of the former and
agreed to pay it a fixed toll of $7.64 per ton upon all freights carried
by rail, and one-quarter of all its revenues derived from the canal.
Soon afterward the Napoleon Company entered into a similar contract with
the Camden Ferry Company and now had a complete monopoly of the
transportation business between New York and Philadelphia. It at once
commenced to develop a system of organized plunder. Instead of the
maximum charter tariff of 8 cents per ton per mile, it charged 10, 12,
and even 15 cents. The through rates charged were several times as high
as those fixed by the charter. Canal rates were raised to such an extent
as to make them prohibitory and to compel the public to ship by rail. It
is difficult even to estimate the total annual profits of the
directorial syndicate. Their accounts, if any were kept, were not
accessible, and surmises can only be based upon such data as
occasionally found their way to the public. In 1845 the share of the
canal tolls paid to the company's stockholders was $359,000. The
directors' share under the terms of their lease is thus found not to
have been less than $1,077,000. Another item of $170,000, tolls
collected for the transportation of 27,000 tons of freight, was so
divided that the Camden Ferry Company, or its other self, the
directorial syndicate, received $32,000 for one mile, while the Camden
and Amboy Railroad Company received $63,000, or less than twice as much,
for ninety-two miles. The directors under their lease were entitled to
the remaining $75,000.

The service of the company was as bad as it was expensive; its trains
were slow and irregular, and its employes arrogant. The syndicate which
controlled the company defied its stockholders, the public and the
courts alike. When one of the stockholders, a Trenton merchant by the
name of Hagar, applied to the courts for an order to compel the
directors to produce their books and render an account, the syndicate
bought Mr. Hagar's shares, for which he had paid $125 a share, at the
price of $1,456 a share. The suit was then withdrawn and the matter
hushed up.

In 1848 a number of articles appeared in a paper published at
Burlington, Pa., which were signed by "A Citizen of Burlington" and
contained much surprising information concerning the Camden and Amboy
Transportation Company. It was charged that the directors had defrauded
both the State and the company's stockholders of large sums of money,
that th