Washington had called the nation's attention in 1784.



CHAPTER III. The Mastery Of The Rivers

It would perhaps have been well, in the light of later
difficulties and failures, if the men who at Washington's call
undertook to master the capricious rivers of the seaboard had
studied a stately Spanish decree which declared that, since God
had not made the rivers of Spain navigable, it were sacrilege for
mortals to attempt to do so. Even before the Revolution, Mayor
Rhodes of Philadelphia was in correspondence with Franklin in
London concerning the experiences of European engineers in
harnessing foreign streams. That sage philosopher, writing to
Rhodes in 1772, uttered a clear word of warning: "rivers are
ungovernable things," he had said, and English engineers "seldom
or never use a River where it can be avoided." But it was the
birthright of New World democracy to make its own mistakes and in
so doing to prove for itself the errors of the Old World.

As energetic men all along the Atlantic Plain now took up the
problem of improving the inland rivers, they faced a storm of
criticism and ridicule that would have daunted any but such as
Washington and Johnson of Virginia or White and Hazard of
Pennsylvania or Morris and Watson of New York. Every imaginable
objection to such projects was advanced--from the inefficiency of
the science of engineering to the probable destruction of all the
fish in the streams. In spite of these discouragements, however,
various men set themselves to form in rapid succession the