822 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Hudson. Power-houses along the banks of the Hudson will fur- 

 nish New York, Brooklyn, Hoboken, Jersey City, Passaic, Pat- 

 erson, Newark, Elizabethtown, the Oranges and other cities within 

 a radius of fifty to one hundred miles with electricity, heat, power 

 for manufacturing, etc. 



The construction of the Great Eastern waterpower canal is 

 estimated to develop 15,000,000 twenty-four-hour horsepower or 

 30,000,000 twelve-hour horsepower, the value of which, the 

 author states, would be when fully utilized $750,000,000 per year. 

 If only one-half the power is utilized, the saving to the country 

 in one hundred years would amount, according to the author, to 

 more than the value of all the property in the United States. 

 The construction involves such items as embankments 1000 feet 

 high and from ten to twenty miles in length. The estimated 

 cost is not given, but can hardly be less than $15,000,000,000 or 

 $20,000,000,000, or about as much as the present total value of 

 property in the United States. The writer concludes, therefore, 

 that this scheme, while involving magnificent possibilities, is not 

 likely to be carried out at once. 



PRIVATE COMPANIES ORGANIZED TO BUILD CANALS 



In order to show how far the people of the State of New York 

 became possessed with the idea that canal navigation was 

 essential to their commercial prosperity, the following list of 

 private companies which had been organized before 1860, for 

 constructing canals and extending navigation in the State, is 

 herewith included. The last of these was the Allegheny River 

 Slack Water Navigation Company, organized in April, 1857, to 

 improve Allegheny river below Olean. 1 



1 Gazetteer of the State of New York, by J. H. French. 



