tional road, as we have seen, was
built by the War Department from the Potomac almost to the Mississippi,
through Wheeling, Columbus, Indianapolis and Vandalia, at a cost of over
six million dollars. And this famous national road was built, in part,
upon an earlier pathway, cut through Ohio by Ebenezer Zane in 1796, also
at the order of Congress, and for which he received grants of land which
formed the nucleus of the three thriving Ohio cities, Zanesville,
Lancaster, and Chillicothe. The constitutionality of road-building by
the government was questioned by some, but that clause granting it the
right to establish post-offices and post roads "must, in every view, be
a harmless power," said James Madison, "and may perhaps, by judicious
management, become productive of great public conveniency. Nothing which
tends to facilitate the intercourse between the states can be deemed
unworthy of the public care."[2] But the government was interested not
only in building roads but in many other phases of public improvement;
it took stock in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; Congress voted $30,000
to survey the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal route, and the work was done by
government engineers. When railways superseded highways, the government
was almost persuaded to complete the old National Road with rails and
ties instead of broken stone. When the Erie Canal was proposed, a vast
scheme of government aid was favored by leading statesmen;[3] the
government has greatly assisted the western railways by gigantic grants
of land worth one hundred and thirty-eight million dollars. The vast
funds of private capital that have been seeking investment in this
country, at first in turnpike, plank, and macadamized roads, then in
canals, and later in railways, has rendered government aid comparatively
unnecessary. In the last few years the only work of internal improvement
aided by the government is the improvement of the rivers and harbors,
which for 1904 takes over fifty millions of revenue a year. The sum of
$130,565,485 has been well spent on river and harbor improvement in the
past seven years. Not only are the great rivers, such as the Ohio and
Mississippi, improved, but lesser streams. A short time ago I made a
journey of one hundred miles down the Elk River in West Virginia in a
boat eleven inches deep and twelve feet long; a channel all the way down
had been made about two feet wide by picking out the stones; the United
States did this at an ex