trouble you with the whole
range, from 1837 to the present time, but I have
selected the statements of important years, which
I submit as the true basis for any theory of future
expectancies.
1837, .
1845,.
1846, .
1852, .
1857, .
18(50, .
1861,.
18(52, .
1863, .
1864, .
1865, .
1866,.
Tons from West¬
ern States.
56,2.55
304,551
506,830
1,151,978
918,998
1,896,075
2,158,425
2,594,837
2,279,2.52
l,9u7,136
1,903,642
2,235,716
Tons from this
State.
321,2.51
655,039
600, (562
492,721
197,201
379,086
291,184
322,257
568,437
239,498
173,538
287,948
Total
tons.
587,506
9.59,590
1,107,270
1,644, 699
1,117,199
2,27(5,061
2,449,609
2,917,094
2,647,689
2,146,634
2,077,180
2,523,664
By this table it will be observed that up
to the year 1852 the highest amount
of tonnage, including that year, from the Western
States, was 1,152,000 tons nearly. We go along
then, sir, until we come to 1851, when that ton¬
nage fell short of a million, by about 80,000 tons.
Then, in 1860 we recuperated, until we reached
1,900,000 nearly. Again, in the first years of the
war, 1862 and 1866, the tonnage rose in the
former year to nearly 2,600,000, and in the latter
fell to nearly 2,300,000. I do not design, sir, to
establish a rate of increase during this whole se¬
ries, but I beg to draw your atteulion to tlie cal¬
culation which I have made, that from 1852
to 1861, a period of ten years, the increased ton¬
nage from the Western States was 99 percent;
and the total increase, including our own State,
was only a fraction over 48 per cent. ¡When you
go from 1852 to 1866, a period of fifteen years,
it is very remarkable that the percentage of in¬
crease varie.s from tlie percentage which I have
just given you, so little, that I can only make it
increase a half per cent over tiie ninety-nine per
cent ; while the total increase on all the tonnage
of tlie State for vegetable food was fifty-three per
cent. I estimate that going from 1866 to 1884, a
period of nineteen years, allowing the same aver¬
age rate, jumping from terra to term according to
the ratios tliat I have just given, you will have
one hundred and one per cent of increase only ;
and your tonnage of vegetable food, including
that of your own State, will but a little exceed
five millions of tons. This same method of cal¬
culation applied to all the tonnage on our canals,
may realize Mr. Sweet's estimates of entire ton¬
nage, inclusive of what is brought down to, as
well as what is returned from tide-water.
Mr. SCHOOiTMAKER—Will the gentleman in¬
form me where that calculation of Mr. Sweet is
be found ?
Mr. CONGER—In his testimony before you,
sir, on pages five and six. Mr. Chairman, I have
in the next place to correct most egregious, say,
rather, remarkable, statements which appear in all
the reports on your table in regard to the capac¬
ity of the great West for the production of food.
The author of the report to the Legislature to
which I liave before referred, drawing upon his
noted enthusiasm, has left us to infer that the
present capacity of the cultivated farms of the
great West—the eight Western States to which,
allusion is especially made—was less than twenty
per cent, not simply as to the state of cultivation
now existing but with refereuee to the amount of
land cultivated compared with all the arable
lands of those States. I find in the report made
by the commissioners of the canal fund to- the
Legislature, that not more than one-sixth of all
this immense area has been brought under cul¬
tivation. This opens the question as to the area
that now exists under cultivation and the area
that is yet to be developed. Any one who will
take tlie trouble to look at the census of 1860
will find how it is that these gentlemen have
made such mistakes. They may have confounded
the number of acres of these eight Western
States with the number of acres throughout the
whole United States, and they have taken the
tenth or one-twentieth part of that. If I mistake
not it has even been said that the one-twentieth
part of the land of the Western States was yet
undeveloped. By looking at the census you will
find, air, concerning all the farms of the United
States, this general proposition, that the improved
portion of laud in farms was a little over one
hundred and si.xty-three millions of acres, and
the unimproved portions of such farms was a
little over two hundred and forty millions; in
other words, as sixteen to twenty-four, or as two to
three. That is to say, sir, taking all the farms in
the United States, of land inclosed and cultivated,
two parts are under cultivation and three par ts
are what are called " unimproved lands." When
you come to these Western States, including Illi¬
