The New York herald., 1877-03-01
Our Canal System and Low Tolls

Our Canal System and Low Tolls.
The Canal Board met yesterday and
adopted the toll sheet which is to be sub
mitted to the Legislature fixing the rates for
the coming season of navigation. The
Comptroller desired that the rates should be
made the same rs last year, but Lieutenant
Governor Dorsheimer favored reduced rates,
and the sheet submitted by him prevailed.
The Lieutenant Governor, although q citizen
of Buffalo, admits that enough revenue
should be collected from tolls to meet all the
expenditures of the canals, but he desires
to place the fixed rates low, siace, if they
should prove insufficient for the purpose
of necessary expenses, tho Canal Board has
the authority under the law to increase
them, while it is prohibited from decreasing
them from the amounts adopted by the
Legislature.
The friends of the Erie Canal make mis-
take, we think, in advocating the entire
abolition of tolls and pressing their favorite
theory of Canals as free as the river, the
lake or the ocean," 1t requires money to
maintain and repair these State works, and
tho surest way to destroy them is to attempt
to support them by taxation. Many canal
men insist that tolls are tax directly
on the boatmen and indirectly on COM
merce-a tax, as Governor Seymour says,
on "food and fuel and lumber and other
crude materials which lie at the basis of all
industry" The fallaciousness of this reason
ing is almost transparent. The State built
these water ways at heavy cost, for the
advantage both of New York and the great
West to bring the commerce of the latter to
the seaboard and to aid in establishing the
commercial supremacy of the metropolis.
The boatman uses this water way and pays
for the privilege in the shape of
tolls on the cargo he carries. His
his profits calculated accordingly. If the
canals did not exist the business of the boat
man would not exist. Tho produce of the
West would come to us wholly by rail, and
We should be at the mercy of the railroad
corporations MS to the cost of transportation.
1t may be said that, as we have both canals
and railroads, if we abolish tolls and make
the canals free freight will be carried on
them ut very low rate the railroads will be
compelled to make their charges for trans
portation on corresponding scale and CON-
mercc will reap the benefit. But the canals
must be maintained and kept in repair, and
If the cost is not paid through tolls it must
fall on the people of the State in the shape
of taxation. Thus we should not only lose
in one direction what wo might possibly
gain in another, but the people of New
York would be burdened with the whole ex.
pense of maintaining canals which benefit the
Western States rs much as they benefit oul
own-an expense which when met by tolls
is distributed fairly among oil those who
reap the benefit of our canal system.
Our true canal policy is very simple. We
should abandon oil except the Erie, Oswego
and Champlain canals and the necessary
feeders, which should be retained only MS
feeders. The new constitutional system
will simplify the canal management and
enable us to reduce the cost of maintenance
to the lowest possible point. We should
collect only just sufficient toll to meet the
years necessary expenses. AS the Cana