Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 10).djvu/111

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OPERATION AND CONTROL
111

amount received from the western division. Even after the amounts paid by the two great stage companies are deducted, a balance of over a thousand dollars is left in favor of the division west of the Monongahela River. In the second report, $4,242.37 more was received on the western division of the road than on the eastern, and even after the amounts received from the stage companies are deducted, the receipts from the eastern division barely exceed those of the western. How can it be that "two-fifths of the trade and travel of the road were diverted at Brownsville?" And the further west Mr. Searight goes, the more does he seem to err, for the road west of the Ohio River, instead of showing "scarcely a tithe of the thrift, push, whirl and excitement which characterized it east of that point," seems to have done a greater business than the eastern portion. For instance, when the road was completed as many miles in Ohio as were built in Pennsylvania, the return from the portion in Ohio (1833) was $12,259.42–4 (in the very first year that the road was completed), while in Pennsylvania the receipts in 1840