Estimates differed in various states but averaged up quite evenly. To the rising generation, to whom tollgates are almost unknown, a study of the toll system affords novel entertainment, helping one to realize something of one of the most serious questions of public economics of two generations ago. Tollgates averaged one in eighteen or twenty miles in Pennsylvania, and one in ten miles in Ohio, with tolls a little higher than half the rate in Pennsylvania.

Tollgate-keepers were appointed by the governor in the early days in Ohio,[38] but, later, by the commissioners. These keepers received a salary which was deducted from their collections, the remainder being turned over to the commissioners. The salary established in Ohio in 1832 was one hundred and eighty dollars per annum.[39] In 1836 it was increased to two hundred dollars per annum, and tollgate-keepers were also allowed to retain five per cent of all tolls received above one thousand dollars.[40] In 1845 tollgate-keepers were ordered to make returns on the first Monday in each month, and the allowance of their per cent on receipts over one thousand dollars was cut off, leaving their salary at two hundred dollars per annum.[41] Equally perplexing with the question of just tolls was found to be the question of determining what and who should have free use of the Cumberland Road. This list was increased at various times, and, in most states, included the following at one time or another: persons going to, or returning from public worship, muster, common place of business on farm or woodland, funeral, mill, place of election, common place of trading or marketing within the county in which they resided. This included persons, wagons, carriages, and horses or oxen drawing the same. No toll was charged school children or clergymen, or for passage of stage and horses carrying United States Mail, or any wagon or carriage laden with United States property, or cavalry, troops, arms, or military stores of the United States, or any single state, or for persons on duty in the military service of the United States, or for the militia of any single state. In Pennsylvania, a certain stage line made the attempt to carry passengers by the tollgates free, taking advantage of the clauses allowing free passage of the United States mail by putting a mail sack on each passenger coach. The stage was halted and the matter taken into court, where the case was decided against the stage company, and persons traveling with mailcoaches were compelled to pay toll.[42] Ohio took advantage of Pennsylvania’s experience and passed a law that passengers on stagecoaches be obliged to pay toll.[43] Pennsylvania exempted persons hauling coal for home consumption from paying toll.[44] Many varied and curious attempts to evade payment of tolls were made, and laws were passed inflicting heavy fine upon all convicted of such malefaction. In Ohio, tollgate-keepers were empowered to arrest those suspected of such attempts, and, upon conviction, the fine went into the road fund of the county wherein the offense occurred.[45]

Persons making long trips on the road could pay toll for the entire distance and receive a certificate guaranteeing free passage to their destination.[46] Compounding rates were early put in force, applying, in Ohio, for persons residing within eight miles of the road,[47] the radius being extended later to ten.[48] Passengers in the stages were counted by the tollgate-keepers and the company operating the stage charged with the toll. At the end of each month, stage companies settled with the authorities. Thus it became possible for the stage drivers to deceive the gate-keepers, and save their companies large sums of money. Drivers were compelled to declare the number of passengers in their stage, and in the event of failing to do so, gate-keepers were allowed to charge the company for as many passengers as the stage could contain.[49]

Stage lines were permitted to compound for yearly passage of stages over the road and the large companies took advantage of the provision, though the passengers were counted by the gate-keepers. It may be seen that gate-keepers were in a position to embezzle large sums of money if they were so minded, and it is undoubted that this was done in more than one instance. Indeed, with a score and a half of gates, and a great many traveling on special rates, it would have been remarkable if some employed in all those years during which the toll system was in general operation did not steal. But this is lifting the veil from the good old days!

As will be seen later, the amounts handled by the gate-keepers were no small sums. In the best days of the road the average amount handled by tollgate-keepers in Pennsylvania was about eighteen hundred dollars per annum. In Ohio, with gates every ten miles, the average (reported) collection was about two thousand dollars in the best years. It is difficult to reconcile the statement made by Mr. Searight concerning the comparative amount of business done on various portions of the Cumberland Road, with the figures he himself quotes. He says: “It is estimated that two-fifths of the trade and travel of the road were diverted at Brownsville, and fell into the channel furnished at that point by the slackwater navigation of the Monongahela River, and a similar proportion descended the Ohio from Wheeling, and the remaining fifth continued on the road to Columbus, Ohio, and points further west. The travel west of Wheeling was chiefly local, and the road presented scarcely a tithe of the thrift, push, whirl and excitement which characterized it east of that point.”[50] On another page Mr. Searight gives the account of the old-time superintendents of the road in Pennsylvania in its most prosperous era, one dating from November 10, 1840 to November 10, 1841,[51] the other from May 1, 1843 to December 31, 1844.[52] In the first of these periods the amount of tolls received from the eastern division of the road (east of the Monongahela) is two thousand dollars less than the amount received from the western division. Even after the amounts paid by the two great stage companies are deducted, a balance of over a thousand dollars is left in favor of the division west of the Monongahela River. In the second report, $4,242.37 more was received on the western division of the road than on the eastern, and even after the amounts received from the stage companies are deducted, the receipts from the eastern division barely exceed those of the western. How can it be that “two-fifths of the trade and travel of the road were diverted at Brownsville?” And the further west Mr. Searight goes, the more does he seem to err, for the road west of the Ohio River, instead of showing “scarcely a tithe of the thrift, push, whirl and excitement which characterized it east of that point,” seems to have done a greater business than the eastern portion. For instance, when the road was completed as many miles in Ohio as were built in Pennsylvania, the return from the portion in Ohio (1833) was $12,259.42-4 (in the very first year that the road was completed), while in Pennsylvania the receipts in 1840 were only $18,429.25, after the road had been used for twenty-two years. In the same year (1840) Ohio collected $51,364.67 from her Cumberland Road tollgates—about three times the amount collected in Pennsylvania. Again Mr. Searight gives a Pennsylvania commissioner’s receipts for the twenty months beginning May 1, 1843, as $37,109.11, while the receipts from the road in Ohio in only the twelve months of 1843 were $32,157.02. At the same time the tolls charged in Ohio were a trifle in excess of those imposed in Pennsylvania, therefore, Ohio’s advantage must be curtailed slightly. On the other hand it should be taken into consideration that the Cumberland Road in Pennsylvania was almost the only road across the portion of the state through which it ran, while in Ohio other roads were used, especially clay roads running parallel with the Cumberland Road, by drivers of sheep and pigs, as an aged informant testifies. As Mr. Searight has said, the travel of the road west of the Ohio may have been chiefly of a local nature, yet his seeming error concerning the relative amount of travel on the two divisions in his own state, makes his statements less trustworthy in the matter. Still it can be readily believed that a great deal of continental trade did pass down the Monongahela after traversing the eastern division of the road and that increased local trade on the western division rendered the toll receipts of the two divisions quite equal. Local travel on the eastern division may have been light, comparatively speaking. Mr. Searight undoubtedly meant that two-fifths of the through trade stopped at Brownsville and Wheeling and one-fifth only went on into Ohio. The total amount of tolls received by Pennsylvania from all roads, canals, etc., in 1836 was about $50,000, while Ohio received a greater sum than that in 1838 from tolls on the Cumberland Road alone, and the road was not completed further west than Springfield.

A study of the amounts of tolls taken in from the Cumberland Road by the various states will show at once the volume of the business done. Ohio received from the Cumberland Road in forty-seven years nearly a million and a quarter dollars. An itemized list of this great revenue shows the varying fortunes of the great road:

YearTolls YearTolls
1831 $ 2,777 161856 $ 6,105 00
18329,067 9918576,105 00
183312,259 42-418586,105 00
183412,693 6518595,551 36
183516,442 26186011,221 74
183627,455 13186121,492 41
183739,843 35186219,000 00
183850,413 17186320,000 00
183962,496 10186420,000 00
184051,364 67186520,000 00
184136,951 33186619,000 00
184244,656 18186720,631 34
184332,157 02186818,934 49
184430,801 13186920,577 04
184531,439 38187019,635 75
184628,946 21187119,244 00
184742,614 59187218,002 09
184849,025 66187317,940 37
184946,253 38187417,971 21
185037,060 11187517,265 12
185144,063 6518769,601 68
185236,727 261877288 91
185335,354 40———————
185418,154 59 Total$1,139,795 30-4
18556,105 00

About 1850 Ohio began leasing portions of the Cumberland Road to private companies. In 1854 the entire distance from Springfield to the Ohio River was leased for a term of ten years for $6,105 a year. Commissioners were appointed to view the road continually and make the lessees keep it in as good condition as when it came into their hands.[53] Before the contract had half expired, the Board of Public Works was ordered (April, 1859) to take the road to relieve the lessees.[54] In 1870 the proper limits of the road were designated to be “a space of eighty feet in width, and where the road passed over a street in any city of the second class, the width should conform to the width of that street,” such cities to own it so long as it was kept in repair.[55]

Finally, in 1876, the state of Ohio authorized commissioners of the several counties to take so much of the road as lay in each county under their control. It was stipulated that tollgates should not average more than one in ten miles, and that no toll be collected between Columbus and the Ohio Central Lunatic Asylum. The county commissioners were to complete any unfinished portions of the road.[56]