nois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mis-'
souri, Ohio and Wisconsin, you find that the sum
total of the improved lands is very nearly fifty-
two millions, and the sum total of tlie unimproved
portions of the farms in those States is little
over fifty-three and one-half millions —
tho ratio between the improved and the
unimproved standing about fifty-two to fifty-
four, or nearly equal. Now, then, sir, as the cen¬
sus of 1860 does not repeat the statement of the
14
census of 1850, I give you the sum total of all the
acres, as returned by the latter census, pertinent
to this issue. In the first place, the sum total of
all the acres iu the United States somewhat
exceeds one thousand live hundred and seventy
millions of acres. When you separate the acres
that are returned, of these eight States, and sum
them all up, you find, sir, including waste lands,
ponds, lakes, bogs, and every thing of that sort,
a trifie over three hundred and eighteen millions
of acres. The coraniiilee has stated that number
approximately, with reference to the' acres that
may he separated, as of land capable at some
future, indefinite day, of being put under cultiva¬
tion, from the part of this extent of territory which
lies under water; they have stated the area at
two hundred and eighty-five millions; and yet
they tell you that not one-sixth has yet been
brought under cultivation. That calculation,
evidently not accurate, was, moreover, not made
by a man who knew anything about farming or
the condition of farms, either iu the State of New
York or in the great West; for every one familiar
with that subject knows that in this country we
have not reached such a state of developmeut of
the cereal products, that all the farrtis iu this
country can be put altogether under the plow,
each and every acre, with no land left as waste
or pasture, or what is called " unimproved land."
The farmers of the West raise cattle for the mar¬
ket, and cows for their dairy, and the production
of butter; .sheep, horses and mules also, and thus
need a large pnriion of their farms, which is re¬
turned in the census as " unimproved" for pastur¬
age. Let me say to you, sir, that wheat and corn
would have to command, fur a number of years,
mttch higher prices in the market than they doeveu
at tilia present time, before the farmers in the
Western States can take all their unimproved laud
and put it under the plow, and give it the drain¬
age and cultivation needed, before they would
be willing to give up the raising and pasturing of
domestic auimala and restrict themselves in the
enjoyment ol the ordinary comforts of farm life,
in order to put every acre vrhich is within feuce
under the plow. Taking these figures as the
committee have given them, suppose at some dis¬
tant day these two hundred and eighty-five thou¬
sand acres to be occupied by farms, and to be distrib¬
uted between improved and unimproved acres as all
the farms in the country are, and on the same aver¬
age, what then would be the result? Why, sir, you
could not increase the amount under cultivation
two per cent—if every acre was iu a farm, and
every farm received the attention which the farm¬
ers of the West are giving now to their lauds, at
best you could not increase the amount under the
plow, and under farming care, more than two
jjud a half per cent. Instead of the statement,
then, that not one-sixth, or, as some one else gave
It, not twenty per cent of these Western lauds
have been put under cultivation, you have to
abridge that statement to this; That less than
two and a half per cent of tho.se lands has as
yet been brought wilhm the ordinary description
of farming lauds. But, please to hear iu mind,
Mr. Chairman, another thing: that a large por¬
tion of this land stretches away beyond the line
where it is possible to raise even corn. You can
carry the line of wheat, up through Minnesota,
10 a very high point ; but you cannot carry the
line of corn planting as high iu the States lliis
side of Miuuesota. So that when X say the pro¬
portion should be stated as one to two and a
half, I ought, further, to modify that ratio
by reasou of the influences of climate—which
1 have not thought it desirable specially to eluci¬
date—and thus we come to a final state¬
ment, that, let the West do their inmost, and
let these Western States that are named be
whelmed by the highest tide of population, and
let every acre that is capable of being occupied
and put under ordinary farming management
within the next halfeentury, they canuot develop
their production of wheat and corn beyond Ihe
present rate more than one hundred per cent.
