Ohio History Journal

THE OHIO CANALS: PUBLIC ENTERPRISE

ON THE FRONTIER

 

By CHESTER E. FINN

 

On July 4, 1825, the little town of Newark, Ohio, celebrated

the grandest and most glorious fourth of its history. The notables

of the State and of other States were congregated there, and a

momentous event in the history of Ohio was about to take place.

After suitable celebrations in the town, the group adjourned to

Licking Summit, escorted by brilliantly uniformed troops of

militia, and followed by the crowd assembled there for the oc-

casion.

Having arrived at Licking Summit, the troops drew up at

attention, the bands played, and that sine qua non of all Inde-

pendence Day celebrations was indulged in, speech-making.

Thomas Ewing made the speech of the day, and he was followed

by Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, who lavishly praised

the undertaking they were about to inaugurate.¹ Governor Clin-

ton and Governor Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio then took spades in

hand, and dug the first spadefuls of earth for the Ohio and Erie

Canal. Accounts differ as to which governor dug the first spade-

ful, but the best eye-witness account of the ceremony says that

they dug simultaneously.² There were "wild huzzas" for Gover-

nor Clinton, and it is reported that his emotions so overcame him

that he wept.3

Among the toasts offered that day at Licking Summit was

one, "Henry Clay--the early advocate for the recognition of

South American Independence, and the firm and eloquent sup-

 

1 John Herman, Commencement of the Ohio Canal at the Licking Summit, printed

by John Herman, 1825, reproduced in Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Pub-

lications, XXXIV (1926), 67.

2 Ibid., 69.

3 Caleb Atwater, A History of the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil (2d Edition,

Cincinnati, 1838), 267. Mr. Atwater is prone to sentimentalize history, as shown by

his proud statement on page 270, "During all the time, while Mr. Clinton was in this

state, from the first moment he touched our soil, at Cleveland, until he left the State,

neither he nor his aides ever paid a single cent for whatever they needed."

(1)

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2     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY porter of internal improvements."4 Well might the crowd have drunk long and heartily to Henry Clay, for they were embarking on an intensive program of internal improvements of the type

advocated by him. This program was to last for over twenty years, and was to be an all-embracing political question of the State for even longer than that. This program was to stimulate the State to a growth in wealth and population both unprece- dented and unimagined; and it was to saddle Ohio with a debt 4 Herman, Commencement of the Ohio Canal, 92.

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THE OHIO CANALS                      3

 

so large and so enduring that it came to be known as the "Irre-

ducible Debt."

Thus, amid all the fanfare and celebration on Licking Sum-

mit, was begun the project to link the two greatest waterway sys-

tems of the United States, the Mississippi-Ohio system and the

Great Lakes. Just four months after the ceremony on Licking

Summit, the first canal boat made its way from Lake Erie to

New York City via the Erie Canal and the Hudson River. Thus,

the Ohio canals on their completion would be the last link in the

transportation chain between the eastern seaboard and the West.

There would be an all-water route between Cincinnati and New

York, a new outlet for the products of the West which would no

longer have to be floated down the Ohio and the Mississippi to

New Orleans to market.

This idea of joining the Great Lakes and the Mississippi

system was not a new one. Its origin can be traced far back into

American history, as far back as that day in 1673 when Pere Mar-

quette, portaging through an Illinois forest, suggested a canal

between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River.⁵ The idea slum-

bered peacefully for nearly a century until in 1762 David Ritten-

house and Dr. William Smith, two Philadelphians, suggested link-

ing the Ohio River to the eastern seaboard by a canal. Their

dream envisaged, however, a canal across the Appalachians, rather

than up to the Great Lakes.6

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the next men

to leave any record of their proposals for a system of internal

improvements in the West. Washington in particular realized

the necessity of a means of transportation between the East and

the trans-Appalachian regions, if these latter regions were to be

kept bound to the East. In a letter to the Marquis de Chastel-

lieux on October 12, 1783, he commented on the growing ten-

dency of the western country to center their sparse economic life

on New Orleans and the Spanish, and added that were the road

to the East but smooth and easy, "what an influx of articles will

be poured upon us, how amazingly our exports will increase, and

 

6 Alvin F. Harlow, Old Towpaths (New York, 1926. Hereafter cited as Old

Towpaths), 5.

6 Old Towpaths, 7.

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4       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble and expense

we may encounter to effect it."⁷ Washington was vitally inter-

ested in all the Ohio country, not only for political reasons but

also because he was engaged in land speculations in the area, and

he had a sincere faith in the future of that country, if it could

ever be linked with the more populous East by some cheap means

of transportation.

It remained for Thomas Jefferson, however, to make the first

definite proposal for a canal in Ohio to join the Great Lakes with

the Ohio, and to specify where this canal should be. On his map

of Virginia which he prepared in 1786-87, he drew in a proposed

canal between the Cuyahoga River, which flows into Lake Erie,

and the Big Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Ohio.⁸ His notions

of the geography of the Ohio country were not exactly correct,

but his general idea of connecting the Lake and the Ohio with a

canal was sound. He would undoubtedly have been greatly pleased

to have known that a canal was eventually built over the general

route he prescribed.⁹

The years passed by, and important events for Ohio took

place. In 1803 the State was admitted to the Union, and she

then had a voice of her own in national affairs. In 1807 Senator

Thomas Worthington of Ohio introduced a resolution in the

Senate petitioning Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin to report

on a plan for the employment of Congress in building canals,¹⁰

and in the following year Gallatin submitted a vigorous report

on the subject of national roads and canals.11 He dismissed the

practicability of a canal across the Appalachians, but suggested

three possible routes for a canal through Ohio to connect Lake

Erie and the Ohio. Two of these three routes were actually

followed when Ohio came to building her canals. The Secretary

 

7  George Washington to Marquis de Chastelleus, October 12, 1783, in J. L.

Ringwalt, Development of Transportation Systems in the United States (Philadelphia,

1888), 43.

8 This large map by Thomas Jefferson was compiled at Paris in 1786-87. The

plate was engraved at London, and this first edition of the map was printed at Paris

in 1787.

9 See frontispiece of C. P. McClelland and C. C. Huntington, History of the

Ohio Canals (hereafter cited as Ohio Canals).

10 Senate Journal, 2 Sess., 9 Cong., 196.

11 Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the Subject of Public Roads and

Canals; Made in Pursuance of a Resolution of the Senate of March 2, 1807 (Wash-

ington, 1808).

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THE OHIO CANALS                      5

 

of the Treasury prefaced his remarks in this report with the

statement, "It is necessary, in order to be productive, that the

canal should open a communication with a natural extensive

navigation which will flow through that channel."12

From the time of Ohio's admission to the Union, there was

a phenomenal increase in population. Whereas in 1800 the pop-

ulation was 45,365, in 1810 it was 230,760, and by 1820 it had

more than doubled itself to 581,434.13  Despite this great in-

crease in population, though, Ohio remained a very poor state.

According to two thorough historians of the State, "This was

due almost entirely to a failure to secure an adequate market for

her surplus farm products, and consequently these products pro-

duced almost no revenue."¹⁴ Unless a farm was located very

close to one of the tributaries of the Ohio, it was next to im-

possible for it profitably to produce a cash crop. Costs of over-

land transportation in a country with no roads worthy of the

name were so high as to be prohibitive; and the closest market

was across the Appalachians which formed an almost insurmount-

able barrier between Ohio and the East. Those who were for-

tunate enough to have their farms located close to the Ohio or

one of its tributaries, could float their farm produce down to

New Orleans, but this was not a highly satisfactory way of car-

rying goods to market. The river trip to New Orleans was an

extremely dangerous one, and the boatman always had the prob-

lem of returning home from New Orleans if and when he was

fortunate enough to sell his products. It was distinctly a buyers'

market at the mouth of the Mississippi, for the merchant there

could afford to wait; while the farmers coming down from the

Ohio country had to sell their crops in a hurry and return to do

the next year's planting. Thus, with no cash crop, the farmers

in the Ohio region were forced to resort to subsistence farming,

and their little farms were, of necessity, as nearly self-sufficient

as possible. The necessity for a cheap means of transportation

of farm produce to a market was becoming painfully evident to

the farmers of Ohio.

 

12 Ibid., 7.

13 Fourteenth Census of the U. S., I, 1920, 20-21.

14 Emilius O. Randall and Daniel J. Ryan, History of Ohio (New York, 1912),

III, 338.

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6      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

In 1816, Judge Ethan Allen Brown of Cincinnati, later to

be governor, engaged in correspondence with DeWitt Clinton on

the question of a system of canals to fill this pressing need of

the people of Ohio. Clinton was enthusiastic about the project,

and he encouraged Judge Brown in his plans. According to

Caleb Atwater, the early historian of Ohio, Clinton suggested

that "Ohio might by means of roads and canals, become the

centre .of travel to and from the Valley of the Mississippi."15

Spurred on by Clinton's encouragement, Judge Brown continued

to think and plan about canals, and finally his great opportunity

to do something practical about it came in 1818 when he was

elected governor. In his inaugural address on December 14, 1818,

he brought up the subject before the people of the State, thus

marking the real entrance of the canal idea into the political halls

of the State, where the subject was to be of primary importance

for the next half-century.16

Four days after Governor Brown's address, Mr. Thompson

rose in the State Senate to report a bill "to incorporate a com-

pany vested with powers to connect by canals the waters of Lake

Erie with those of the Ohio River."17 This resolution did not

get very far, though, for the members of the Assembly were

clearly of the opinion that the canals, if there were to be canals,

should be built by the State. As much as Governor Brown was

in favor of a canal system, he was not willing to have the project

undertaken by private enterprise. Brown, along with practically

everyone else in Ohio, seemed to take it for granted from the

beginning that the canals were to be built and controlled by the

State. He continued to deliver messages to the Assembly urging

on them the canal project, and the hiring of an engineer to sur-

vey proposed canal routes, but the House and the Senate could

not agree over any specific measures to be taken in regard to the

plan.l⁸

In January, 1820, the House of Representatives requested

 

15 Atwater, A History of the State of Ohio, 251.

16 Extract from Governor Brown's Inaugural Address, Dec. 14, 1818, in John

Kilbourne, ed., Public Documents Concerning the Ohio Canals, which are to Connect

Lake Erie with the Ohio River (Columbus, 1828. Hereafter cited as Canal Docu-

ments), 3.

