"This sum of $28,000,000 and upwards represents the premium which the people of this State have paid in taxes during the last fifty-odd years to secure and encourage the use of these waterways for purposes of transportation, the equivalent of an annual subsidy of over $560,000.
The tolls received from all the canals during the fiscal year ending September 30, 1875, amounted to | $1,902,990.64 | |
There were expended for repairs and maintenance during the same period | $2,247,297.01 | |
Damages during the same period | 305,796.68 | |
| 2,553,093.69 | ||
| Balance against the State | $650,103.05 |
"If to this be added the interest on the canal debt, the cost of collection, and the difference between miscellaneous expenses and receipts, as set forth in detail in Exhibit B, the loss to the State from the canals during the last fiscal year will be found to amount to the enormous sum of $1,412,470.79.
"The cost of repairs and maintenance is so obviously out of all proportion with the necessities of a system of completed structures like our canals, which have little that is complicated or perishable about them, that we are forced to seek the explanation of it in their administration.
"Our investigation was not long in revealing the fact that the canals have not been managed upon the principles which would govern any man in the administration of his private estate. The interests of the public have been systematically disregarded. The precautions with which the Legislature has attempted to defend this property from peculation and fraud, and secure for it faithful and efficient service, have been deliberately and persistently disregarded; while the responsibility of its agents has been so divided and distributed as to leave the State comparatively remediless and at the mercy of the predatory classes, who have been, if they do not continue to be, a formidable political power.
"The more conspicuous evidences of mismanagement which our investigation has disclosed may be divided into three categories:
"First, as to the modes of letting contracts.
"Second, as to the modes of measuring and estimating work to the contractors.
"Third, as to the facilities for procuring legislative relief.
"First, as to the mode of letting the contracts: