New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1885-06-26
THE CANALS.


again, and it should have double locks through
out the entire length. The plan is to deepen
the canal one foot and raise the banks one foot,
thus securing an additional depth of water OF
two feet. To recommend this plan 1T is urged
that the cost would mot exceed $3,OOo,ooo,
that it would entail a tax of only one mill on
the dollar and would lessen the cost OF trans
portaton and reduce the time from Buffalo to
New-York by at least one-sixth.
It will hardly be denied that the canal stands
in need of Improvement. That has been the
fact at any time during the last twenty years.
Ever since the railroad system began to COM
pete actively with water routes, the canals have
been GET ting the worst of it, and improvements
have been constantly recommended rs neces-
sary in order to preserve their existence and
continue their usefulness to the people OF the
State. Nor is there doubt that these recon-
mendations, made from time to time have
been warranted by facts. The improvement of
the canals has at all times been too slow,
niggarlly and inadequate. If it was intended
to keep them in condition to compete with the
railroad system; shicir efficiency should have
been Tar more promptly and thoroughly devel-
opad. For many J ears the railroad system has
been necessarily improved by all the devices
that science and experience could suggest
Under the impulse of self-interest these i'm
provements have been adopted with extraor-
binary promptness as fast aslthey were devised
and fairly tested, and so it has come to pass
that the cost of transportation by rail has been
wonderfully reduced. Meanwhile the canal
system has been but little improved; in
some respects 1t is substantially what it was
fifty years ago. A more important fact Is
that the canal improvements have been too
tardily made. When they were found to be
necessary it required first long time to get the
officials sufficiently satisfied to recommend
Them and then a much longer time to get the
Legislature to agree to them, and finally, when
the work was actually ordered its execution
was delayed by official red tape. So it has
come to pass that nearly every improvement
made, though perhaps adequate when hr1t rec
commended, has proved entirely inadequate by
the time the State could get it actually done.
+. 1t may be well just here to ask whether the
experience in this State does not furnish an
impressive warning against the various schemes
which would place other systems of transporta-
ton under State authority. If the railroads
had been managed as the canals have been dur
imagine that grain would to-day be taken from
Buffalo to New York at cost of less than
quarter of accent per ton per mile y The great
change made on the canals has been in the re-
duction and tie removal of the State taxes
that is to say the people in their corporate
capacity have accepted part of the cost of trans
portation by canal in order to preserve the
canals from destruction. 1t is at least certain
that, if the railroad companies had been under
State control the canals would not have been
in anv serious danger of losing their usefulness
When people recommend the purchase Of the
railroads by Government, or their management
by commissions created by the Government. it
NAV be well to remember this sharp contrast
between the improvement'of transportation by
canals under the authority of the State, aud the
Improvement in transportation by rail under
the stimulus.of individual interests.
The main question in regard to the Erie
Canal and the improvements now proposed is
whether those mprovementsiwll be found ade-
quate BY the time they are completed, even If
they should be Immediately ordered, the rail-
| road system will Slave made much further pro-
| gress But the improvements themselves are
| evidently limited by the desire of the authori-
ties to propose no burdensOme tax or heavy ex-
pense. If it had been proposed instead to put
the canals at once into such condition that
the 1,6O0-son boats which can nov pass
through the Welland Canal could go from Lake
Erie to the Hudson River without difficulty,
that would have been different matter. Prob
ably it would have secured the efficiency OF the
canals in competition with the railroads for
long time to gcome. But it may be seriously
questioned whether the improvements which
are nov officially proposed will not be found OF
little use by the time they can be completed.