17 Ohio Senate Journal, 1818, p. 139.

18 Canal Documents, 3-4.

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THE OHIO CANALS                     7

 

Governor Brown to report to them what information he possessed

about the subject of canals, and on January 20, he submitted a

long report mentioning the possible routes, and holding out the

prospect of Federal aid through land grants. In fact, by rather

devious calculations, he arrived at the conclusion that through

the sale of the hoped-for land grants, "We gain, besides the canal

and all its benefits, the immense sum of $10,000,000." He fur-

ther put himself on record as in favor of the canals with no

reservations, and said, "It can scarcely be doubted that a canal is

practicable."¹⁹ This time the House and the Senate were able

to reach an agreement, and the Assembly passed an act setting

up a commission of three to survey possible routes and to make

propositions to Congress for a grant of land.²⁰

On December 5, 1820, Governor Brown again delivered a

message to the Assembly, in which he spoke at length of the

canals.²1 He took note of the fact that Congress had done noth-

ing about giving or selling any public lands to Ohio to help

finance the project, but he was not discouraged; and he held out

hopes that Congress might still be converted to the cause of the

canals. He added that there was plenty of idle capital in the

East that would be anxious to undertake the job, but he hoped

that Ohio would get the "honor and revenue of the achievement."

It appears that the governor intended this last remark in the

nature of a nettle to sting the legislators' pride, and to spur them

on to undertaking the task, for he did not seem to have any in-

tention of letting private enterprise handle the job.

Again there was a lapse of a year before anything more was

done about the canal idea, but in December, 1821, a committee

was appointed by the House to investigate the governor's recom-

mendations. This committee reported the next month, and it

reported favorably. It estimated that a canal connecting Lake

Erie with the Ohio could be constructed at a cost of around

$2,500,000, and further predicted that the State would soon be

able to pay off this debt with the income derived from tolls on

the canal. To make their point clear as to the desirability of a

 

19 Governor's Message of Jan. 20, 1820, in Canal Documents, 5-11.

20 Act of Feb. 23, 1820, in ibid., 12.

21 Extract from  Governor's Message of Dec. 5, 1820, in ibid., 14.

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8       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

canal, the committee presented the following proof of the value

it would be to the people of Ohio:

Price of flour per bbl. in  Cincinnati.................. $  3.50

Estimated freight charge through the proposed canal

and the Erie Canal to New York City...........                                1.70

 

Total cost per bbl. in       New  York.................... $                           5.20

Price   of   flour  in  New York ........................                                  8.00

Profit  per bbl .......... ............................                                            2.80

Barrels of flour exported from Cincinnati, 1818-1819.. 130,000

 

Possible  Grand  Profit.............................. $364,000

 

The committee then added, "If this be correct as to flour,

it is equally so as to every other article these counties would

produce for exportation."22

The friends of the canal plan had now attained success, for

on January 31, 1822, the Assembly passed an act providing: (I)

Authorization of the governor to employ an engineer to make the

necessary surveys of possible routes; (2) establishment of a

Board of Canal Commissioners composed of seven men; and (3)

the appropriation of $6,000 for the financing of the survey.²³  It

is an interesting fact that this act was passed by means of a

coalition of those favoring the public school bill and the friends

of the canals, thus symbolizing the linking of internal improve-

ments with public education, a fact that loyal Ohio historians

are a bit too prone to emphasize.

In pursuance of this act, Governor Allen Trimble, who suc-

ceeded Brown when the latter went to the Senate, began looking

around for an engineer. Ohio at this time was not, as it is to-

day, the home of more colleges than any other State, and it was

next to impossible to find an Ohio man for the job. Conse-

quently, the governor sent to New York for James Geddes, "an

approved, skilful, and practical engineer," who had been acquiring

 

22 Extract from the Journal of the House of Representatives of Jan. 3, 1822, in

ibid., 16-26.

23 Act of Jan. 31, 1822, in ibid. 26-27.

• 8
 

THE OHIO CANALS                       9

experience at this sort of work on the Erie Canal. He immediately

set to work surveying the possible canal routes through Ohio.²⁴

The Canal Commissioners and Mr. Geddes worked diligently

throughout the year, particularly Geddes, who had the arduous

task of surveying proposed routes through country that was wil-

derness for the most part. On January 4, 1823, they submitted

their reports to the Assembly.²⁵  Geddes had surveyed five pos-

sible routes, and found all of them practicable: (I) Mahoning

and Grand Rivers, (2) Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas Rivers, (3)

Black and Killbuck Rivers, (4) Maumee and Great Miami Riv-

ers, and (5) Scioto and Sandusky Rivers. The Commissioners

were still hopeful of a Federal land grant to aid in financing the

canals, but they had still another recommendation for the financ-

ing. The Federal government had granted to Ohio large tracts

of land, the revenue from the sale of which was to be used to

establish public schools in the State. The Commissioners sug-

gested that in the absence of a Federal land grant specifically for

the canals, these school lands be sold, and the money "invested"

in the canals, there to draw interest. This plan was later used as

a partial means of financing the canals.

The Assembly was favorably impressed by the report of the

Commissioners, and several days later passed an act which ex-

tended the life of the Commission and appropriated $4,000 for

them to continue their investigations.26  This act also authorized

the Commissioners to receive donations of land along the pro-

posed routes, and to investigate the possibility of borrowing money

outside the State for the purposes of construction.

In the appendix of the Second Annual Report of the Canal

Commissioners,²⁷ submitted to the Assembly on January 21, 1824,

were printed letters from various New York bankers and busi-

nessmen in reply to the questions asked them by Canal Commis-

sioner Williams in regard to this question of loans to the State.

They all endorsed the proposed canal project unreservedly, and

they left little room for doubt as to the facility with which private

 

24 Extract from Governor's Message of December 5, 1822, in ibid., 31.

25 Report of the Canal Commissioners of Jan. 4, 1823, and report of James

Geddes of Dec., 1822, in ibid., 31-51.

26 Act of Jan. 27, 1823, in ibid., 52.

27 Second Annual Report of the Canal Commissioners, Jan. 21, 1824.

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10     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

capital could be enlisted behind the project.  The report also

stated that besides having corresponded with eastern bankers, Mr.

Williams had gone to New York, where he had personally re-

ceived assurances of the possibility of loans. The Commissioners

themselves were wholeheartedly in favor of the project in this

report, and they seemed to be anxious to commence work as soon

as possible.

The Commissioners were no less definite in their opinion that

the canal program should be a State project rather than a private

one. "We are decidedly of the opinion, that the proposed canal,

if undertaken at all, should be made by the State. Every great

work of this kind in which the welfare of the public is so deeply

concerned, should be under the control of the government, and not

of a private company, where the object can be effected without

resorting to the latter alternative."²⁸ They conceded that a smaller

enterprise such as a turnpike falls within the province of private

enterprise, but so grand a project as a canal system could only

be accomplished by "a powerful nation, or an absolute monarch."

The Commission submitted its next report on January 8,

1825.29  By this time their surveys had gone far enough that

they were prepared to suggest the best route for the canal, that

of the Scioto, Licking, Tuscarawas and Cuyahoga Rivers. The

mileage on this proposed route was 322, and the estimated expense

$2,301,709. They also proposed a second route, that of the Great

Miami and Maumee Rivers, with a mileage of 290 and an esti-

mated cost of $2,929,957. Of these two routes, the Commission-

ers recommended the former for immediate completion, and the

latter for completion only from Cincinnati fifty miles north to

Dayton.

This choice of canal routes was definitely in the nature of a

compromise, both economically and politically. The Commission-

ers quite naturally wanted the canals to traverse the most popu-

lous sections of the State, both because of the increased oppor-

tunity for success, and because of the political interests to be

 

28 Ibid., Jan. 21, 1824. p. 29. No less modern is the idea expressed therein that

public works are beneficial because of "the general spring given to industry," the

increased demand for labor, and "the distribution of money in the best possible

manner."

29 Third Annual Report of the Canal Commissioners, Jan. 8, 1825.

• 10
 

THE OHIO CANALS                      II

 

served. It had originally been hoped that the canal would start

in the northeast corner of the State, and go in a general diagonal

direction across the State, ending up in the southwest corner.

This route was found to be impossible because of the topographi-

cal difficulties involved. Canals obviously could not be built to

serve every portion of the State, and the Commissioners decided

upon the plan described above as the best possible compromise.

There was local dissatisfaction, of course, in the areas neglected

by this plan, and even charges of treachery leveled at legislators

from unfavored sections by their constituents.30 There is, how-

ever, no evidence to refute the contentions of these legislators

that they were innocent of any dishonesty in consenting to this

proposed plan.

The next step was for the Assembly to pass "An Act to Pro-

vide for the Internal Improvement of the State of Ohio by Navi-

gable Canals," which act was passed on February 4, 1825.31 It

provided for the continuance of the Canal Commissioners on a

more permanent basis, and authorized them to go ahead with the

construction of a canal system according to the plan submitted

in the Second Annual Report of the Canal Commissioners de-

scribed above. It specified the routes to be followed as those

suggested by the report, but gave the Commissioners a great deal

of leeway in regard to the details of these routes.