Moreover, sir, they will be obliged to improve
their farming iu some of those Western States,
where the lands are being run out, to keep
them up to their present capacity and maiiiiain
their products at the present raie.s. Now, sir, I
know that to many persons who have received
these siories, whieli have risen up like fables—
like exhalations wild, covering the desert air—
I am aware that I seem as one that chaliers with¬
out bound; but let us look a little further. I
have been at pains, sir, to run over the census of
1860—to separate all those cereal productions of
the United States, embracing wheat, Indian corn,
rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, peas and beans, giv¬
ing you the sum total of the productions of these
iu the whole of the United Slates and Territories,
and then what is produced in the parts known as
the Western States in the census, which adds two
more States than those embraced iu tlie report of
your committee, to wit: Kentucky and Kansas, the
Middle, Southern, Pacific, and New Euglaud
States; aud then I have given, also, the produc¬
tion of New York. The whole of the United
States produced 173,000,000 bushels of wheat,
being at the ratio of live and one-half bushels to
each Inhabitaut; the Western States produced
102,250.000, or at the ratio of ten bushels to each
inhabitaut; the Middle Slates, 30,500,000, or
three and two-thirds to each inhabitaut; the
Southern States, 31,500,000, nearly, or three and
one-half to each iiihabilant; the Pacific States,
7,660,000, or ihirieeu aud eight-ninths to each in¬
habitaut; the New Kiiglaud States produced a
million aud a trifie over, or about eleven aud one-
half quarts to each iuhabitaut. Now, you are
met here iu the first instance, with the asiound-
iiig intelligence in regard to the production as re¬
ported by the ceusus of 1860, that the highest on
the list iu the produotiou of wheat to each inhab¬
itant were the Pacific States, which raised nearly
four bushels to each iuhabitaut more than was
raised in the Western States. That is a very
significant fact, sir, and I remember that in
tlio early days of the se.ssiou of this Con¬
vention, when the honorable gentleman from
Rensselaer [Mr. M. 1. TuwiiseudJ doubted
what I had urged in regard to the debt
of the couutiy, as a reasou why we should not
precipitate ourselves, before careful inquiry, into
a new enlargement, he suggested that, not only
iu the city of New York, but in tlie county of
Rockland, we needed the productions of the
15
West. He asked what we would do if it were
not for the productions of the West pourlnp its
wheat and corn into our laps—what we would do
for food for mau and beast in the county of Eock-
land? Had tlie lioiiorabie geutleinan waited lor
an answer I siiould have been obliged to tell him
at tliat time tliat the last quantity of flour that
had been purchased lor the support of those under
my care came from California via Liverpool, and
if it had not been lor that accession of store to
the supply then in New York, oommon flour
would have gone up in that city to twenty-flve
dollars per barrel. Therefore I tliink, from the
present as well as the future • indications, this
question in regard to the supply of cereals, espe¬
cially of wheat, is not entirely to be determined
by the productions of the Western States, or the
facilities for the transmission of the products of
their farms to the city of New York. Hence the
reason I seek to draw your attention to the pro¬
ductions of the Pacitle States. There is also this
further consideration, that the Western States, as
a general rule, do not produce grain, either wheat
or-corn, equal in quality with that which is raised
in the State of New York or in the Southern States
or that whioli is raised in the Pacific States.
Not to detain you with the ratio of production
to each of the iuhabitants of the several States,
as given by the census, I will sum it all up by
saying that out of twelve hundred and fifty-four
millions of bushels of grain, of all the sorts I
have enumerated, produced in the United States,
the We.stern States including Kentucky and
Kansas produced six hundred ard seventy-four
millions; the Middle States two hundred and
eight millions ; tiie Southern States three hun¬
dred and forty-eight millions ; the New England
States only twenty-live millions, while the State
of New York produced seveuty-niiie millions.
Now, this summary would be without the iuflii-
ence which it ought to have in a discussion like
this, were it not coupled with the further state¬
ment which is given by the census return
itself. After tabulating minutely the proportions
which lliese States have produced of all
these various grains in bushels to each
inhabitant, the report says: "It will be
Been that in proportion to the population,
taking the States and Territories together,
there has been but slight increase in our princi¬
pal crops since 18.50. Of all these grains (enu¬
merating them) there were raised in 1850, thirty-
eight and twenty-eight liiiridredtlis bushels to
each iiihabitaiit ; in 18G0," how many do you
lliiiik, sir ? What do i.lie gentlemen who imagine
so much of the future development of the produce
of this country, what do ihey suppose in ten years,
from 1850 to 18B0, was the increase in the
amount of grain produced to each inhabitant?
