This page has been validated.
LOCAL INFLUENCES OF THE CANAL
173
urged upon the legislature loans to corporations—of the credit of the state to an indefinite amount—for almost every mad scheme speculators might suggest.[1]
"Summing up the most important internal improvement works for which Mr. Seward advocated state aid, we have, the enlargement of the Erie canal,[2] the Black River canal in the counties of Oneida and Lewis and joining the Black River with the Erie canal, the Genesee Valley canal in the counties of Broome, Chenango, Madison, and Oneida joining the Chenango river with the Erie Canal (the two canals last mentioned would unite Lake Ontario with
- ↑ This is probably a reference to such loans as were authorized to be made to the New York and Erie Railroad. The New York and Erie Railroad was incorporated in 1832 and in 1836 the legislature authorized a loan of the credit of the state to the company for the amount of $3,000,000 subject to certain restrictions, some of which were that the route of the road should be through the Southern tier of counties in the state, one-fourth was to be completed in ten years, one-half in fifteen years, and the whole of it in twenty years. The road was to begin at Tappan, Rockland County, on the Hudson, pass through Goshen, Oswego, Elmira, and other towns and end at Dunkirk on Lake Erie.—Tanner, Canals and Railroads of the United States, 1840, p. 74.
- ↑ Lossing, Empire State, p. 493.