The act also instituted a Canal Fund which was to be kept

separate from all other funds in the State Treasury, and through

which all financing of the canals was to be carried on. To ad-

minister this fund, there was established a Board of Commission-

ers of the Canal Fund, composed of three men who were to hold

office at the pleasure of the Assembly. These Commissioners were

authorized to "borrow . . . moneys on the credit of the State, at

a rate of interest not exceeding six percent per annum," and to

issue certificates of stock as security for these loans. The income

from the canals was pledged to meet interest payments on these

loans, and the act also authorized taxation to meet the interest

payments until the income from the canals themselves should be

 

30 Cleaveland [sic] Herald, March 11 and 18, 1825.

31 Act of February 4, 1825, in Canal Documents, 158.

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12     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

sufficient to meet these payments unassisted. These certificates

of stock so issued were to be tax-free.

The Act also gave the Canal Commissioners the right of emi-

nent domain over all lands they might need in the construction of

the canals or the reservoirs to be used as feeders. In case of a

dispute between the Commissioners and the owner of the land,

over the compensation for his land, it was to be referred to an

impartial board of not less than three nor more than five men

who were empowered to settle the dispute. Such settlement was

to be final, and the Commissioners were required to pay the owner

the specified price, in return for which the State got title in fee

simple to the land. Also, in regard to land, the Commissioners

were authorized to apply to Congress for land grants, and to ac-

cept donations of land or money from any individuals or munici-

palities on the route of the canal.

Thus, a little more than six years after the inauguration of

Governor Brown, Ohio started out on her program of internal

improvements. There is no gainsaying the fact that it was an

ambitious program for the young State, a state that was still a

frontier community. At this time, not one-half of Ohio was set-

tled, and only one-sixth of it was cleared and cultivated.³² The

total valuation of the taxable property in the State was $59,527,-

336,33 and the estimated cost of the canals was $6,600,000.34 It

took courage to envisage a program the cost of which was more

than one-tenth of the total wealth in the State, but the men who

fought for the canals had this courage. They realized full well

that Ohio was a poor State, and that the canal program, if un-

successful, might easily bankrupt her. But they also realized that

without a cheap and dependable means of transportation, the

State would never get out of its poverty-stricken condition. They

had great faith in the natural wealth of Ohio, and they were con-

fident that their canals would tap this wealth.

After leaving the ceremony at Licking Summit, Governor

Clinton, along with many of the other notables who had been

 

32 Third Annual Report of the Canal Commissioners, Jan. 8, 1825, p. 37.

33 B. Drake and E. D. Mansfield, Cincinnati in 1826 (Cincinnati, 1827), 21.

34 Third Report of Canal Commissioners, 33-34. Since Ohio's population was

about 650,000 in 1825, this amounted to a proposed expenditure of $10 per capita.

• 12
 

THE OHIO CANALS                        13

present there, went to Middletown, where, on July 21, 1825, he

participated in another day of speeches, toasts and ground-break-

ing, this time for the Miami and Erie Canal.35 In view of this

custom of Americans of that period to have all such rituals take

place on the Fourth of July, the citizens of Middletown were

doubtlessly disappointed that they had been thus slighted. If the

canal were to be begun in that year, however, it was necessary to

break with tradition and to trust that the future benefits Middle-

town would derive from the canal would make up for the injured

feelings of its citizenry.

After these auspicious "openings," the real work on the canal

soon began in earnest. To obtain the funds necessary for the

prosecution of the work, the Commissioners of the Canal had bor-

rowed $400,000, at a discount of 2 1/2 per cent, it must be said;36

so the Canal Commissioners had ample funds with which to begin

their work. They soon let out a large number of contracts and

work was progressing on both the canals to the satisfaction of the

Commissioners according to their next report.

When it came to the actual building of the canals, the State

deserted the principle of public enterprise, to which it had ad-

hered so strongly throughout the discussions about canals.     It

was believed that the work could be done much more efficiently

by private contractors than by the State, and accordingly all the

actual construction work was performed by the former. The

Canal Commissioners, after surveying a portion of the proposed

canal, divided it into sections and advertised for bids from private

contractors for these sections. All bids were submitted in writing,

and the contract was given to the lowest bidder. All the work

was done by written contract, the contracts being made in trip-

licate, one copy to the contractor, one to the Acting Canal Com-

missioner who had let the contract and one to the State ar-

chives.³⁷ There seems to have been no scarcity of bidders for

 

35 Atwater, A History of the State of Ohio, 269. References to the western

canal throughout this paper hereafter will be to the "Miami and Erie Canal," although

it was not so designated until March 14, 1849, by act of the Assembly.

36 Report of Canal Fund Commissioners, Dec. 10, 1825, in Canal Documents,

p. 174.

37 Fourth Annual Report of Canal Commissioners, Dec. 12, 1825, p. 15.

• 13
 

14      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the job, at one time around six thousand bids being received for

contracts on one hundred and ten sections.³⁸

During the early days of the construction work, the Canal

Commissioners ran into a great deal of trouble with inexperi-

enced contractors who underestimated the cost of the work they

were bidding on, and were forced to leave off work in the middle

of the job due to lack of funds. They were constantly warning

contractors to make careful surveys of the section before sub-

mitting their bids. The standard wage of laborers during the

early days was thirty cents a day with board and lodging and,

during the first few months, a jiggerful of whiskey a day.³⁹

Wages had to be raised later, however, because of the increased

demand for labor in that section.

Certain specifications for the canals were prescribed from

the beginning and rigidly adhered to throughout the whole period

of construction.⁴⁰ They had to be forty feet wide at the water

line, twenty-six feet wide at the bottom, and four feet deep.

Whenever possible, however, large portions of the canals were

made much larger than these minimum dimensions. The locks

had to have walls of solid stone masonry, and were required to

be fifteen feet wide by ninety feet long. The Commissioners also

laid down specifications for the way in which all particular forms

of work, such as grading, scraping, filling, etc. were to be done.

The construction seems to have been done mainly by local

men, although not a few contractors came to Ohio from their work

on the Erie Canal in New York. In some instances the con-

tractors were farmers whose lands were near the route of the

canal, and many of the laborers were farm boys who were glad

of the chance to bring some cash to their meagre family incomes.

There was, nevertheless, a constant labor shortage which is men-

tioned in nearly all the Reports of the Canal Commissioners.

This was due to the competition for labor exercised by the Penn-

38 Fifth Annual Report of Canal Commissioners, Dec. 27, 1826, p. 8.

39 Ohio Canals, p. 26. This contrasts with the Pennsylvania Canals, where wages

were ten-twelve dollars per month and "found," or if labor was scarce, fifteen-twenty

dollars per month. Also contrasts with seventy-five cents per day wage of average

city worker at this time. See John R. Commons, History of Labor in the U. S. (New

York, 1926), I, 415.

40 Eleventh Annual Report of Canal Commissioners, Jan. 22, 1833, pp. 6-7.

• 14
 

THE OHIO CANALS                     15

 

sylvania canals which were being built at this time, and by the

National Road which was then being continued from Wheeling

on through Ohio. The labor shortage became so acute at one

time that the Assembly passed an act commuting the punishment

of convicts in the State penitentiary to hard labor on the canals.⁴¹

Another factor which contributed to the labor shortage was the

unhealthy working conditions on the canals during the summer

months. There is scarcely a Canal Commissioners' Report which

does not mention the fevers encountered by laborers on the canals

during the summer months, particularly when they were working

in swampy country, and a great deal of the country through which

the canals were to pass was swampy.

Another problem that had to be faced during these construc-

tion days, and also during the entire history of the canals, was the

tendency of the rivers of Ohio to flood easily and often. Since the

canals followed, for the most part, the river banks, the spring

floods often wreaked havoc with the construction work. Damage

to the canals by flood is also a topic that keeps recurring in the

Reports of the Canal Commissioners.

Despite these various difficulties, the builders of the Ohio

Canals did a job of which they may well have been proud. An ex-

cellent example of their efficiency may be found in the comparative

costs per mile of the canals being built at that time: Erie Canal,

$19,255; Ohio and Erie Canal, $10,000; Miami and Erie Canal,

$12,000; and Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, $161,000.⁴² There

have been many who criticized the policy behind Ohio's canals,

but few who have found fault with the manner of their construc-

tion. The French traveler and author of a text on transportation,

Michel Chevalier, saw the work in progress and praised it thus:

"This young State, with a population of farmers, not having a

single engineer within her limits, and none of whose citizens had

ever seen any other canal than those of New York, has thus, with

the aid of some second-rate engineers borrowed from that state,

constructed a canal longer than any in France."⁴³ Not only was

 

41 Act of Jan. 30, 1827, in Canal Documents, 266.

42 Old Towpaths, 83.

43 Michel Chevalier, A Series of Letters on North America, translated from the

3d Paris edition by I. G. Bradford (Boston, 1839), 245.

• 15
 

16     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the engineering and construction ability of those who built the

canals thus praised, but there is an almost unanimous agreement

among all who have written on the subject of the absence of

fraud and scandal in both the construction and the financing of

these public works⁴⁴ This fact, in view of some of the experi-

ences with public works of the present day, is perhaps the most

notable distinction of the canals.