Why, sir, it was only eighty-seven liutidredths
of a bushel to each individual. Further on
" when it is remembered that our horses, cattle,
pheep and swine have also increased, that
these'animals have to be fed, to a certain extent,
on the products named, the ■ total increase, less
tliiin one bushel to the iiiliabitant, is small in-
deeil." You see that even if population does in¬
crease, if farms are muUlplied, if the work of
cultivation goes on, unless we increase much
more rapidly in 1810 from I860 —much more
rapidly than we did in 1860 from 1850 we will
only be able to give a beggarly fractional part
of a bushel to each Inhabitant as the extra gain
10 our merchandise in farms, and in the cultiva¬
tion of grain. Now, Mr. Chairman, although tliese
gentlemen picture to you so much of the future
capacity of those eight Western States, when the
census tells you how very litt'e increase was
made in ten years in the production of all the
States of the Union with reference to their in¬
habitants, when you consider that in addition to
providing for a population of nearly thirty-one
and one-half million.s of people, you have to
feed also over eighty-nine millions of domestic
animals, it may be inferred that as the Western
States increase in population and multiply
their flocks and herds they will require a
greater amount for home consumption, even
if they do not develop a new line of policy
and encourage manufactures at their principal
centers. Where then is your immense trade of
grain to come from—from what West—to fill
your canal-boats enlarged to this new amplitude
of navigation Î Sir, I look upon the whole story
as a delusion, a figment 01 the imagination. I
should be very glad to believe that it was possi¬
ble to predict from these census returns a much
larger agricultural ■wealth for the whole people
of this country. But I am compelled to give you
the statistics just as they are. I call next upon
the gentlemen who have inaugurated this attempt
to revolutionize the system of transportation in
this State to show where the grain which they
expect to raise is to go. Are they going to send
one hundred and fifty or two hundred extra mil¬
lions of bushels to the city of New York to glut
the market? Will they hurry their grain in
huge bulk and so rapidly to that city, that it may
be exported to foreign countries? Tiie next ques¬
tion comes up: What foreign countries want it?
We have beeu told so much of the necessities of
Great Britain that I think it well to know whence
Great Britain gets her supply of grain. Sir, the
aggregate imports of wheat into Great Britain
and Ireland from five of the leading grain export¬
ing countries during the ten years ending with
1863, were: From the United States,
nearly thirteen millions of quarters ; from
Prussia nearly e.ight and one-half mi lions;
from Eussia a trifle over seven millions ; from
Egypt a little over four and flfteen-hundredths;
from Canada less than two and one-half mil¬
lions of quarters, so that the annual importation
from all these countries into Great Britain
was a fraction over three and one-half mil¬
lions of quarters, and from the United Stares less
than thirteen hundred thousand quarters. We
may be elated too much by the extraordinarv
amounts shipped to Great Britain and Ireland
in llie two years ending June 30, 1862 and 1863,
in the former of over tliirty-four, and in the latter
of over forty-seven milliotis of bushels of grain,
at an average annual value of over fifty-two mil¬
lions of dollars. As intimately connected with
these exports, and as best calculated to dissipate
the incubus which imparts such dark despondency
to lire dreams of those who fear that the com¬
merce of the city of New York is to depart to
16
other ports on our Atlantic coast, let me inter¬
pose tliat the export of flour and grain from the
metropolis for six years prior to june 30, 18öl,
may be summed up from this census as valued at
one hundred and forty-one and a half million of
dollars, while for the same period the exports
from Boston were about eight and a half millions
of dollars in value, those from Philadelphia not
quite seventeen millions, those from Baltimore
a trifle over twenty-five and three-quarter mil¬
lions, and those from Portland less than one and
a half millions. If it is necessary to follow up
these inquiries, any gentleman who wishes to
take these figures can make a very fair approxi¬
mate conclusion as to ho w much extra grain will
be raised in the eight Western States during the
next decade ; how much of it will be consumed ;
how much of it will be exported ; how much of
it will go down the Mississippi ; how much of it
must be consumed in Canada ; how much of it
will come to Atlantic ports, and the lion's share
that will be secured to the city of New York, ac¬
cording to the laws of trade. In regard to the
future, as well as the present, I wish the way was
easy. I wish there were no dilHcullies to be
overcome. For one I will advocate as free a
canal as we can get in the State of New York, as
free a canal as the gentlemen who sit at the
other end of this hall, taxing the grain of the
West will permit us to have. Sir, we want food
for man and beast in the Hudson valley
at the cheapest possible rate. But we can¬
not get it. What are the reasons? There
are two general causes why our wishes are not
gratified. First, we are at the mercy of the men
who sit at the western gates of commerce at Buf¬
falo and Oswego, places where the people may be
said to go to be taxed ; who have what are called
elevators, who put upon each bushel of grain that
is taken from the lake boats for transportation to
the city of New York and elsewhere along our
canal lines the extreme price of two cents per
bushel. I do not know how much would pay
them a fair living profit, but I believe the old
charge was about a cent per bushel.
