tipulated that
all profits over fifteen per cent should revert to the State Treasury.
This hint concerning surplus profits, however, did not cause a stampede
when the books were opened for subscriptions in New York and Albany. In
later years, when the Erie Canal gave promise of a new era in American
inland commerce, Elkanah Watson recalled with a grim satisfaction the
efforts of these early days. The subscription books at the old Coffee
House in New York, he tells us, lay open three days without an entry,
and at Lewis's tavern in Albany, where the books were opened for a
similar period, "no mortal" had subscribed for more than two shares.

The system proposed for the improvement of the waterways of New York was
similar to that projected for the Potomac. A canal was to be cut from
the Mohawk to the Hudson in order to avoid Cohoes Falls; a canal with
locks would overcome the forty-foot drop at Little Falls; another canal
over five thousand feet in length was to connect the Mohawk and Wood
Creek at Rome; minor improvements were to be made between Schenectady
and the mouth of the Schoharie; and finally the Oswego Falls at
Rochester were to be circumvented also by canal. All the objections,
difficulties, and discouragements which had attended efforts to improve
waterways elsewhere in America confronted these New York promoters. They
began in 1793 at Little Falls but were soon forced to cease owing to the
failure of funds. Under the encouraging spur of a state subscription to
two hundred shares of stock, they renewed their efforts in 1794 but
were again forced to abandon the work before the year had passed. By
November, 1795, however, they had completed the canal and in thirty days
had received toll to the amount of about four hundred dollars.

The total actual work done is not clearly shown by the documents, but
it is evident that the measure of success achieved was not equaled
elsewhere on similar improvements on a large scale. From 1796 to 1804
the tolls received at Rome amounted to over fifteen thousand dollars,
and at Little Falls to over fifty-eight thousand dollars--a sum which
exceeded the original cost of construction. Dividends had crept up from
three per cent in 1798 to five and a half per cent in 1817, the year in
which work was begun on the Erie Canal.

No struggle for the mastery of an American river matches in certain
respects the effort of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to bridle
the Lehigh and make