Such is the description given of these two parties by the pen of a political opponent, who found in them the greatest obstacles to the enlargement of the canal.
The name of De Witt Clinton will ever be associated with this great and useful work, by which the whole commerce of the ocean lakes is poured into the Hudson, and thence to the Atlantic. After eight years' hard struggle, and the insane but undivided opposition of the city of New York, the law for the construction of the canal was passed in the year 1817. One opponent to the undertaking, when the difficulty of supplying water was started as an objection, assisted his friend by the observation, "Give yourself no trouble—the tears of our constituents will fill it." Many others opposed the act on the ground that, by bringing the produce of the States on the lake shores so easily to New York, the property of the State would be depreciated; which appears to me, in other words, to be—they opposed it on the ground of its utility. Others again grounded their objections on the doubt that the revenue raised by the tolls would be sufficient to justify the expense. Fortunately, however, the act was carried; and in seven years, the canal, though not quite completed, was receiving tolls to the amount of upwards of 50,000l. In 1836 the canal debt was paid, and produce valued at 13,000,000l.—of which 10,000,000l. belonged to the State of New York—was carried through it; the tolls had risen to 320,000l. per annum, and 80,000l. of that sum was voted to be appropriated to the general purposes of the State, the total cost having been under one and a half million sterling.
One might imagine that such triumphant success would have made the State ready to vote any reasonable sum of money to enlarge it if required; but the old opponents took the field in force when the proposition was made. Even after a certain sum had been granted, and a contract entered into, they rescinded the grant and paid a forfeit to the contractor of 15,000l. It was in vain that the injury to commerce, resulting from the small dimensions of the canal,[[BA]] was represented to them; it was in vain that statistics were laid before them, showing that the 7,000,000 miles traversed by the 4500 canal-boats might, if the proposed enlargement took place, reduce the distance traversed to two millions of miles, and the boats employed to 1500; Barn-burners triumphed, and it was decided that the enlargements should only be made out of the surplus proceeds of the tolls and freight; by which arrangement this vast commercial advantage will be delayed for many years, unless the fruits of the canal increase more rapidly than even their present wonderful strides can lead one to anticipate, although amounting at this present day to upwards of 1,000,000l. yearly.[[BB]] Such is a short epitome of a canal through which, when the Sault St. Marie Channel between Lakes Superior and Huron is completed, an unbroken watery highway will bear the rich produce of the West from beyond the 90° meridian of longitude to the Atlantic Ocean.[[BC]]
Although the Erie is perhaps the canal which bears the most valuable freight, it is by no means the greatest undertaking of the kind in the Union. The Chesapeake and Ohio canal, uniting Washington and Pittsburg, has nearly 400 locks, and is tunnelled four miles through the Alleghanies; and the Pennsylvania canal, as we have already seen in a former chapter, runs to the foot of the same ridge, and being unable to tunnel, uses boats in compartments, and drags them by stationary engines across the mountains. Nothing daunts American energy. If the people are once set upon having a canal, go ahead it must; "can't" is an unknown expression.[[BD]]
However important the works we have been considering may be to the United States, there can be no doubt that railways are infinitely more so; I therefore trust the following remarks upon them may have some interest.
By the statement of the last Census, it appears that there are no less than 13,266 miles of railroad in operation, and 12,681 in progress, giving a total of nearly 26,000 miles; the cost of those which are completed amounts to a little less than 75,000,000l., and the estimate for those in progress is a little above 44,000,000l. We thus see that the United States will possess 26,000 miles of railroad, at the cost of about 120,000,000l. In England we have 8068 miles of railway, and the cost of these amounts to 273,860,000l., or at the rate of 34,020l. per mile. This extraordinary difference between the results produced and the expenses incurred requires some little explanation. By the Census report, I learn that the average expense of the railways varies in different parts of the Union; those in the northern, or New England States, costing 9250l. per mile; those in the middle States, 8000l.; and those in the southern and western States, 4000l. per mile. The railway from Charleston to Augusta, on the Savannah River, only cost 1350l. per mile. From the above we see clearly that the expenses of their railways are materially affected by density of population and the consequent value of land, by the comparative absence of forest to supply material, and by the value of labour. If these three causes produce such material differences in a country comparatively unoccupied like the United States, it is but natural to expect that they should be felt with infinitely more force in England. Moreover, as it has been well observed by Captain D. Galton, R.E.,[[BE]] "railways originated in England, and therefore the experience which is always required to perfect a new system has been chiefly acquired in this country, and has increased the cost of our own railways for the benefit of our neighbours."—Some conception may be formed of the irregular nature of the expense on the lines in England from the statement subjoined, also taken from the same paper, viz.:—
Name of Railway. Land and Total Cost
Compensation. Works. Rails. per Mile.
£ £ £ £
London }
and } 113,500 98,000 1,000 253,000[BF] Blackwall }
Leicester }
and } 1,000 5,700 700 8,700[BF] Swannington }
From the table on the opposite page, it will be seen that the cost of construction and engineering expenses amounted to 35,526,535l. out of 45,051,217l. Taking the railways quoted as representing a fair average of the whole, we ascertain that more than one-fourth of the expense of our railways is incurred for extras comparatively unknown in the United States. At a general meeting of the London and North Western, in 1854, Mr. Glyn mentioned as a fact, that a chairman of a certain line, in giving evidence, had stated that a competition for the privilege of making 28 miles of railway had cost 250,000l. Such an item of expenditure can hardly enter into the cost of a railway in a country as thinly populated as the Republic. There are also two other important facts which are apt to be overlooked: first, that a great portion of the railways in the United States are single lines; and secondly, that the labour performed is of a far less solid and enduring character. A most competent civil engineer told me that the slovenly and insecure nature of many of the railway works in the United States was perfectly inconceivable, and most unquestionably would not stand the inspection required in England. A friend of mine has travelled upon a railway in America, between Washington and Virginia, of which a great portion was composed of merely a wooden rail with a bar of iron screwed on to the surface.[[BG]] The carriages are also far less expensive and comfortable; a carriage in the United States, which carries fifty people, weighs twelve tons, and costs 450l.; in England it may be fairly asserted, that for every fifty people in a mixed train there is a carriage weight of eighteen tons, at a cost of 1500l.
The following Table, extracted from a Return moved for by Lord Brougham, may help to give a better general idea of the reason why our Railroads have been so costly:—
Name of London & Great Midland, South Eastern Total
Railway. North Western, and 12 and 6
Western, and 3 branches branches
and 12 branches
branches
Length/Miles 433 215-3/4 449-1/4 198-1/2 1296-1/2
Cost of Con-
struction. £ 13,302,313 6,961,011 9,064,089 5,375,366 34,702,779
Conveyance
and Law
Charges. £ 143,479 105,269 119,344 138,034 506,128
Cost of
Land. £ 3,153,226 1,132,964 1,764,582 1,458,627 7,509,399
Parliamentary
Expenses. £ 555,698 245,139 287,853 420,467 1,509,157
Engineering
and Sur-
veying. £ 289,698 201,909 216,110 116,039 823,756
Total
Cost. £ 17,444,414 8,646,292 11,451,978 7,508,533 45,051,217