A number of small companies were promoted also' in New England, with varying success. Several of these were in Maine. As early as May, 1789, a committee of investigation, chosen by several towns, reported favorably on a scheme for a canal to unite Sebago Pond with Presumpscot River at Saccarappa and estimated the cost as £3000 (£1800 for digging and £1200 for damages). Interest was again aroused in the summer of 1791. In 1795, on the initiative of Woodbury Storer, charters were secured from the General Court for this, "the Cumberland Canal," and for "the Falmouth Canal" to connect the Presumpscot above Saccarappa with the Fore River; but capital could be secured for neither.1

In June, 1791, The Proprietors of the New Meadow Canal were chartered to open a canal from the New-Meadow River to the Kennebec, below Merry Meeting Bay. Within two years it appeared that the canal had been opened "at considerable expense" to the proprietors. But it "did not answer the expectations of the public nor compensate the labors of the proprietors," and soon went to ruin.2

In June, 1792, The Proprietors of Mousom Harbour in Wells were incorporated to open a navigation in York County. At a meeting October 1 the proprietors "took up" all the unsubscribed shares, elected three directors, a treasurer, and a clerk, and contracted with one Richard Gilpatrick to complete the canal in one year for £1000, payable in instalments.3 In March, 1797, a company was incorporated to cut a canal "by the Ten Mile Falls in Pejepscot or Androscoggin River, lying between Durham and Little River Plantation."4 Probably neither of these was completed.

In the same category with the canals belong the sluiceways. In 1796 were incorporated The Proprietors of the Sluice-Way on Saco River, and in 1797 a similar company to build sluiceways

1 Columbian Centinel, Sept. 3, 1791; Willis, History of Portland, 724-725; Priv. and Spec. Stats., Mass., ii, 42, 46; S. T. Dole, "The Cumberland and Oxford Canal," in Me. Hist. Soc. Colls., 2d Series, ix, 264-271 (1898).

2 Priv. and Spec. Stats., Mass., ii, 309, 432; Joseph Sewall, "History of Bath," in Me. Hist. Soc. Colls. (Portland, 1847), ii, 220. Sewall erroneously dates it 1779Priv. and Spec. Stats., Mass., i, 378; Columbian Centinel, Oct. 13, 1792. Priv. and Spec. Stats., Mass., ii, 158-161.

1

"in the Plantation of Little Falls, from Buxton Mill-Dam to Cook's Eddy." Probably numerous unincorporated companies existed for the same purpose.

The Amoskeag Falls on the Merrimac, at Manchester, naturally early aroused hope of improvement. Samuel Blodget settled at Goffstown in 1769, purchased extensive timber lands above the Falls, and only the Revolution prevented his making an effort at that time to open a canal around the Falls. Like many another man of enterprise, he served in the war on the commissary side, and returned from the struggle not worse off in a pecuniary way. After wasting some years in rather unsuccessful operation of an invention for raising sunken vessels, he settled at Manchester (then Derryfield) in 1793. Securing permission from the legislature, he set vigorously to work on his favorite project, the canal, upon which he concentrated both his capital and his energy. In October, 1796, it was opened. Thanks to the proprietor's undue faith in his own ingenuity, a full $20,000 was wasted when first the natural pressure of water let into the lock, and then a June freshet, destroyed the work of years. After having spent $30,000 without attaining his object, he secured a charter in December, 1798, giving up the hope of accomplishing his end solely by his own means. Colonel Baldwin, the active superintendent of the Middlesex Canal, made at his request a survey of a new route, estimated the cost of completion at $9000, but urged "that it would not do to depart much from established principles nor presume much on new theories, or to introduce works of speculation in canaling." This report was published, and within three years $7000 of stock was sold, and $5000 more raised by lottery out of a grant of $9000 made by the legislature in December, 1799. The canal was unfinished when the new century dawned and was eventually completed only in the hands of the Middlesex Canal proprietors.5

1 Priv. and Spec. Stats., Mass., ii, 82, 158.

2 On Blodget see G. N. Browne, in Manchester Hist. Assoc. Colls., i, 120-176 (1897).

'N. H. Town Papers, xii, 557-559; Columbian Centinel, Oct. 15, 1796.