It will be remembered that the honor¬
able gentleman from Onondaga [Mr. Alvord]
insisted how easy one-quarter or one-eighth
of a cent on a bushel would turn trade. I
wish to know whether this extravagant and ex¬
treme tax for the transferring of grain at these
western ports is not threatening the prosperity of
the State of New York with disaster far more
than the tolls that are imposed by tlie State. Let
us look very briefly at what the auditor informs
us in a table given on the thirty-second page of
his report.
Mr. VKRPLANCK—I would like to know if
the gentleman is at all acquainted with the
amount of capital invested in elevators, and the
amount of benefit they do the grain by handling
it and cooling it, and whether or not two cents is
an improper charge, taking into consideration the
capital invested, and the labor necessary to handle
the grain ?
Mr. CONGER—I do not know the particulars
of all the questions wliich the gentleman has
asked. But I know this : that in the city of New
York on the Atlantic docks they only charge one
and one-quarter cents for the same service. If
capital in Buffalo is worth more than capital in
Brooklyn then perhaps the gentleman will force
me to a further invetigation of this question.
Mr. VERPL.'VNCK—Does the gentleman know
that grain lands in New York in a very different
condition than that it is in when it reaches Buf¬
falo? It is very much sweeter.
Mr. CONGER—If the people of Buffalo give
sweeter grain I have no objection. But they
charge thus much more for the simple mechanical
process of handling grain. If boats come from
the western lakes with their cargoes of grain a
little damaged, is it not for the interest of those
gentlemen engaged in this business that they
produce as good an effect upon grain as it is pos¬
sible by its being handled? When they charge
two cents a bushel they only allow ten days' stor¬
age, as I understand it. Is not grain entitled to
the small privilege of ten days or more of storage,
especially when so much more is charged for the
service of handling at Buffalo than is charged at
the Atlantic docks in New York? But I have no
fault to find with Buffalo. What I want to arrive
at is a fair statement of all the impediments to
the free transportation of grain. The gentleman
from Onondaga talked about the competition of
the lakes so eloquently and told us that one-eighth
of a cent would turn trade. I wish to know, if
that is the case, what will three-quarters of a cent
do ? But, as I said before, Mr. Chairman, I have
no desire to bring up any unfair issue with my
friends from the western part of the State who
are so earnest in promoting this trade. I am per
fectly willing that they should have
a fair return from their capital, a fair profit from
their business. But they come clamoring to load
the State with a debt which I believe will amount
to fifty millions of dollars, taxing my property,
and withal the food that I and my fellow citizens
in the southern tier of counties are to eat. and
the grain that our cattle and our beasts of burden
are to consume. I wish to know why we of the
State of New York should be taxed so heavily to
swell the profits of Buffalo and Oswego. It is a
fair question. Further I wish to draw your attention
to one very singular thing that I never could
understand. Why it is that those who are engag¬
ed in the carrying trade are all the time varying
their prices? Gentlemen have told us here, on
this floor, that there is so much trade hurrying
into Buffalo that the carriers' charges have at
this present time been largeiy increased. I find
on looking over this table of the auditor that in
1847 the carriers' charges for freight exceeded
the toll $1,182,771. We are told again that in
1856 the earners' charges exceeded the toll
which the State exacted, $1,076,801. Not de¬
taining you with all the figures, I find that
in 1860 the freight exceeded the toll over
two millions; in 1861 over a million and a
half; in 1864, again, over two radiions; and the
year last past it exceeded the tolls over a
million and a quarter of dollars. What does all
this mean ? Is there any statute regulating this
matter? No, sir. The State of New York has
left this thing entirely open to competition. Some-
limes freights fall below the toll ; but then when
you come to look at it all the way through you
17
find that the freights have exceeded the tolls
from 1831 to the close of last year over ten mil¬
lions of dollars. I was a little curious to know
something about this, so I went to the auditor's
office and obtained a statement of the tolls that
were charged on flour and wheat per bushel, on
corn, barley and oats, and on coal and lumber. I
