themselves," as one member of the Legislature put it, was granted
by an act passed March 20, 1818. The various powers applied for,
and granted, embraced the whole range of tried and untried
methods for securing "a navigation downward once in three days
for boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons." The
State kept its weather eye open in this matter, however, for a
small minority felt that these men would not ruin themselves.
Accordingly, the act of grant reserved to the commonwealth the
right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water
navigation from Easton to Stoddartsville if the service given by
the company did not meet "the wants of the country."

Capital was subscribed by a patriotic public on condition that a
committee of stockholders should go over the ground and pass
judgment on the probable success of the effort. The report was
favorable, so far as the improvement of the river was concerned;
but the nine-mile road to the mines was unanimously voted
impracticable. "To give you an idea of the country over which the
road is to pass," wrote one of the commissioners, "I need only
tell you that I considered it quite an easement when the wheel of
my carriage struck a stump instead of a stone." The public mind
was divided. Some held that the attempt to operate the coal mine
was farcical, but that the improvement of the Lehigh River was an
undertaking of great value and of probable profit to investors.
Others were just as positive that the river improvement would
follow the fate of so many similar enterprises but that a fortune
was in store for those who invested in the Lehigh mines.

The direct result of the examiners' report and of the public
debate it provoked was the organization of the first interlocking