committee of stockholders should go over the ground and pass
judgment on the probable success of the effort
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.