The actual construction problems in Ohio were not extremely

difficult. There were no mountain ranges to be cut through or

locked over, and in general the canal routes were fairly level. The

greatest single problem of these canals, as of all canals, was that

of supplying the uppermost levels with water. To do this, it was

necessary to dam up a river and construct a reservoir at a level

higher than the highest level of the canal. It was essential that

this reservoir supply a constant and adequate amount of water,

for the losses of water due to evaporation, seepage and operation

of the locks were considerable. The next most difficult problem

was that of having the canal cross rivers that lay in its path. This

was accomplished either by bridging the river with an aqueduct

or by damming it up until the river's level reached that of the

canal, thus permitting the boat to be towed across the river on the

upstream side of the dam, with the mules using the dam as their

towpath.  Due to the previously mentioned tendency of Ohio

rivers to flood, however, this latter method was the less satis-

factory.

The act of the Assembly⁴⁵ authorizing the canals gave to the

Canal Commissioners the power to exercise the right of eminent

domain over any lands they needed. In most cases, the owners

of land desired for the right-of-way sold the required strips of

land unhesitatingly, for they realized how much the presence of

the canal would enhance the value of the land they retained.⁴⁶

Most of the damage actions that had to be settled by referees

were for materials which the Commissioners had confiscated for

the purposes of construction. In any case, the amount of these

 

44 An example of alleged fraud is cited in William Renick, Memoirs, Correspond-

ence, and Reminiscences (Circleville, 1880), 81; but he gives no evidence to back up

his statement.

45 Act of Feb. 4, 1825, in Canal Documents, 158.

46  Fourth Annual Report of Canal Commissioners, 17.

• 16
 

THE OHIO CANALS                    17

 

claims, both for land and for materials, was infinitesimally small

each year. Almost counterbalancing these damage claims were

the donations made by private individuals or municipalities to the

canal fund. In the first year alone, these amounted to $25,000.⁴7

These donations were usually in the form of bonds that became

payable when the canal reached the farm or city of the donor.

In some cases, the Commissioners changed the route of the canal

to include a village or town which was willing to donate enough

bonds, or else constructed an extension canal connecting the main

canal with the town. This was not, as appears on the face of it,

a form of official graft; for the funds subscribed by the village

or town were used to take care of the increased costs of con-

struction necessitated by the change in route or by the extension

canal.

The work on the canals continued with only seasonal inter-

ruptions caused by cold weather in the winter and the dangers to

the workers' health mentioned above during the summer months.

By the end of January in 1826, the legislators of the State realized

that they had a large enough stake in the canals to take measures

to protect them, and they accordingly passed an act making sabo-

tage of the canals a criminal offense and defining the various ac-

tions that would fall under this category.⁴⁸

In the next year, Ohio was able to indulge in another one of

those ceremonies so typical to the Fourth of July, for on that

date the canal boat State of Ohio made the first trip from Akron

to Cleveland on the completed portion of the Ohio and Erie

Canal. Governor Trimble became almost poetic in describing

this event: "The gentle descent of a boat of fifty tons burthens,

from an eminence of 400 feet, consummating on the day of

American Independence, the union between the waters of the

north and the south . . . could not but have awakened, in all who

beheld it, feelings of the most exalted patriotism and devotion to

the cause of Internal Improvements."49 This quotation is sig-

nificant not merely as an example of the lyrical qualities possible

in a governor's message, but mainly as showing the devotion to

 

47 Ibid., Schedule H, 50-54.

48 Act of Jan. 31. 1826, in Canal Documents, 223.

49 Extract from Governor's Message, Dec. 4, 1827, in ibid., 270.

• 17
 

18      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the cause of internal improvements at the time. Soon after this

maiden voyage on an Ohio canal, three boats initiated the Miami

Canal by traveling from Cincinnati to Middletown on November

28, 1827, at an average speed of three miles per hour, no mean

speed for those days.50   From this time on, each section of the

canals was put into use as fast as it was completed,⁵¹ and the

canals began to play the important part their sponsors hoped for

in the commerce of the State.

Soon after this, Ohio finally received the Federal aid for

which she had so long been hoping. The followers of both

Adams and Jackson in Congress were each so anxious to obtain

the favor of this western State that each group sponsored a bill

granting land to Ohio for the purpose of internal improvements.

In fact, Turner says that in their anxiety the Congressmen gave

Ohio double what the State was asking for.⁵² This appears to be

true, for the Act of Congress of May 24, 1828, not only gave

Ohio 500,000 acres of land, but also granted a quantity of land

equal to one-half of five sections in width on either side of the

proposed extension of the Miami and Erie Canal from Dayton to

the Maumee River so far as the canal should traverse public

lands.⁵³ This amounted to 438,301 acres. The act further au-

thorized Indiana to give Ohio, as partial recompense for the value

to Indiana of the Miami and Erie Canal, the public lands in Ohio

owned by Indiana. This land proved to be a great help in the

financing of the canals, a subject to be discussed later. It is in-

teresting to note at this point, however, that two years later Con-

gress passed an act amending this land grant act, by the term of

which Ohio could qualify for the grants of land by building a

railroad from Dayton to Lake Erie instead of a canal.⁵⁴

Ohio, however, was too busily at work masticating its first

mouthful of canals to bite off another large chunk at this time.

It was not until 1830 that the Assembly passed an act authorizing

a survey of the proposed canal from Dayton to the Auglaize River

 

50 Sixth Annual Report of the Canal Commissioners, in Canal Documents, 284.

51 Less than a week after first boat traveled on Miami and Erie Canal, there were

two canal boat advertisements in Cincinnati Saturday Evening Chronicle, Dec. 1, 1827.

52 Frederick J. Turner, The Rise of the New West (New York, 1906), in The

American Nation: A History, 293.

53 Act of Congress of May 24, 1828, in Canal Documents, 319.

54 Act of Congress of April 2, 1830, in ibid., 445.

• 18
 

THE OHIO CANALS                     19

 

at Defiance.⁵⁵ The Canal Commissioners set their engineers to

work on the survey, and on January 28, 1831, the engineers re-

ported. The length of the extension to Defiance, they reported,

was 127 miles, and the estimated cost of the canal $2,055,421.

They also reported on the route to be followed, and said that it

presented no particular difficulties.⁵⁶

Work began on this extension while the other canals were as

yet uncompleted. By this time, though, the Canal Commission-

ers, their engineers, and the contractors had learned much from

experience, and the work progressed rapidly. On January 11,

1832, the Canal Commissioners were able to report that out of

the originally planned 400 miles, three hundred and forty-three

were completed, and that they hoped to have the whole system

completed within the next year.⁵⁷ Their prediction proved true,

and the next year they reported that the whole canal system au-

thorized by the Act of February 4, 1825, was completed, except

for the locks connecting the canals with the Ohio River at Ports-

mouth and Cincinnati.⁵⁸ The extension of the Miami Canal to

Lake Erie was not completed until 1845, at which time Ohio had

two complete canals connecting the lake with the Ohio River.

Ohio did not stop, however, with the two main canals from

the lake to the Ohio. Using these as the trunks of the trees,

branches were soon stemming off in all directions.⁵⁹  Two of

these were the Walhonding Canal running from the Ohio Canal

up the Walhonding Valley, and the Muskingum Improvement on

the Muskingum River from Dresden Junction 91 miles to the

Ohio River; both of these projects were begun in 1836 and com-

pleted in 1841. At this time there was the entrance of private

enterprise into the field of internal improvements, and five canals

were begun in Ohio by privately chartered companies. Three of

these, the Warren County Canal, the Sandy and Beaver Canal,

and the Hocking Canal were never completed by their original

owners, and were taken over by the State. The Cincinnati and

Whitewater Canal was completed, due to the aid granted the

 

55 Act of Feb. 9, 1830, in ibid., 446.

56 Report of the Canal Commissioners, Jan. 29, 1831, in ibid., 417-39.

57 Tenth Annual Report of Canal Commissioners, Jan. 16, 1832, p. 2.

58 Eleventh Annual Report of Canal Commissioners, Jan. 22, 1833, p. 3.

59 Ohio Canals, 39-41.

• 19
 

20      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

company by both Ohio and Indiana. The Pennsylvania and Ohio

Canal from Akron to the Pennsylvania and Erie Canal was com-

pleted by the owners, and never came into the hands of the State.

With the completion of these branch canals, there was in Ohio,

in 1850, a canal system almost exactly a thousand miles in length.

Before the completion of the canals, though, the State found

it necessary, due to the heavy traffic on the completed portions, to

lay down certain rules and regulations regarding navigation on

the canals and to establish toll rates. This was done by the As-

sembly in 1830,60 one of the most interesting features of the act

being the toll rates established. They were based on the general

principle of "charging what the traffic will bear," and the rates

decreased after the first hundred miles. The rates on a few items

were as follows: Window glass, tobacco, cordage, nails, leather,

iron, lead, candles and paper, two cents per ton mile for the first

hundred miles and one and a half cents per ton mile after this;

farm produce, per ton mile, one and a half cents and one cent;

coal and iron ore, per ton mile, .5 cents and .3 cents; and passen-

gers, per mile, .5 cents. Translating this last item into terms of

canal distances, it is seen that the total tolls paid per passenger

for the journey from Cleveland to Portsmouth on the Ohio and

Erie Canal was $1.65.

The boats used on the canals were usually of the maximum

size that could get through the locks, seventy-eight feet long by

fourteen feet, ten inches wide. "The itemized cost for one of the

first boats used on the Ohio canal totalled $2,123.34, including

six horses for towing . . . and two gallons of whiskey at twenty-

four cents per gallon for the 'hands'."⁶¹ Either horses or mules

were used for motive power, being hitched to towlines seventy to

ninety feet long, depending upon the Captain's ideas of physics.⁶²

High speeds were not particularly desirable, for the speed limit

was four miles per hour.⁶³ The fast passenger "packets," how-

 

60 Act of Feb. 23, 1830, in Canal Documents, 393.

61 A. N. Doerschuk, "The Last Ohio Canal Boat," Ohio Archaeological and

Historical Society Publications, XXXIV (1926), 112.

