46 HAUPT— EMANCIPATION OF THE WATERWAYS. [April 12. 



stimulated the opening of canal routes to the great cities of the 

 seaboard and for its transportation to the manufactories. Thus the 

 Delaware and Hudson, the Morris and Essex, the Schuylkill Navi- 

 gation, the Chesapeake and Ohio, the Delaware and Raritan, as 

 well as the James River and Kanawa, the Pennsylvania, the Schuyl- 

 kill & Susquehanna and the Erie were well under way or completed 

 prior to the advent of railroads ; but it soon after became apparent 

 that a railroad constructed by private capital could not conduct a 

 profitable business as a competitor of a free waterway built and 

 operated by public funds, so that a war of extermination began 

 between these interests and it became necessary to purchase or lease 

 the canals to control their tonnage. Instead of enlarging and 

 modernizing them for the interest of the lessees and the public 

 they have in some cases been abandoned and in others only suffi- 

 cient traffic is carried to maintain the charters. The result of this 

 policy is well illustrated in the history of the State works of Penn- 

 sylvania where between 1865 and 1874 some 701 miles of canals, 

 which had cost over $33,000,000 to build, were abandoned. In 

 a similar way 656 miles of the Ohio canals were obliterated having 

 cost nearly $11,000,000. New York has been more fortunate in 

 having lost only about 269 miles which cost something over $10,- 

 000,000, but the determined effort now making to prevent the 

 enlargement of the Erie Canal to even 1 2 feet depth indicates that 

 the active opponents to our waterways are not yet convinced that 

 their best interests are conserved by these great arteries of cheap 

 transportation. The beneficial effects of the cheapest water com- 

 petion in the country upon railroad interests may be seen along the 

 Great Lakes where the roads skirting their banks are amongst the 

 best revenue producers in the United States. If it were possible to 

 purchase the 90,000 square miles of non-productive water-surface 

 and convert it into arable land the railroad interests would not per- 

 mit it to be done as it would exterminate the prosperous cities and 

 industries which these waters have created, and ruin the tonnage 

 incidental thereto, yet they persist in obstructing deep water legis- 

 lation. By the end of 1835 there were about 2,700 miles of 

 canals open and in use and only about 1,000 miles of railroad ; in 

 1889 the canal mileage had fallen to 2,305.2 while the railroad 

 mileage had increased to 157,976 miles and to-day it is not less 

 than 212,000. Of the canal mileage only 40.6 is under the con- 



