With the new state Constitution and the new Commissioners of Public Works, a
certain amount of organization was, of course, necessary. After considerable parlia-
mentary maneuvering, the legislature finally enacted a bill providing for an annual
salary of $200 for each commissioner, but, because it neglected to include funds for
that purpose in the annual appropriation bill, the commissioners, in fact, remained
unpaid until the following year.1 Leave was given to the House Committee on Internal
Improvements to report a bill providing the commissioners with an office and a clerk,
but such a measure does not appear to have been introduced. It certainly was not
passed. No office was in fact provided, and so the commissioners were required to meet
in various hotels and private offices. The legislature did, however, provide a procedure
for their taking the required oath of office.2
Despite its niggardly attitude in terms of an office and staff, the General Assembly
had no hesitation in promptly adding new statutory duties for the commissioners. In
1852 the legislature amended the charter of the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company
to permit it to construct or purchase railroads in Allegany County. In doing so the
General Assembly provided that any dispute in regard to "locating, constructing or
working its rail road or rail roads, or in respect to the charges for transportation
thereon . . . shall be submitted to, and be decided by the Commissioners of Public
Works." The act also reserved to the state and to the companies incorporated by it the
power to connect into Cumberland's railroads "in such manner that, in the opinion of
the Commissioners of Public Works of this state, no injury will be done by such con-
nections."3
What makes this act particularly interesting is that the state was neither a stock-
holder nor a creditor of the company. In the preamble, the legislature simply recognized
the value of its operations to the internal improvements of the state, and that alone
seemed to form the basis of its broad delegation of arbitral authority to the commis-
sioners. In that limited context, at least, this represented a rather more expansive
view of their function than had been apparent in the Constitutional Convention.
The first commissioners were John S. Gittings (First District), Charles R. Stewart
(Second District), William P. Ponder (Third District), and John R. Franklin (Fourth
District). They first met on 8 December 1851 in Gittings's office, where they took the
1. The salary was established by Acts of 1852, ch. 122. See also Acts of 1853, ch. 139, appropriating the
salary for the current and the prior year.
2. H. Jour. (1852), p. 153; Acts of 1852, ch. 172, sec. 3.
3. Acts of 1852, ch. 93, secs. 8, 5.