find that the tolls on a barrel of flour have run
down from thirty-five cents, in 1843, to fifteen
cents in the years 1858, 1859 and 1860. That is
the period about which gentlemen complain so
much as having effected unnecessary reduction of
the tolls. The highest carriers' charge was in
1847, when forty-six cents were exacted on a bar¬
rel of flour from Albany to Buffalo ; but the lowest
charge in the whole period is sixteen cents in the
year 1859. After that there is a gradual change
in the charges; the highest subsequent prices
fiaving been reached in 1864, when the carriers
charged thirty-four and one-half cents. Now,
there has been exhibited some feverish disposition
to investigate the causes which induced the canal
board from time to time to lower the charges on
flour and other grain. The reasons assigred
for reducing the rates in 1859 . and 1860
were the necessities of commerce. Although the
gentleman from Onondaga [Mr. Alvord] found a
great deal of fault with the action of the board in
those years, I think a careful study of the results
wül show that the canals gained in trade, while
the railroads fell off during those years. I find
that the carriers' charge, coming down in 1859 to
sixteen cents, was the next year raised to twenty-
seven cents, the tolls imposed by the State re¬
maining at the lowest figure at which they were,
ever put. I shall be glad to place this table at
the service of any gentleman who would like to
investigate this subject. I only wish to say that
the toll remained as it was originally placed in
1843, until 1861, with the exception of five
years, on a thousand feet of lumber. It was
in 1861, 1862, 1863, one dollar and ninety-seven
cents, and is now still further raised by the canal
board to two dollars and twenty-nine cents. The
freight on coal, which was uniform from 1847 and
for thirteen years at thirty-five cents two
mills, on two thousand pounds, has for
the last seven years nearly doubled. I should like
to know, if it were possible, what is the reason
that while there is such a clamor from time to
time raised about the ears of the State officers in
favor of a reduction of the tolls, and the tolls are
finally reduced, the rates of carriers' charges im¬
mediately go up ? I wish to know whether the
tolls are taken off in order to swell the profits of the
carriers, or for the real benefit either of the State
or of the consumer. Now, before I leave this
subject, I interpose what I omitted a few moments
since, that the items of grain and flour, as
shown by the auditor's table (on the supposition
that the tax which is imposed on a barrel of flour
at the ports of entry at the West is about the
same as the tax that is imposed on the correspond¬
ing number of bushels of wheat), give for the
last seven years 3,804,836 tons shipped at Buffalo
for tide-water, 1,340,662 shipped at Oswego, and
a beggarly fraction at Tonawanda, which may
lead you to some adequate idea of the taxes im¬
posed at those porta for the mere handling and
elevating of grain. My attention has been di¬
rected to the fact that ever since the reduction
of tolls on grain, the carriers' charges have gone
steadily up, with the exception of a few years,
when the transporting railroad media were in a
measure broken down. X have to detain you with
another statistical statement by way of correction,
to be applied to some columns in the auditor's ta¬
bles, to which attention has been directed to show,
while a large canal debt is staring us in the face,;that
the State has received such a magnificent revenue
and profit on their cost, from its canals. Taking
his tables at page 450 of the second volume of
our Manual, and comparing them with those on
page 422, you arrive at an entirely different con¬
clusion as to profit or cost from that so boldly
vaunted by the honorable gentleman from Onon¬
daga [Mr. Alvord]. Taking, I say, the auditor's
figures, I read from this table which I have pre¬
pared and is now before me :
Cost of construction,.... $64,710,886 94
Int. on constrnctioii, 93,736,654 89
Cost of repairs, 24,377,114 75
Interest on repairs, 27,268,893 77
$210,093,502 35
Tolls proper $92,116,741 67
Interest thereon, 100,^39,037 90
192,455,779 57
Balance of cost $17,637,722 78
from which it appears that the cost of construc¬
tion of the canals was nearly $64,750,000, the
interest on the same nearly $93,750,000, the cost
of repairs over $24,250,000, and the interest on
the same $27,250,000, in all, say, $210,100,000,
while the tolls proper, a trifle over $92,000,-
000, added to the interest thereon, $100,000,000
and over, make a sum total of nearly $192,500,-.