62 There are few schoolboys in the United States who do not know that President

James A. Garfield began his career as a mule-driver on the Ohio canals.

63 Act of Feb. 23, 1830, Section 4, in Canal Documents, 393. The speed limit

was so low because the wash from boats traveling at a higher speed was destructive

to the earthen banks of the canals.

• 20
 

THE OHIO CANALS                     21

 

ever, did try to keep up to that speed, and races were not uncom-

mon among them. Even with their "high speeds" these packets

were not a very comfortable form of transportation, if we are to

believe some of the accounts that have come down to us.64 The

boats stopped at nine in the morning and two in the afternoon to

let the passengers ashore to build fires and cook their meals while

the horses were being fed, and one of the more disagreeable fea-

tures of these canal boats was the custom on the Ohio canals of

carrying the spare horses along on the boat. Malaria or miasma,

known to the boatmen as "Canal Chills" or "Canal Fever" was

another common danger faced by travelers on the canals. At the

time, it was thought to come from "poisonous exhalations" but

it is now realized that it was caused by the mosquitoes who found

the stagnant pools of the canals an excellent place to breed.

There was an established practice to be used when two boats

met each other.⁶⁵ The boat going downstream stopped, and let its

towline sink to the bottom. The upstream boat had the right of

way, and it proceeded over the sunken towline. The Assembly

of Ohio took cognizance of this custom in 1831 by requiring that

all boats on the canals must have a guard plate attached to the

keel and extending out over the rudder.⁶⁶  This was to prevent

the sunken towline from getting caught in the underside of the

boat. The procedure to be followed when two boats arrived at

a lock at the same time, however, was not so clearly outlined. In

general, the boat whose crew could out-fight the boatmen from the

other usually went first. Complications really arose when four

boats approached a lock at the same time, two coming from each

direction. A situation such as this usually gave rise to a tremen-

dous brawl, although it must be said to the credit of the boatmen

that the common weapon in these fights was the fists, and that

they rarely resorted to more lethal implements of destruction.

The story of the financing of the canals consists of a myriad

of details which really obscure the general principles underlying

64 Doerschuk, "The Last Ohio Canal Boat." 109.

65 Old Towpaths, 314.

66 Act of March 10, 1831, in Canal Documents, 440.

• 21
 

22      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the financial structure.⁶⁷ Disregarding these details, though, the

general outline of the financial plan is not too complicated. The

Canal Fund Commissioners borrowed the necessary money out-

side the State, in return for which they gave stock bearing inter-

est at the rate of 5% on the first loan and 6% on all succeeding

loans. By the Act of February 4, 1825,68 all income from the

canals, and designated sums to be raised annually by taxation

were pledged to pay the interest on this stock. This act also re-

quired that a specified sum should be set aside each year from the

State revenues raised by taxation to form a sort of sinking fund

for the eventual redemption of the stock.

The money so borrowed was deposited by the Fund Com-

missioners in the Manhattan Bank in New York, where all but

two thousand dollars of it drew interest. As the money was

needed to pay the costs of construction, it was transferred to the

State banks in Ohio, which had been designated as the disbursing

agents. It could be drawn out of the State bank only by the check

of the Acting Canal Commissioner, drawn to the credit of a con-

tractor for services rendered or to a landholder who had a damage

claim against the State. In this way the money expended on the

canals was handled.⁶⁹

There were also other sources of income to the Canal Fund.

There were the donations by individuals and communities men-

tioned above, the income from the sale of the public lands granted

by Congress, the money borrowed from the school funds, and the

money placed in the hands of the State when the Federal Gov-

ernment distributed its rather embarrassing Treasury surplus in

1837. The receipts from the canals themselves in the form of

tolls and water rents were used to pay for the repairs on the

canals, and the surplus above that was used to help pay the in-

terest on the public debt.

The total cost to the State of all its canals amounted in 1845,

67 For painstaking surveys in the financing of the canals and the handling of

the State debt, see C. P. McClelland and C. C. Huntington, History of the Ohio Canals

(Columbus, 1905), and Ernest L. Bogart, Internal Improvements and State Debt in

Ohio (New York, 1924).

68 Act of Feb. 4, 1825, in Canal Documents, 158.

69 Report of the Finance Committee of the House of Representatives, Nov. 30,

1827, in ibid., 307.

• 22
 

THE OHIO CANALS                     23

 

at which time the internal improvement program had come to an

end and after which there were no additions to the public debt

from this source, to $15,022,503.⁷⁰ In 1849 the total public debt

of the State was $16,880,982.71 The discrepancy in figures is

due to the fact that the State also loaned its credit to railroad and

turnpike companies. The canals had not been unprofitable from

the standpoint of operating income, but the profit was not enough

to do much more than pay the interest on the debts. The Canal

Fund Commissioners were unable to make a sizeable reduction in

the debt itself, and the sinking fund idea was lost somewhere

along the line.

Thus, in 1849, after completing its program of internal im-

provements, Ohio found itself saddled with a debt of $16,880,982.

The interest on this debt was making a large dent in the annual

revenues of the State, and the people were getting quite con-

cerned over their large burden of debt. Accordingly, the new

Constitution of 1851 made it imperative upon the Assembly to

establish a sinking fund to pay off the debt.⁷² This sinking fund

was based on sound financial principles, and it was not long after

that the debt created by the canals was wiped out.

The proponents of the canal plan had contended that the

canals would pay for themselves; and in view of the fact that it

was necessary to resort to taxation in the manner described above

to pay off the debt occasioned by the building of the canals, it

might be argued that they were an unsuccessful venture. I do

not believe, however, that this argument is sound because it fails

to take into consideration the tremendous impetus given to the

growth of Ohio in both wealth and population by the canals. The

amount assessed against the citizens of the State in the form of

increased taxes to pay off the canal debt was small compared to

the value that they received from their canals.

For Ohio was not long in feeling the effects of canal trans-

portation, even before the canals were completed. As they began

to notice these effects, Ohioans must have been particularly de-

lighted with their program of internal improvements. They were

accomplishing two of their desired ends, namely, raising the price

 

70 Tenth Census of the U. S., VII, 616.

71 Ibid., 615.

72 Ohio Constitution of 1851, Section 7, Article 8.

• 23
 

24       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

of farm products and increasing the population. The population

figures are perhaps the most impressive, rising from 581,295 in

1820 to 1,519,467 in 1840.73 The population increase was par-

ticularly marked in those sections along the canal, as is illustrated

by the following table:74

1820   1830   1840              1850

Cincinnati ................                   9,642 24,831            46,338     115,435

Cleveland  ................                   ....             1,076       6,071       17,034

Columbus ................                  ....             2,435       6,048       17,882

Dayton .     .................                1,000        2,950       6,067       10,977

Toledo ....................                    ....             1,222       3,829

No less impressive is the increase in the assessed value of tax-

able property in the State from $59,500,000 in 1825 to $440,-

000,000 in 1850.75

Of even more value to the farmers who composed the great

mass of the population of Ohio, though, was the rise of farm

prices. Flour, which had sold for three dollars a barrel in Cin-

cinnati in 1826 was selling at six dollars in 1835.76     Wheat, which

was bringing from twenty to thirty cents a bushel in central Ohio

in 1823 was worth from fifty to seventy cents a bushel in 1832.⁷⁷

The increase in prices of other agricultural products was in the

same proportion. This hundred per cent jump is more easily un-

derstood if one examines a partial list of the arrivals and clear-

ances at the Cincinnati terminal of the Miami and Erie Canal in

1839:78

Arrived

Passengers ............. 8,159

Whiskey ...............  42,228 Bbls.

Flour ..................                  138,120 Bbls.

Pork  ..................    4,077,770 lbs.

Cleared

Salt ..................   7,033,655 lbs.

Merchandise ........... 8,664,640 lbs.

Iron and nails.......... 3,191,085 lbs.

Lumber ................   2,150,641 feet

73 Fourteenth Census of the U. S., I, 1920, 20-1.

74 Twelfth Census of the U. S. I, 1900 430-33. Toledo's late growth is accounted

for by the fact that the Miami and Erie Canal was not completed until 1845.

75 Robert E. Chaddock, Ohio Before 1850 (New York, 1908), 26.

76 Old Towpaths, 107.

77 Eleventh Annual Report of Canal Commissioners, Jan. 22, 1833, p. 37.

78 Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841; Its Early Annals and Future Prospects (Cin-

cinnati, 1841), 84-85.

• 24
 

THE OHIO CANALS                     25

 

This list is by no means a complete one, being merely an abstract

of some of the more significant products which were shipped

through Cincinnati. Nor does it take into consideration the fact

that much of the commerce on the Ohio Canals was of a local

nature, and thus did not reach a terminal.

Thus, from the standpoint of the practical results accom-

plished by the canals, it cannot be denied that they were probably

the greatest single impetus to the expansion and growth of Ohio.

They accomplished more than even the most visionary of their

proponents dreamed of in promoting individual welfare in the

State and raising Ohio from its former position of a sparsely

populated and poverty-stricken frontier section to an affluent and

growing State.

Three years after the celebration at Licking Summit, and one

year after the first boat traveled on an Ohio canal in another

Independence Day ceremony, there was a Fourth of July "initia-

tion rite" that was to prove to be of more significance to the future

of the Ohio canals than either of these other two had been. For

in 1828 in Baltimore, Charles Carroll, the sole surviving signer

of the Declaration of Independence, laid the cornerstone for the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This event marked the beginning

of that great era of railroad building and development that was

to play a dominant role in American history for the rest of the

century. In no section of the country was the influence of this

movement to be felt more keenly than in Ohio, for there not only

did the railroads complete the job of turning a wilderness into a

highly industrialized center, but there the railroads ran up against

another form of transportation that had gotten there first.

