NEW YORK. 



75 



This shows a decrease in expenditures of 

 $626,558.13 in two years, and an increase in 

 earnings of $137,892.96, or a total gain to the 

 State Treasury of $764,451.09. The average 

 number of convicts during the two years end- 

 ing March 1, 1877, was 8,455, and during the 

 two years ending March 1, 1879, 8,572. 



The first year of the management of the 

 State canals by a Superintendent instead of 

 Oanal Commissioners terminated on February 

 1, 1879. The results were as follows: 



I8T8 BY SUPERINTENDENT. 



Extraordinary repairs |2,817 00 



General expenditures 10,470 49 



Salaries and travel 16,632 04 



Eastern Division 176,486 15 



Middle Division 140,818 17 



Western Division 121,894 16 



$468,068 01 



Days of naviifation, 1878 287 



Tolls received, 1878 1993,848 00 



1877-BY CANAL COMMISSIONERS. 



Extraordinary repairs $77,1 82 25 



Salaries and travel 9,938 41 



Eastern Division 424,978 86 



Middle Division 167,040 72 



Western Division 218,962 87 



$898,097 61 



Days of navigation, 1877 214 



Tolls received, 1877 $880,896 00 



Redaction In expenses for year ending Febru- 

 ary 1, 1S79, over year ending February 1, 1878. $425,029 50 

 Increase In tolls (1878) 112,453 00 



These returns include the Erie, Champlain, 

 Oswego, Cayuga and Seneca, Black River, 

 Genesee Valley, Ohenango, and Chemung Oa- 

 nals. The success of the new system, which 

 consisted in placing them under one respon- 

 sible head, was admitted by all parties. The 

 Superintendent in his report makes the fol- 

 lowing suggestions to the cities of Buffalo and 

 New York for the improvement of the com- 

 merce of the Erie Canal. To Buffalo he says : 

 " Provide a low fixed rate of harbor and com- 

 mission charges on all incoming and outgoing 

 canal freight." And to New York : " Increase 

 your terminal facilities to a capacity whereby 

 the cargoes of canal-boats can be unloaded 

 more quickly and cheaply in your harbor, and 

 ocean-going vessels receive their grain cargoes 

 with greater convenience and dispatch." 



A bill was before the Assembly to provide 

 for the tunneling of the Hudson River from 

 Jersey City to New York, and for a grand cen- 

 tral underground depot in New York to which 

 all the railroads entering the city would be 

 compelled to run. 



Another bill which passed the Legislature 

 defined tramps to be "all transient persons 

 who rove about from place to place, and all 

 vagrants living without labor or visible means 

 of support, who stroll over the country with- 

 out lawful occasion." The law further says 

 that any act of vagrancy, by any person not a 

 resident of the State, shall be evidence that 

 the person committing the same is a tramp 

 within the meaning of the act, and any person 

 who shall be deemed to be a tramp shall be 

 liable to punishment of not more than one 



year's confinement at hard labor in a county 

 jail or a penitentiary. 



Charges were transmitted to the Senate by 

 the Governor against John F. Smyth, Superin- 

 tendent of Insurance. They related to mal- 

 administration in reference to the Atlantic 

 Mutual Life and Globe Mutual Life Insurance 

 Companies. When the subject came before 

 the Senate, the charges were not sustained. 



A bill to amend the charter of Brooklyn, 

 which the Governor designated as pluralism, 

 and defined as " a plan by which a man can 

 draw the salaries of two offices and neglect the 

 duties of one," was vetoed by him. Daniel 

 O'Reilly, an Alderman of Brooklyn, was elect- 

 ed a member of Congress. His friends desired 

 that he should hold both offices ; a general act 

 was presented and passed both Houses without 

 a dissentient vote to change the organic law of 

 the city, having half a million population, for 

 the convenience of one of them. Such was 

 the bill. 



A bill was passed appropriating $8,000, being 

 the award made by the Board of Audit to Ter- 

 ence O'Neil Donnelly for damages sustained 

 by false imprisonment. The case is too pecu- 

 liar to be passed. Mr. Donnelly was a builder 

 of houses in South Brooklyn. He purchased 

 lots, built houses upon them, and sold them. 

 He was regarded as an honest and industrious 

 man, a public-spirited citizen, and a kind hus- 

 band and father. His occupation required some 

 outlay and more credit, with diligence and fore- 

 sight. He owned one of the houses in a block 

 he built. It was worth $9,000, and had a $4,- 

 500 mortgage on it. He maintained his family 

 in plain comfort, in a house of that quality. 

 As inmates of his house were two persons con- 

 siderably his junior in years. Their relations 

 with him were casual and on a slight business 

 understanding only. The perpetration of a 

 forgery was traced home to them. On being 

 apprehended, it was schemed out for them to 

 exhibit themselves as tools rather than princi- 

 pals. They were instructed to swear that Mr. 

 Donnelly was the instigator and procurer of 

 their crime, and the one who profited by it. 

 They did so. Mr. Donnelly was arraigned, 

 was very hurriedly tried, lost several advan- 

 tages which defendants generally have, and, 

 against his own protestations of innocence and 

 the proof of his theretofore exemplary charac- 

 ter, he was convicted and sentenced to a term 

 of imprisonment. The men who swore the 

 crime on him received the minor degree of 

 punishment they sought. What happened to 

 Mr. Donnelly is summed up in the fact that he 

 went to prison. To his family this happened : 

 They had to move from their homestead into 

 a tenement, and were there in want. They 

 had to withdraw the children from school, as 

 their fellow pupils taunted them with their 

 father's degradation. The man who had the 

 mortgage on the house foreclosed it, and bought 

 the house in for $200 under the face of the 

 mortgage, and the mortgage was only one half 



