When a single tug shall equal 30 to 50 horses on the tow-path, it equals 60 to 100 of supply, as all require the alternate team.
The automaton system of steam is a hinderance to horse-boat navigation, besides increasing the risks and dangers, whilst the towing system, in substitution for horses, greatly improves the navigation and lessens the risks and dangers. Averaging the total mileage of a season with horse-boat times of transit, and boats meet each other every twenty minutes, night and day including Sundays, for seven months. To carry this tonnage, there must be eleven meetings of steamers to nine by horses, which increases the risks and dangers twenty-two per cent.; on the other hand, tows to the same tonnage would only meet each other about every three hours, hence for long distances they have an unobstructed water way.
Mechanical invention, to adapt steam to the heavy resistances of canal boats, is therefore the first and greatest necessity of canals.
A second necessity will be auxiliary and co-operative power at the locks and short levels.
These must be local, and may be by stationary steam-power, by water-power from the upper levels, or by horses.
Thus, there would be only one detention of a tug through all the sixteen locks from West Troy to Cohoes—only one wherever there are two or more locks near each other, and at all locks there must be an independent local power to handle all boats. In this way tugs will lose less time between Buffalo and Albany than horse-boats do in changing teams from boat to tow-path every six hours.
Following these necessities, new rules, regulations and customs will be established, protecting the rights and equities of all.
A third necessity will be a centralized management, or control of all tugs, train-movements, and local powers at short levels and locks.
This is essential to a harmony of movements, to a proper distribution of motors, and to a proper adaptation to all the ebbs and flows of trade. This is just as essential for the tugs of a canal as for the locomotives of a railway. Provided the control of steam shall be held, upon the merits of some invention, protected by Letters Patent from the General Government; then the owners thereof might establish a centralized management to meet the merits, demands and exigencies of the case. They could enforce a harmony of interests between all trains and a harmony of police regulations, and they could enforce a consolidation of effort and co-operation to meet any exigency, just as a railway company can consolidate and develop its efforts upon any necessitous occasion.
In the nature of the case, these three necessities, when accomplished, will give to steam the universal movement of boats.