The text for this chapter might well be: "The canal systems,

the earliest efforts of the Northwest to improve upon the routes

of nature, failed to receive a fair trial. . . . The railroads not only

overtook, but passed and left them far behind."⁷⁹ In no place

is the truth of this statement better illustrated than in Ohio. The

canal program was completed in 18₄₅, and only three years later

the early period of railroad development in the State culminated

79 Frederic L. Paxson, The Railroads of the "Old Northwest" before the Civil

War (Madison), Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters,

XVII (1914), Part I, 252.

• 25
 

26     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in the opening of a through railroad line from Sandusky on Lake

Erie to Cincinnati on the Ohio.⁸⁰ The railroads had now definitely

made their appearance on the scene, and the next fifteen years

were to witness a tremendous program of railroad building in

Ohio.

Railroad construction in Ohio prior to the Civil War may be

divided into two periods, the first from 1836 to 1850 during which

very little was accomplished, and the second from 1850 and 1860

during which railroad expansion was phenomenal. The first

period began with the Kalamazoo and Erie Railroad in 1836, the

first railroad in the State.⁸1 At this time, a definite trend is

noticeable in the policy of the State toward transportation. To

coin a phrase, "Internal improvements at any cost" became the

watchword of the people of Ohio. Ohio went hog-wild on in-

ternal improvement, and canal, turnpike and railroad compa-

nies sprang up all over the State. It is significant, though, that

these new ventures in internal improvements were undertaken

privately and not by the State.

The official policy of the State towards internal improve-

ments changed in 1837 when the policy of State construction of

public works was abandoned and the policy of State aid to private

enterprise engaged in such work was adopted. On March 24,

1837, the Assembly passed the "Loan Law,"82 which authorized

a "loan of credit by the State of Ohio to Railroad Companies,"

and "subscriptions by the State to the capital stock of Turnpike,

Canal, and Slackwater Navigation Companies." Under the terms

of this act, every railroad to which two-thirds of the capital stock

or estimated cost had been subscribed, was entitled to a loan

from the State of the other one-third, the loan being in the form

of negotiable scrip or certificates of stock of the State. It is

ironical that the tolls and revenues from all the State-owned public

works, including the canals, were pledged for the full payment

of interest and the final redemption of this scrip and stock which

was being used to finance competing companies. Thus was the

 

80 Ibid., 255.

81 Eugene H. Roseboom and Francis P. Weisenburger, A History of Ohio (New

York, 1934), 321-22.

82 Acts of a General Nature passed by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio,

XXXV (1836-37), 76 (hereafter cited as Ohio Laws).

• 26
 

THE OHIO CANALS                        27

 

policy of the State towards public works changed.     No longer

does one find Governor Brown resisting a proposal to charter a

private company to build the canals; rather, the situation is one

where the government is anxious to assist private enterprise in

building any form of internal improvement at all. This was the

first step in the right-about change in the policy of the State

from public to private ownership of internal improvements.

It did not take long for speculators to realize the opportunity

the State was throwing in their path in the form of this loan law.

Two men, merely by signing their names as subscribers for two-

thirds of the stock of a railroad company, could obtain the other

third of the capital from the State; and it was with this State-

contributed capital that most of the enterprises of this period were

undertaken. By 1840, Ohio had chartered 24 railroad companies,

but the financial soundness of these companies is made painfully

clear by the fact that only one of them built its proposed road.⁸³

In 1840 the State took another step in its reversal of policy

towards internal improvements by repealing the Loan Law of

18₃₇^.84  One of the reasons for its repeal was the distaste with

which the Assembly viewed the opportunity of plundering the

treasury offered by this law;⁸⁵ but an even more potent reason

was the general trend away from State ownership of, or partici-

pation in, internal improvements.   Three years later this trend

was expressed even more forcibly by an act of the Assembly

which forbade the State to make loans to railroad or canal com-

panies in any form at all.⁸⁶ With this act Ohio abandoned com-

pletely the policy of State aid to private companies engaged in

constructing internal improvements, and withdrew from any fur-

ther participation in the construction of canals or railroads. The

ultimate expression of this trend away from State aid and towards

laissez-faire may be seen in the Constitution of 1851, which pro-

hibited the State from lending credit to, or becoming a stockholder

in, a private company.⁸⁷

 

83 William F. Gephart, Transportation and Industrial Development in the Middle

West (New York), Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public

Law, XXXIV (1909), 161.

84 Act of March 17, 1840, 38 Ohio Laws, 55.

85 In his message of 1839, the governor pointed out that the State debt had been

increased $2,492,215 by loans made under the Loan Law.

86 Act of March 13, 1843, 41 Ohio Laws, 80.

87 Ohio Constitution of 1851, Article VIII, Sections 3 and 4.

• 27
 

28     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Although the people, through their elected representatives,

did not want the State to make any more investments in private

forms of internal improvements, they themselves were clamoring

to invest their own money. Ohio was no longer a poor State,

and there was capital in the hands of many. They no longer

needed the State to build their improvements, and the great ma-

jority of the citizens were in a great hurry to invest their own

capital in internal improvements. That they did this is evidenced

by the fact that in the period between 1840 and 1850 there were

23 more railroads chartered in the State, eight of which actually

built their roads.⁸⁸

It was not enough, though, either for the railroads or for the

people, to have merely private investment. On February 28,

1846, the legislature answered the popular demand by passing an

act providing for a referendum in any county where the county

commissioners wanted to subscribe to the stock of a railroad,

turnpike or other incorporated company.⁸⁹   If the referendum

passed, the county was allowed to issue its bonds to the company

in return for stock in the company. That the people were not

loath to take advantage of this new act is shown by the fact that

by 1851, counties, townships and municipalities had loaned $7,-

542,000 to railroad companies.90 That these local groups must

have suffered large losses is made clear by the fact that of all the

railroads chartered during this period before 1850, only four sur-

vived. In fact, by 1850 there were only a little more than three

hundred miles of railroads being operated in the State, and the

greater portion of this mileage was on the Moa River and Lake

Erie Railroad, the road which in 1848 first established through

railroad transportation between Lake Erie and the Ohio River.91

The decade from 1850 to 1860 was a great one for railroad

construction throughout the United States, and in no other State

was the railroad activity greater than in Ohio. The railroad

mileage in the State increased ten times, and by the end of the

period there were about three thousand miles of railroads in

88 Gephart, Transportation and Industrial Development, 161.

89 Ohio Laws, 82.

90 Roseboom and Weisenburger, History of Ohio, 322.

91 This railroad advertised that the railroad and stage time between Sandusky

and Cincinnati was twenty-nine and a half hours. Sandusky Clarion, June 8, 1847.

• 28
 

THE OHIO CANALS                          29

Ohio. This boom in railroad construction in Ohio is indicated

by the following table:92

 

Railroads in Operation Before January 1, 1848...... 275 miles

Railroads Completed during 1848 ...................                     32   "

"        "        "    1849 ...................  16                                                    "

"        "        "    1850..................    122      "

"        "        "    1851 ...................     333 "

"      "                  "    1852 ...................                                       292   "

"        "                 "   1853 ...................     500                                                  "

"       "         "       1854...................              587 "

"            "        "    1855 ...................                       385   "

"            "               "                 1856 ...................                           133   "

"        "                              "         1857...................                                                     129   "

"              "    "    1858 .................    ...  "

"                      "           "                        1859...................        174                 "

"        "                       "         1860 ...................                                                    16     "

 

Total......................................                                                                         2994

The promoters of these roads found very little difficulty in financ-

ing them, for people were still anxious to invest their money in

railroads, despite the losses they had suffered in the earlier period

of railroad development. The most valuable allies the promoters

had were the newspaper editors "who incited local pride by de-

scribing what other sections were doing, and enlisted support by

arguing that railroads would make work, by holding out the

danger of control through foreign capital, and by minimizing

the accidents upon the early roads."⁹³ The counties were still

actively supporting the railroads under the provisions of the law

providing for referendums, and the people were also investing

privately.

Thus the great rival of the canals appeared in the State, the

rival that was eventually to spell the doom of the State's am-

bitious program of public works. It was not realized, though, at

the beginning of the railroad era just how much competition the

railroads were going to offer the canals. It was first thought that

the railroads would merely act as connecting lines between places

92 Paxson, Railroads of the Northwest, XVII, Part I, 267-74.

93 Balthaser H. Meyer, et al., History of Transportation in the United States

before 1860 (Washington, 1917), 491.

• 29
 

30      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

that were not joined by canals. The technical superiority of the

railroads over the canals in crossing heights of land was early

realized, but the consensus of opinion in the early days was that

the railroads would merely supplement the canals and not compete

with them.

In the late 1840's the first glimmerings of the idea of rail-

road competition with the canals began to enter in upon the con-

sciousness of the people and their legislators, and in 1849 the

State took measures to establish rates for the railroads in the

interest of the canals.⁹⁴   The full significance of railroad com-

petition was not realized yet, however, and the following extract

from a debate during the Constitutional Convention in 1850

seems to be significant of the general attitude of the State:

 

Mr. Archbold: I therefore anticipate a great reduction of tolls (on

the canals) for surely no man will adopt the tedious and costly mode of

conveyance by the canals, when he can send his property by the cheaper

and speedier route of the railroad. The great saving of time and trouble

will give the railroads an immense preference.