000, and showing a balance of cost unliquidated
of over $17,600,000. That seems to me a
truer balance on which we may best account
for the present very onerous canal debt.
The gentlemen who say the canals have brought
us a profit of thirty millions fail to tell us why it
is that we are nearly twenty millions in debt on
the canals. It is not material for our present pur¬
pose to showhow much the Erie, Oswego and Cham-
plain canals have earned, or how much the lateral
canals have cost beyond their several earnings ;
since if you commence a new expenditure, no mat¬
ter how you seek to control it in your financial
article the result will practically follow, that the
trunk canals wiU have to earn in the shape of tolls
levied on the bread of the people, of larger amount
or for longer time, moneys to provide for the pay¬
ment of the increased indebtedness, and the laterals,
envious of the huge sums expended along the cen¬
trals will crib from treasury stores. Now,
Mr. Chairman, I add a few words in conclusion.
At the commencement of my remarks I endeav¬
ored to give you a history of the first successful
method devised in the State of New York in the
provision of a constitutional amendment for en¬
larging the canals. I did it for the purpose of do¬
ing justice to the memory of the men who were en¬
gaged in the work, and especially, sir, to one who
stood in the Convention of 1846. the friend of the
people, a man of probity, with high sense of
honor and justice, who assisted his compeers in
framing for us what was thought at that time to be
3
18"
a perfectly safe fleancial article. I think it ia right,
and just, and due to the labor which that honored
man bestowed upon the constitutional amendment
at the extra session of 1853, that he should have
the credit, democrat as he was, of having origin¬
ated the draft of that article and perfected "the
plan by which, the present enlargement was ef¬
fected. I confess, sir, that I did not like to hear
the intimations tliat have been thrown out on this
floor, that the policy of 1842, and the policy of
1846, and the policy of a reduction of the tolls in
1859 were inimical to the interests of the canals.
Necessity is the parent of wisdom, and tolerates
no gainsaying of its decrees. Sir, there are too
many men in this Convention who are the le¬
gitimate successors and representatives of the
men who stood up in 1846 and announced as their
motto the " pay as you go " policy—too many
such men, I say, stand in this Convention to re¬
nounce their original .faith, much less to flout
dishonor upon the services of the men who were
engaged in that important controversy. It is fair
and right that in this place we should remember
not only what they accomplished, but
what they attempted, and the prophecies
they put forth. They said a system of
enlargement, however commenced, if pushed by
clamor or ambition beyond the avails in the treas¬
ury, would result in a wasteful expenditure of
money, and a flagitious accumulation of debt.
What are the statistics given you by the tables ?
