Seymour Accusations

Seymour Accusations

   In May of 1825, Canal Commissioner Henry Seymour saw fit to “publicly...notice and repel,” accusations levied against he and other commissioners that they sought private profits from a toll increase on packet boats.  Along the early Erie Canal, packet boats carried passengers and were subject to tolls according to distance traveled an the number of passengers they carried over a duration of time.  Packet boat companies would be charged these tolls, owed to the Canal Commission for operating on the state waterway. 

   Seymour outlines in his retort, published in the Mohawk Sentinel on May 26th, navigation costs and states a “...restrictive measure was necessary to prevent the alarming increase of those boats, and the destruction which they threatened to the Canal banks.”  He notes in particular that the Eastern Section, seeing such a rise in transportation, the packets “had been most injurious to the Canal” already.  The tolls were not meant to create a profit, neither privately nor publicly, but to allow for safe transit of cargo as well “as many boats as may be required for the public accommodation.”

 On average, freight barge tolls were half those of passenger boats, though he warned that packets could not expect to “pass in disguise of freight boats” as they’d be subject to double the tax for the violation (much like speeding in a work zone on the NYS Thruway, doubling the fines).

   Seymour then offers up some canal arithmetic. The gist of which, as he puts it is “that the question of profit or loss does not so much depend upon the amount of toll, as upon the amount of business the boats may find to perform.”