44 G. S. CALLENDER 



influence in determining legislation. The readiness with 

 which the legislatures of all the states created corporations 

 for all sorts of purposes, whenever they were called for by 

 individuals, in many cases granting the privilege of limited 

 liability, shows that the opposition to corporations as such 

 was insignificant. 



The considerations which received the principal attention, 

 and which chiefly determined the policy pursued, were of an 

 entirely different nature. They related to the utility to the 

 community of the various improvements contemplated, and to 

 the inability of private enterprise to secure the capital to 

 construct them. Long arguments were presented to show 

 that the benefits to be derived by the community at large 

 from such improvements were sufficient to justify their con- 

 struction at public expense, even though private capital 

 should not find it profitable to undertake them. 



Such reasoning as this may be found in the public docu- 

 ments of most of the states which adopted the policy of inter- 

 nal improvement. Sometimes it appears in the discussions 

 which preceded the construction of the works, and some- 

 times it is used to justify that policy after experience had 

 shown that the tolls were not sufficient to pay the interest on 

 the public debt created to carry it out. The Ohio canal 

 commissioners at the outset of their enterprise, after express- 

 ing their opinion that the construction of the canals would be 

 a prudent investment of capital, declared that a more impor- 

 tant and interesting inquiry is what are the advantages which 

 the people of this state may derive by the construction of 

 navigable canals. 



After the canals had been finished, they laid still greater 

 stress upon the fact that, in estimating their value to the state, 

 the revenue accruing from tolls was a matter of secondary im- 

 portance. By taking the amount of tonnage received and ex- 

 ported from either end of the canal in 1832, and estimating 

 the rise in the price of exports and the fall in the price of 

 imports, they reached the conclusion that the aggregate saving 

 to the people had amounted to $312,000; whereas the taxes 

 raised to pay interest on the canal amounted to only $143,- 

 000. 



