Thus, in brief, was inaugurated the largest work of its kind in our history, an artificial waterway to connect an inland lake and river, the entire expense to be borne by a single state. For the very boldness of its conception and the magnitude of its realization it demands our respect. As the old Erie Canal heralded a new epoch in the commercial history of America, is it not possible that the new Grand Canal will be the beginning of another new epoch in this new century? A study of the map of the new canal appended will show, for one thing, that New York is going back to the old idea of canalizing rivers. Instead of building a canal beside the Mohawk, for instance, her engineers will canalize that river. This is in direct opposition to the advice sent by Benjamin Franklin from England to the Pennsylvania promoters of inland navigation at the close of the Revolutionary War;[71] it is an indication of the great advances in engineering science since the days of Smeaton, and is made possible by the substitution of the screw propeller for the mule and tow-path. It is by this means that the Ohio River is to be made a great artery of commerce.[72] With steamers fitted out with low pressure engines it is estimated that freight can be transported profitably on the Ohio at an astonishingly low rate with which no land method of transportation can ever dare hope to compete. The new project of New York, therefore, brings back all the old-time dreams of early American promoters--of Washington's for the Potomac, of Morris's for the Mohawk, and of Robert Morris's for the Susquehanna. If modern engineering can make the canalization of one river a success, it can of hundreds of rivers. No sooner was the Erie Canal a success in 1825 than Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and other states began canal building. No sooner had New York voted in favor of her thousand-ton barge canal than Ohio again followed by passing an act looking toward the improvement of her canal from the Ohio to Lake Erie. Does New York again lead the way to a new field of national development by means of canalization of rivers at the beginning of the twentieth century, as she did by means of canal-building at the beginning of the nineteenth? Appendixes APPENDIX A ACT OF APRIL 17, 1816[73]