Mr. Reemelin: The price of coal is so great in Ohio, that railroads

can never transport heavy goods as cheaply as the canals, and I think, take

it upon the average, owing to the increase of wealth and production by

the means of the railroads, the canals will still find as much employment

as formerly, and that the gross amount of tolls will not be reduced.

Mr. Hitchcock: It has been found that railroads built along the lines

of canals have not diminished the net revenue of the canals. In England,

where railroads have been built right by the side of canals, it has in many

instances increased the carrying trade and revenues of the canals in part

by carrying coals for the railroads, and railroad works.

Mr. Archbold: I may be mistaken.95

Soon after this, however, the fact that the railroads consti-

tuted a serious menace to the canals came to be widely recognized

throughout the State, and a debate such as that just quoted would

have been impossible.      One of the most important factors in

effecting the realization of this fact was the conduct of the rail-

roads themselves. Instead of biding their time until the definite

94 Roseboom and Weisenburger, History of Ohio, 323. The statute books for

that year have been carefully examined but the writer was unable to find this

embodied in a law, yet he believes that the above historians are to be trusted.

95 Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of

the Constitution of the State of Ohio, 1850-51 (Columbus, 1851), 1, 483.

• 30
 

THE OHIO CANALS                         31

superiority of the railroad over the canal would be proved merely

by experience, they went out of their way to attack the canals

with a vengeance. In the prospectuses which they issued to pro-

spective bondholders, they cited the figures of canal clearings from

towns through which the railroad was to pass, as evidence of the

expected success of the railroad, exhibiting not a trace of doubt

that the railroad when completed would take almost all this

traffic away from the canal.96 But far more obvious to everyone

concerned was the railroad practice of using discriminating rates,

and long-haul, short-haul rates to attack the canals.

To meet this vigorous competition, the Board of Public

Works replied in kind, and in 1851 they established the same sort

of discriminatory rates on the canals.⁹⁷ The railroads, however,

were better at playing this game than the State, and the next

year, to protect its canals, the State took recourse to its last re-

sort, legislation. On May 1, 1852, the Assembly passed an act,

the terms of which remind one strongly of the Granger Laws

and the Interstate Commerce Act of later dates.⁹⁸ This act re-

quired all railroads in the vicinity of, or intersecting, State canals

to establish uniform rates eliminating the long-haul, short-haul

discrimination, to publish their freight rates, and to adhere to

these published rates at all times, under penalty of the law. To

show that they were playing fair, the State at this same time

abolished its discriminatory rates for the canals and returned to

its uniform  rates, at the same time reducing rates in general

about twenty-five per cent.

The railroads, however, completely nullified this law by re-

fusing absolutely to comply with its provisions. They continued

on in their course of ruthless competition, heedless of the State's

attempts to regulate them. The State tried to fight back by re-

peatedly reducing toll rates on the canals, but they soon began to

realize that they were fighting a losing battle against unconquer-

able odds. The high point in the career of the canals was 1851

 

96 Exhibit of the Affairs of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad Company (Pitts-

burgh), July 1, 1850, and Circular of id., relative to the Stark County Bonds (Canton),

June 15, 1850.

97 Ernest L. Bogart, Internal Improvements and State Debt in Ohio (New York,

1924. Hereafter cited as Internal Improvements), 98.

98 50 Ohio Laws, 205.

• 31
 

32     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

when the total receipts from tolls were $799,024, and after that

the decline in toll receipts is steady.99

Thus, the canals struggled valiantly in the face of superior

competition, but they lost in the end. The horse could not com-

pete with the iron horse, and the tempo of life in a state which

was rapidly becoming industrialized was speeding up. The canals

which had been a daring proposal when they were started had

become an anachronism even before they were finished.

The canals began to be attacked on all sides when it was

finally realized that they were doomed by the railroads. People

were quick to forget the untold benefits the State had derived

from the canals. All that they could see was the tremendous

State debt which had resulted mainly from canal construction;

and with the canal revenues declining, they could foresee no way

of paying off this debt except by taxation.  Even before the

revenues began to decline, though, there were attacks on the

canals, as is evidenced by the Sandusky Clarion, which pointed

out how much shorter were the railroad distances between the

Lake and the Ohio than the canal distances.l00 If Sandusky had

been the only town to assail the canals, it would not be particu-

larly significant, for the citizens of Sandusky seem never to have

gotten over the fact that the canal routes did not include their

town. This particular article, however, is quoted from the Cin-

cinnati Gazette, and Cincinnati may be regarded as the hot-bed

of canal enthusiasm from the earliest days on.

In the 1852-53 session of the legislature, there was a pro-

posal to sell the canals, but nothing came of it.101 In his annual

message of 1857, Governor Salmon P. Chase recommended the

sale of the canals, and he recommended the same thing in his

subsequent messages of January 4, 1858 and January 2, 1860.

The Assembly, however, was not quite ready to sell the canals,

but by the act of April 6, 1859, they did provide for the leasing

of the entire public works system of the State at an annual rental

of not less than $54,000.102 The act forbade the railroads to bid,

 

99 Internal Improvements, Appendix C.

100 Sandusky Clarion, March 17 and 31, 1851.

101 Ohio Senate Journal, L (1852-53), Part II, 331.

102 56 Ohio Laws. 243.

• 32
 

THE OHIO CANALS                      33

for they did not want a recurrence of what happened when the

State leased a branch canal to a railroad and the railroad upped

the tolls to such a high point as to destroy completely all com-

merce on the canal.¹⁰³  There were no bids received under this

act, and the State continued to operate its canals.

Matters were not allowed to rest there, however, for public

dissatisfaction with the canals was growing all the time, and along

with it was growing the strength of the railroad interests in the

State. The railroads feared hostile legislation as long as the

canals were operated by the State, and they were very anxious

to remove this incentive from the path of the Assembly. Ac-

cordingly, in 1861, the Assembly passed an act providing for the

leasing of the public works of the State for a period of ten years

to the highest bidder.¹⁰⁴ Two bids were received, one for $20,050

and the other for $20,075, the lease going to the latter bidder.

The bids are rather obviously collusive, and Bogart says, "The

circumstances under which the act was passed as well as the

other interests of the men who leased the public works seem to

justify the suspicion of improper influences."105 At any rate,

whatever the means or the motive, the canals were now handed

over to private enterprise, and the State now retired from the

public utility business.

The private operation of the canals was neither brilliantly

good nor terribly bad. The company that leased them seems to

have been duly aware of its obligation to keep them in good re-

pair, and both the State and the company were satisfied for many

years with the arrangement as it stood. In 1867, by a joint

resolution of both houses of the Assembly, the lease was renewed

for a period of ten years after its expiration, until June 1, 1881.106

Business on the canals kept declining, however, and on Decem-

ber 1, 1877, the lessees surrendered their lease, mainly because

of the unprofitableness of the venture. Thus, after this interlude

of private management, the canals returned into the hands of the

State where they have remained ever since.

 

103 Internal Improvements, 125-6.

104 Act of May 8, 1861. 58 Ohio Laws. 117.

105 Internal Improvements, 110.

106 Ibid., 113.

• 33
 

34     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

From this time on, there was a steady retrogression in the

canals. Needed repairs were not made, the traffic declined more

than ever, and, most important of all, large sections of the canals

were abandoned or leased to private companies, usually railroad

companies. Little pieces were lopped off here and there, until

the State had what resembled a patchwork of canals rather than

a canal system. The railroads were expanding rapidly during

this period, and Ohio was just as anxious as any other State to

get its share of the new railroad mileage. The level canal routes

made the best possible right of way for a railroad, and the State

gave or leased parts of the canal routes to railroads as an induce-

ment to run a line through the region. When the State was un-

willing to lease the canal to a railroad, there were always many

subterfuges by which a railroad could get control of this section

of the canal. Governor Charles Foster, in a message to the As-

sembly, said, "Of the millions of dollars worth of property given

away by legislative enactment under various pretexts, most of it

has, in the end, fallen into the hands of railway corporations."107

There was a short revival of interest in the canals around the

end of the century, but it was short-lived. In  1900 an experi-

ment was made with an "electric mule" to pull canal boats on the

Miami and Erie Canal, but it was not successful. This last futile

attempt to restore the canals to a place of importance in the trans-

portation system of the State may be regarded as the last struggle

preceding death. Since that time their usefulness as a means of

transportation has completely ended. Large sections of the canals

have been completely abandoned by now, and in many places high-

ways have been built along the path of the filled-in canal route.

The author can remember quite well when a section of the

Miami and Erie Canal still ran through the center of the city in

which he lives, and he can remember watching with interest the

work of filling it up and building a boulevard over the old canal

bed. He, along with thousands of other Ohioans, have fished in

the old reservoirs which were once so important in supplying the

canals with water, but which have now been turned into State

parks. Even today while traveling through Ohio, one occasionally

107 Ohio Canals, 52.

• 34
 

THE OHIO CANALS                      35

 

comes across sections of the canal with the water still in it, and

one can still see the old locks standing high and dry out in the

middle of a farmer's pasture.108 But these and the nostalgic

memories that some older residents of Ohio retain of excursions

on the canal109 are about all that is left of this system of inland

waterways.

This, then, is the story of the Ohio canals from their original

inception in the mind of man until their eventual abandonment as

an avenue of commerce. The counterpart of this story can be

told of almost every State admitted to the Union prior to 1830,

for in the early years of the nineteenth century it was hoped that

a vast network of canals was the answer to the pressing problem

of transportation in the ever-growing United States.   It was

realized then that without adequate means of transportation the

Sections, which were growing farther apart, could never be bound

together, and it was the hope of many that the canals would tie

them together.