[See page 143, vol. ii. of Manual.] They are,
that up to the year 1866 you have paid for inter¬
est on the loans made for the work of construc¬
tion, twenty-four and one-half millions of dollars ;
while the highest amount of the canal debt
.reached in 1860 was twenty-seven millions of
dollars. Why is it that at such a time as this
you propose to add to the present debt twelve
or twenty millions of dollars, as the same will
eventuate whichever way this plan is inaugu¬
rated, or into whosoever hands it may be commit¬
ted, to say nothing of the ñfty millions that must
follow ? Is that the way you propose to give tlie
people of the State free trade and cheap food in
these times and those which are to come? If you
propose to add to your debt, you continue the ne¬
cessity of accumulating large surplus revenues,
and at small rates of interest in our sinking
funds, to provide for the interest and the
principal of that debt. Sir, look for one mo¬
ment at what would be saved in cost on
the value of food in the State of New York if
the surplus revenues could be extinguished. If,
instead of applying them to the payment of the
principal and interest of your debt, you could take
an equal amount off the tolls, and reduce these,
and the cost on vegetable food, from three
to one, I trust this committee will consider
not only what may be politic along the cen¬
tral lino, not only what may best respond
to the loud-tongued cries of the West; not
only look at what has been pompously threatened
at the conventions assembled at Detroit and Chi¬
cago a few years ago, but that they will not allow
themselves to bo frightened by the holding up
before their eyes of new navigable media through
Virginia and Caiuuln. Give me an Erie canal
free from debt. Dct tlie French and Mnglish cap¬
italists take up, the former the James river and
the K inawha canal, or the latter the Ottawa or
ti.e ¡St. Lawrence route, and this little canal, so
despised on this floor because it will not float
boats of five hundred tons burden, will prove in
the future the great wisdom of the old adage,
that " a nimble sixpence is better than a slow
shilling." Your small boats navigating a free
channel unincumbered with debt, even if they
are on the average of only one hundred and fifty
tons burden, will surpass in availibility to the peo¬
ple who consume the products they carry, the boats
of heavy burden, plodding on in channels of more
pompous pretension and more admired navigation,
which carry also their heavier burdens of debt to
capitalists who may have foolishly invested large
sums upon them. The people of the State of New
York having paid the interest and reimbursed the
principal of these enormous debts with which
their public debts are incumbered will have the
Erie canal a free navigable stream, and thus hon¬
orably redeem the pledges made in the beginning.
I am for putting the Erie canal/in as good and
efficient repair as the nature of the case demands,
and at the earliest day practicable ; I believe that
the people of the State, the producing and consum¬
ing interest demand this, and execrate the present
flagitious combinations of wily, debased and profli¬
gate contractors. The rings must be broken up,
all their schemes declared felonious, and their
disjecta membra, as well those which now stand
out in the light as those obscured from present
view, be cast out on the dung heaps of society.
Stop your Inordinate expenditures and give no
premium to the vile scoundrelism which starts
breaks upon the canals, that] these impedimenta
to your prosperity may be plunder for them.
Your werè a half a million of dollars short last
year, to meet the supplies of your sinking funds
and the requirements of the Constitution, and you
had to wring out from an overtaxed constituency
the deficiency which the profligacy and imbecility
of your public servants caused. Sir, the Einanoe
Committee have done their work nobly. They
have fortified the public credit by refusing to ig¬
nore existing pledges. They maintain and pre¬
serve inviolate the public faith plighted by the
Constitution of 1846 to the creditors of the State.
They do not say, as the gentleman from Onondaga
[Mr. Alvord] did, that, as far as the general fund
debt is concerned, it is only a transference from
one pocket of the State to another, it is only a
debt by the people of the State to the neople of
the State. Is that a doctrine, sir, to advance in
these days and to proclaim when the general
government is taxing every commodity to main¬
tain its credit, that the debt contracted in de¬
fense of Union and national life is mainly a debt
which the people of the United States owe
the people of the United States? No, sir, stand
by the plan of the Finance Committee and
preserve from the breath of contempt and the ru¬
mor of repudiation your own great and glorious
commonwealth, even though disaster and blight
may fall thick and far all about it. Understand,
that your Finance Committee do not intend to tie
up and fetter as the gentleman who preceded mo
[Mr. Andrews] imagined, the future control of
the rovciuie.s of the canals after the debt it has
19
created has been discharged. They are to be left
to the wisdom of those who come after us (just
as the Constitution of 1846 designed) either to
reduce so as to make our canals, repairs excepted,
■channels of trade as free as our inland seas, or
to appropriate on the public works, as the people
may then deem best. But, whatever else you
conclude, resolve to pay your outstanding debts,
for which your great property is pledged, now ;
now, in inflated currency it may be—now, while
your revenues are overflowing and your oom-
merce prosperous.