Meanwhile, under the direction of Caleb Eddy, who assumed the agency of the corporation in 1825, bringing great business ability and unquenchable zeal to his task, the perishable wooden locks were gradually replaced with stone, a new stone dam was built at Billerica, and the service brought to a high state of efficiency. [103] The new dam was the occasion of a lawsuit brought by the proprietors of the Sudbury meadows, claiming damages to the extent of $10,000 for flooding their meadows. The defendants secured the services of Samuel Hoar, Esq., of Concord, assisted by the Hon. Daniel Webster, who accepted a retaining fee of $100 to "manage and argue the case in conjunction with Mr. Hoar. The cause was to have been tried November, 1833. Mr. Webster was called on by me and promised to examine the evidence and hold himself in readiness for the trial, but for some time before he was not to be found in Boston, at one time at New York, at another in Philadelphia, and so on from place to place so that I am satisfied no dependance can be placed with certainty upon his assistance, and," plaintively concludes the agent, "our $100 has gone to profit and loss account."
On the other side was the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, assisted by Franklin Dexter, Esq. This case was decided the following year adversely to the plaintiffs.
With the accession of business brought by the corporations at Lowell, the prospect for increased dividends in the future was extremely encouraging. The golden age of the canal appeared close at hand; but the fond hopes of the proprietors were once more destined to disappointment. Even the genius of James Sullivan had not foreseen the railway locomotive. In 1829 a petition was presented to the Legislature for the survey of a railroad from Boston to Lowell. The interests of the canal were seriously involved. A committee was promptly chosen to draw up for presentation to the General Court "a remonstrance of the Proprietors of Middlesex Canal, against the grant of a charter to build a railroad from Boston to Lowell." This remonstrance, signed by William Sullivan, Joseph Coolidge, and George Hallett, bears date of Boston, Feb. 12, 1830, and conclusively shows how little the business men of fifty years ago anticipated the enormous development of our resources consequent upon the application of steam to transportation:—
The remonstrants take pleasure in declaring, that they join in the common sentiment of surprise and commendation, that any intelligence and enterprise should have raised so rapidly and so permanently, such establishments as are seen at Lowell. The proprietors of these works have availed themselves of the canal, for their transportation for all articles, except in the winter months ... and every effort has been made by this corporation to afford every facility, it was hoped and believed, to the entire satisfaction of the Lowell proprietors. The average annual amount of tolls paid by these proprietors has been only about four thousand dollars. It is believed no safer or cheaper mode of conveyance can ever be established, nor any so well adapted for carrying heavy and bulky articles. To establish therefore a substitute for the canal alongside of it, and in many places within a few rods of it, and to do that which the canal was made to do, seems to be a measure not called for by any exigency, nor one which the Legislature can permit, without implicitly declaring that all investments of money in public enterprises must be subjected to the will of any applicants who think that they may benefit themselves without regard to older enterprises, which have a claim to protection from public authority. With regard, then, to transportation of tonnage goods, the means exist for all but the winter months, as effectually as any that can be provided.
There is a supposed source of revenue [104] to a railroad, from carrying passengers. As to this, the remonstrants venture no opinion, except to say, that passengers are now carried, at all hours, as rapidly and safely as they are anywhere else in the world.... To this, the remonstrants would add, that the use of a railroad, for passengers only, has been tested by experience, nowhere, hitherto; and that it remains to be known, whether this is a mode which will command general confidence and approbation, and that, therefore, no facts are now before the public, which furnish the conclusion, that the grant of a railroad is a public exigency even for such a purpose. The Remonstrants would also add, that so far as they know and believe, "there never can be a sufficient inducement to extend a railroad from Lowell westwardly and northwestwardly, to the Connecticut, so as to make it the great avenue to and from the interior, but that its termination must be at Lowell" (italics our own), "and, consequently that it is to be a substitute for the modes of transportation now in use between that place and Boston, and cannot deserve patronage from the supposition that it is to be more extensively useful...."
The Remonstrants, therefore, respectfully submit: First, that there be no such exigency as will warrant the granting of the prayer for a railroad to and from Lowell.
Secondly, that, if that prayer be granted, provision should be made as a condition for granting it, that the Remonstrants shall be indemnified for the losses which will be thereby occasioned to them.
