68. Development of the toll system.—With the growth of commerce the toll-stations of course increased in value; and the practice grew up of leasing them to contractors, who paid a high sum for the privilege and had to devise, an old author tells us, “ten thousand new and unusual tyrannies, frauds and exactions” to make any profit for themselves. Many kept taverns, and managed to detain the merchant for days on various pretexts, such as absence of the proper official. Some made the merchant pay to be relieved of the necessity of having his wares unpacked and weighed and measured in detail. Many kept the tariff secret, and extorted what they could on every occasion. Some lived far from the highway, and some put their offices by design on impracticable roads, and fined the merchants heavily who went by another route.
On some routes, as along the middle Rhine, Bingen to Coblenz, it was almost impossible for commerce to be carried on except along the river, and very heavy tolls could be levied here without danger of the merchants escaping; but under other conditions the collectors established wings, as they were called, secondary offices on the side-roads to prevent evasion of the toll. Some collectors established regular pools, to use the modern term applied to railroad combination; twenty-five or thirty of them, representing perhaps five or six separate toll-areas, associated and agreed upon their rates; then they pooled and divided their profits.
69. Constraint of trade by tolls.—The establishment of toll-stations put an artificial constraint on trade, which kept it in the paths most convenient for the collectors, not most suitable to the merchants. Lords would not allow new and better roads to be built, for fear that profits on the old roads would be impaired. The compulsion to follow certain routes (German Strassenzwang) became a serious evil as commerce developed and sought new openings; and the loss to the public was far greater than any gain by the toll receiver.
Peculiarly noxious customs clustered around the rights which feudal lords claimed for themselves in the period when the central government was powerless. The right to a wrecked ship, which had once been the prerogative of the king, could be distorted so that the whole cargo of a Regensburg ship was confiscated in 1396 because a single little cask had fallen off into the Danube. It was an accepted rule in Germany that if a wagon broke down so that the axle touched the ground it became a part of the land and belonged to the lord of the territory; break-downs must have been frequent, in view of the wretched condition of the roads, and it has been suggested that lords sought to cause them by traps and pitfalls.
70. Burden of the tolls on trade.—The most evident effect of the tolls was the additional cost of transportation which must be paid, of course, by the consumer. The price of a ware might rise, within a comparatively short distance, so much that it could not be sold at all. It has been estimated that in the fourteenth century the Rhine tolls merely on the stretch between Bingen and Coblenz amounted to two thirds of the value of the wares. Even in the fifteenth century, and after some reform had been effected in the French tolls, the price of goods was doubled by carriage from Nantes to Orleans on the Loire or from Honfleur to Paris on the Seine.
Besides the loss of money there was the loss of time; a merchant might arrive at his destination too late to find a market for his wares, or might find that they had deteriorated on the road. The monks of Beauvais took three pennyworths from each horse load that passed by, and on fast days they spent so much time in selecting their fish that the rest of the load spoiled before it reached Paris.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Make a study of the roads in your own State, noting (a) the extent of good and of bad roads, (b) the effect on transportation, (c) the system under which the roads are maintained, (d) organized attempts at improvement. Study the system of New Jersey and its effects. [Documents aiding in this study may be obtained from the Department of Agriculture, Washington, and probably from the government of your own State—apply to State Librarian for information.]
2. To what extent is river navigation practised in your State? Was it not more important before the introduction of railways?
3. Estimate the distance between the points named in the text, sect. 62, by land and by water.