N. H. Town Papers, xii, 560-565.

Potter, History of Manchester, 525-537.

In January, 1794, two men, McGregor and Duncan, petitioned the New Hampshire legislature for the exclusive privilege of cutting a canal on the Merrimac at Isle-a-hooksett Falls, with toll privileges. This was granted, and in 1797 extended, but no corporate powers were sought or bestowed. There were probably other authorizations of this type for works higher up the Merrimac.1 Massachusetts made a similar grant, in 1793, to Charles Barret, for a canal from Barretts Town, in Lincoln County, Me., down George's River to the sea.

In June, 1791, one or two hundred men were employed in digging a 1 mile canal through the marshes between Newburyport, Mass., and Hampton, N. H., to unite two small streams and furnish an eight-mile navigation between these two towns. This seems not to have had legislative sanction, but it was completed within a short time.3

Connecticut chartered one small company besides the Union, to clear the channel of the Ousatonic River, October, 1795.4

The success of most of these little companies cannot be ascertained. It is to be inferred that some advantage was derived from their efforts to improve navigation; else the acts would have ceased much earlier. Yet such success as they may have had was too insignificant to tempt capital largely into this field or to create enough stir for historians to notice.5

Viewing as a whole the efforts to improve navigation, it is clear that this branch of enterprise called forth more corporate charters, more other legislative acts, and more state support

1 N. H. Town Papers, xii, 254-255, 562; G. Stark, "Frederick G. Stark and the Merrimack Canals," in Granite Monthly, ix, 5-6 (Concord, 1886).

2 Priv. and Spec. Stats., i, 412-414.

• Columbian Centinel, July 6, 1791; Winterbotham, North America, ii, 80; Merrill, Amesbury, 396.

• Private Laws (ed. 1837), i, 517.

Cf. Governor Martin of North Carolina, urging upon the legislature in 1791 the necessity of improving river and land communication: "Our sister states are emulous with each other in opening their rivers and cutting canals, while attempts of this kind are but feebly aided among us. Though laws are passed for this purpose, they are not properly executed.”—J. A. Morgan, in The North Carolina Booklet, x, 123–124 (1911), quoting also Martin's message of 1784.

and encouragement than any other branch. The results were entirely disproportionate to the efforts. The Americans found the making of a canal far from the "simple and easy" task which Adam Smith described, and the corporate form, while necessary here, proved unequal to the task.

CHAPTER IV

TOLL-BRIDGE AND TURNPIKE COMPANIES

THE most successful of the early corporations, after the financial ones, were the toll-bridge companies. They required only a limited capital for construction and a minimum of working capital. Their problem of construction was not exceedingly difficult. Their returns were fairly sure. Once the structure was built the problem of management was simple in the extreme, and there were no problems of finance to worry about, except to provide for repairs due to ice or freshets, and rebuilding when such hostile agents caused total destruction.

Here one finds numerous forerunners of the business corporation, in colonial days and afterwards. The smallest bridges were treated as part of the highways and constructed and kept in repair by local officials. Even in colonial days, however, tollbridges were known, and in these cases they were usually constructed by individuals who received from the state the right to take toll upon condition of building and keeping the bridge in repair, much as ferry privileges were granted by "charter" or license from the state. Sometimes such a privilege was granted to an unincorporated association. More often commissioners were appointed by the state to arrange for the building of a bridge, and these contracted with individuals or groups to build the bridge for specified tolls. Sometimes the state made a grant of funds for the building of the bridge, conditioned on the raising of subscriptions from private individuals; or grants of lottery privileges were made, the managers of which were to build the bridge as well as to collect the funds. An unusual type appears at least once, in Massachusetts. By act of Nov. 29, 1785, provision was made for building a toll-bridge over Parker River in Newbury. In February, 1798, a trustee was