This may seem the wilful blindness of self-interest; but the utterances of the press and the legislative debates of the period are similar in tone. In relation to another railroad, the "Boston Transcript" of Sept. 1, 1830, remarks: "It is not astonishing that so much reluctance exists against plunging into doubtful speculations.... The public itself is divided as to the practicability of the Rail Road. If they expect the assistance of capitalists, they must stand ready to guarantee the percentum per annum; without this, all hopes of Rail Roads are visionary and chimerical." In a report of legislative proceedings published in the "Boston Courier," of Jan. 25, 1830, Mr. Cogswell, of Ipswich, remarked: "Railways, Mr. Speaker, may do well enough in old countries, but will never be the thing for so young a country as this. When you can make the rivers run back, it will be time enough to make a railway." Notwithstanding the pathetic remonstrances and strange vaticinations of the canal proprietors, the Legislature incorporated the road and refused compensation to the canal. Even while the railroad was in process of construction, the canal directors do not seem to have realized the full gravity of the situation. They continued the policy of replacing wood with stone, and made every effort to perfect the service in all its details; as late as 1836 the agent recommended improvements. The amount of tonnage continued to increase—the very sleepers used in the construction of the railway were boated, it is said, to points convenient for the workmen.
In 1832 the canal declared a dividend of $22 per share; from 1834 to 1837, inclusive, a yearly dividend of $30.
The disastrous competition of the Lowell Railroad was now beginning to be felt. In 1835 the Lowell goods conveyed by canal paid tonnage dues of $11,975.51; in 1836 the income from this source had dwindled to [105] $6,195.77. The canal dividends had been kept up to their highest mark by the sale of its townships in Maine and other real estate: but now they began to drop. The year the Lowell road went into full operation the receipts of the canal were reduced one-third; and when the Nashua & Lowell road went into full operation, in 1840, they were reduced another third. The board of directors waged a plucky warfare with the railroads, reducing the tariff on all articles, and almost abolishing it on some, till the expenditures of the canal outran its income; but steam came out triumphant. Even sanguine Caleb Eddy became satisfied that longer competition was vain, and set himself to the difficult task of saving fragments from the inevitable wreck.
At this time (1843) Boston numbered about 100,000 inhabitants, and was dependent for water upon cisterns and wells. The supply of water in the wells had been steadily diminishing for years, and what remained was necessarily subject to contamination from numberless sources. "One specimen which I analyzed," said Dr. Jackson, "which gave three per cent, of animal and vegetable putrescent matter, was publicly sold as a mineral water; it was believed that water having such a remarkable fetid odor and nauseous taste, could be no other than that of a sulphur spring; but its medicinal powers vanished with the discovery that the spring arose from a neighboring drain." Here was a golden opportunity. Eddy proposed to abandon the canal as a means of transportation, and convert it into an aqueduct for supplying the City of Boston with wholesome water. The sections between the Merrimac and Concord at one extremity, and Charlestown mill-pond and Woburn at the other, were to be wholly discontinued. Flowing along the open channel of the canal from the Concord river to Horn-pond locks in Woburn, from thence it was to be conducted in iron pipes to a reservoir upon Mount Benedict in Charlestown, a hill eighty feet above the sea-level.
The good quality of the Concord-river water was vouched for by the "analysis of four able and practical chemists, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston; John W. Webster, of Cambridge University; S.L. Dana, of Lowell, and A.A. Hayes, Esq., of the chemical works at Roxbury." The various legal questions involved were submitted to the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who gave an opinion, dated Dec. 21, 1842, favorable to the project. The form for an act of incorporation was drawn up; and a pamphlet was published, in 1843, by Caleb Eddy, entitled an "Historical sketch of the Middlesex Canal, with remarks for the consideration of the Proprietors," setting forth the new scheme in glowing colors.
But despite the feasibility of the plan proposed, and the energy with which it was pushed, the agitation came to naught; and Eddy, despairing of the future, resigned his position as agent in 1845. Among the directors during these later years were Ebenezer Chadwick, Wm. Appleton, Wm. Sturgis, Charles F. Adams, A.A. Lawrence, and Abbott Lawrence; but no business ability could long avert the catastrophe. Stock fell to $150, and finally the canal was discontinued, according to Amory's Life of Sullivan, in 1846. [106] It would seem, however, that a revival of business was deemed within the range of possibilities, for in conveyances made in 1852 the company reserved the right to use the land "for canalling purposes"; and the directors annually went through with the form of electing an agent and collector as late as 1853.