The state engineer's report shows the abandonment of 221 miles of canals with their locks and feeders. To this, add a littoral of lakes and rivers of 300 miles and we have abandoned waterways of 521 miles. This covers a region which, in the course of thirty years, has increased 1,500,000 in population and its manufactured products have more than trebled.
The American voter is not the wise man that he thinks he is. He fails to grasp the primary idea of statecraft. He bends an obedient knee to the moloch of the lobby. He obeyed the behest of his party and sold his birthright for something as impalpable as moonlight. When he sold the right of way of the Chemung Canal for $100, he saw neither wrong to himself nor injustice to his posterity. A few dollars of annual tax was worth more than millions in prospective.
For years it was a vexed question in politics, with the democrats on one side and the republicans on the other. The fatal blow was given in the republican stronghold, central New York, by the people who had the most at stake in preserving the canals.
The republican legislature of 1873 officially abandoned them. The results were quickly shown. The year before the abandonment gave a loss in tons of 308,588, while two railways connecting Lake Erie with New York showed an excess in tons of freight over that of 1872 of 1,877,187. This was a direct loss to the farmer and the small producer of $96,693 to save the small sum of $34,000 divided among sixteen counties. A more complete demonstration of the canals as a freight regulator it would be impossible to find.
