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21
Ballendine succeeded in attracting a number of Ohio Company
members who by this date no doubt felt that with George flercer's in-
ability to secure a charter renewal in England, Ballendine's plan offered
an attractive alternative. Even George Washington, who thought
Ballendine's
"principles have been loose," and George Mason managed to overcome their
qualms and agreed to take subscriptions too. 36
Ballendine's plans for the Potomac were more ambitious than those
of either Johnson or Semple and even included an extensive system of locks
and by-pass canals for Great Falls. No earlier proposals had contemplated
navigation around Great Falls. His projected costs for the entire river
from tidewater to Fort Cumberland came to L44,887 which was a sizeable
increase from Johnson's and Semple's estimates of about L3000 to L5000.
Ballendine sought to attract commerical interests by estimating how much
trade the river already carried; nonetheless, his plan was more closely
allied with speculative concerns. Not only were the governors of Maryland
and Virginia and Thomas Walpole, the principal stockholder in the
Walpole Associates, to be among six men who would approve expenditures for
the river project, but Ballendine's projected income of 1=11,875 per year
on the improved Potomac represented a speculative twenty-six percent
annual return on capital invested. Noting the trade from the increasing
western settlement, on an advertising pamphlet Ballendine optimistically
added that "the above estimate is supposed to be as near to the annual
produce of the country as can be possibly asscertained; it is submitted
36Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, vol. 3, pp. 82-83.
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