In practically every State where canals were built, the ex-

perience with them was the same as it was here in Ohio. Rail-

road competition was too strong for the canals, and today there

are just a few remnants of the once-proud system of inland

waterways, most notable of which is the New York State Barge

Canal which has grown out of the old Erie Canal. Railroad

competition has already been examined here, though, so there is

no need of developing that subject. In regard to the railroads,

however, an interesting problem is raised by the facts presented

in this study. Both the canals and the railroads were forms of

transportation whose development was vital to the prosperity of

Ohio. Why, then, were the canals built and operated by the State

when the railroads were left to private enterprise for development

and operation? True, the State gave bounteous aid to the rail-

road companies under the terms of the "Loan Law" of 1837,110

but the railroads were nevertheless distinctly private enterprises.

In fact, by 1850, when the great decade of railroad construction

108 The author has personally seen an abandoned lock near Lockington, Ohio.

109 See Charles Ludwig, Playmates of the Towpath (Cincinnati, 1929).

110 Act of March 24, 1837, 35 Ohio Laws, 76.

• 35
 

36     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in Ohio began, the State had withdrawn all aid to the railroads

and had even adopted an attitude antagonistic to them.

The answer to this question is to be found, the writer be-

lieves, in the greatly altered economic condition of the State be-

tween the early 1820's when the canals were promulgated, and the

1850's when railroad construction began in earnest. In 1825

there was not enough private wealth available in the State to

undertake the canals, nor was there any man or group of men

whose credit would have been good enough to have enabled them

to borrow the vast sums of money necessary for this tremendous

task. The people were resolved to build their canals, and they

resorted to the one agency capable of successfully carrying out

this project, the State. A. T. Hadley has analyzed the situation

correctly when he says: "The wish to make up for the lack of

private enterprise has often been the motive which induced gov-

ernment to take up an industry in its early stages. This was the

case with the canals."¹¹¹ In this case the "lack of private enter-

prise" was not due to any deficiency of the people of Ohio in

ambition or foresight, but rather to their utter lack of capital.

These circumstances, then, account for the canals having been

undertaken by the State.

As has been pointed out earlier, the canals may be con-

sidered unsuccessful from the standpoint of revenue for the

State, but they were eminently successful in the benefits they

brought to the people of Ohio. Mainly because of the canals, the

people of Ohio prospered and their wealth increased by leaps and

bounds along with a similar increase in the population of the

State. By the time the railroads began to be built, private wealth

had increased to the point where it was capable of doing the job

itself, although the entrepreneur still sought all the State help

he could get. The State of Ohio did not build any railroads; it

left them all to private enterprise, although it assisted some of

them. The railroad lobbies which were becoming effective at that

time were anxious to keep the railroads out of the hands of the

State. But the petty capitalists were even more anxious to keep

the railroads in their hands, for they saw no reason for the State

111 Arthur T. Hadley, Railroad Transportation (New York, 1906), 238.

• 36
 

THE OHIO CANALS                       37

 

to build railroads when they saw the prospect of large profits by

subscribing to the stocks and bonds of the private railroad corpo-

rations that were mushrooming overnight. And since in 1850,

infinitely more so than today, the government was merely the

embodiment of the citizens who composed it, the attitude of the

State in regard to the railroads may be taken as the attitude of

the people of Ohio.

Thus, by the time railroad development reached its peak, the

people could afford to build the railroads privately; but when the

canals were being built, the people could not afford to undertake

the project and it was left to the State. These facts raise another

interesting question, the most interesting question to develop out

of the facts here gathered together.  How can the State con-

struction and ownership of public utility such as a canal system,

an example of pure collectivism, be reconciled with the theories

of frontier individualism presented by the whole school of fron-

tier historians?

Before going any farther with this question, though, it is

necessary to realize that Ohio in the early 1820's was a frontier

State. As was pointed out earlier, it was only one-sixth culti-

vated and cleared,112 and the population in      1820 was only

581,434.113 The northwestern section of the State was virtually

wilderness, and the rest of the State could by no stretch of the

imagination be called well settled. In the War of 1812, just a

few years before, Ohio had been the scene of many bloody Indian

battles. It was not, it is true, the frontier of the trapper and

trader, but rather the frontier of the farmer who had cleared his

own land, and was eking out a living on his farm which was of

necessity as self-sufficient as he could make it. It was, in short,

the frontier of the second wave of immigration described by

F. J. Turner, the father of the school of frontier historians.¹¹⁴

This was the frontier whose influence upon American his-

tory and American philosophy has been so carefully examined

by the whole school of frontier historians.  Frederick Jackson

112 Report of Canal Commissioners, Jan. 8, 1825, p. 41.

113 Fourteenth Census of the U. S., I, 1920, pp. 20-21.

114 Frederick J. Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920),

19 ff.

• 37
 

38     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Turner and his followers like to picture the frontiersman as the

embodiment of individualism, as the father of the American ideal

of individualism. They portray him as depending upon his rifle

and his crude plow to protect and feed his family, asking no

favors from anyone and impatient with government interference

in any aspect of his life. Turner summarizes this conception of

the frontier in writing of "the democracy born of free land,

strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of administra-

tive experience and education, and pressing individual liberty

beyond its proper bounds.¹¹⁵ These frontiersmen "viewed govern-

mental restraints with suspicion as a limitation on their right to

work out their own individuality."116  The frontiersman was an

exalted individualist.

Again, though, one must ask a question. How can this fron-

tier individualism be reconciled with the frontier collectivism of

which the Ohio Canals form a clear-cut example? These people

living on the Ohio frontier may well have been in their daily

lives the individualistic despisers of governmental control de-

scribed by Turner.   They probably viewed the tax-gatherer

as a "representative of oppression" in the true frontier tradition,

and the conditions under which they lived may have produced an

"antipathy to any direct control."¹¹⁷ The fact remains, though,

that when it came to the important question of internal improve-

ments, a problem that vitally affected their future prosperity, they

submerged their individualism and became militant collectivists.

It seems to have been taken for granted from the outset of the

canal discussions that the canals would be built and operated by

the State. Only one note has been found to the contrary, the

above-mentioned suggestion in the Assembly that a private com-

pany be chartered to build the canals; and this was quickly

shouted down. In none of the newspapers of the period that

were examined is there a suggestion of private ownership as a

possibility. The Ohio frontiersman, far from shunning any pa-

ternalism in government, actually demanded it, not only from the

 

115 Ibid., 32.

116 Ibid., 303.

117 Turner, Frontier, 30.

• 38
 

THE OHIO CANALS                        39

State, but also from the Federal government in the form of land

grants.

It is true that the frontiersman did not consider, and proba-

bly was not aware of, any philosophical problems raised by the

idea of State ownership, problems such as those that are being

discussed today in regard to public or private ownership of

utilities. He was not interested in whether he was an individual-

ist or a collectivist, he probably would not have known what the

terms meant. He was a hard-headed man engaged in a very diffi-

cult struggle for existence, and he had only one goal in mind, to

make that struggle an easier one. He envisaged a canal system

as the best way of improving his conditions, and the ethical and

moral considerations involved in having the canals built by the

State or by private enterprise carried no weight with him. He

merely wanted the canals, and he saw in the State the best means

of obtaining his end. The reasons why the State was the best,

and the only, agency capable of building the canals, have already

been pointed out, and these very reasons were the only ones in

which the frontiersman was interested. It cannot be emphasized

too often that he was interested only in the end, and not in the

philosophical problems involved in the means.

Thirty years later, when dissatisfaction with the canals was

growing, the ethical question came up for discussion. Voices

were raised proclaiming that the canals should have been left to

private enterprise. Typical of these was one Archbold who, in

one other instance, expressed doubt as to the ability of the canals

to stand up in the face of railroad competition, by remarking

"Commercial and associated wealth would always have stood

ready to make all our valuable improvements only for the official

intermeddling of the government."118 This was said in 1850 and

may be taken as representative of a large body of thought of the

time, but one must remember that by this time changed economic

conditions prevailed in Ohio. Along with increased wealth had

118 Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of

the Constitution of the State of Ohio, 1850-51 (Columbus, 1851), 1, 501. It is interest-

ing to speculate whether this Mr. Archbold was related to J. D. Archbold, also an

Ohioan, whose association with Rockefeller in Standard Oil symbolized the ideas here

expressed. Due to lack of information about the Archbold here quoted, the author has

been unable to prove a relationship, but has found nothing proving the contrary.

• 39
 

40     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

come a crystallization of the ideals of individualism and freedom

from government restraint. The frontiersman living on the edge

of existence had been anxious for the State to help him in every

possible way. But when this same frontiersman saw his patch

of cleared woodland develop into a prosperous farm whose profits

enabled him to accumulate a little capital, he immediately became

suspicious of any governmental action that might endanger his

freedom. Conservatism is often proportional to a man's bank

account, and Ohio bank accounts were beginning to swell.

The fact remains, though, that in the 1820's the average Ohio

bank account was slim, was non-existent in fact; and Ohioans

resorted to collectivism to build their canals. Again question

arises as to how this collectivism is to be reconciled with the in-

dividualism described by Turner and others? The writer has

stated what he believes to be the cause of the collectivism, but

this mere exposition of causation falls far short of being a recon-

ciliation of this seeming contradiction. In fact, he comes to the

conclusion that by the very nature of this paper he is unable to

answer the question he himself has raised so often.

The frontier was not a static phenomenon. It swept across

the continent from the first settlements on the Atlantic Coast to

the Pacific Coast and back again to the Great Plains. This study

has examined only a very small aspect of this great force. It

would be futile to attempt to generalize for the whole frontier

movement from this one example of its workings. The best the

writer can do, therefore, is to pose the question this study has

raised, and hope that it will someday be answered by someone

more competent.

• 40