[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 73 (Friday, May 21, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E943-E944]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HONORING MICHAEL DOYLE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. GEORGE RADANOVICH

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 20, 2004

  Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to honor Michael Doyle 
who was former Knight Journalism Fellow at Yale Law School and recent 
author of The Forestport Breaks: A Nineteenth-Century Conspiracy along 
the Black Forest Canal. I have had the pleasure of forming a 
relationship with Michael Doyle because of his continued fair and 
balanced Washington Politics Beat coverage in my district newspaper, 
the Fresno Bee. Doyle's latest literary achievement follows a string of 
exceptional work including numerous articles for McClatchy Papers in 
California's Central Valley. The Forestport Breaks: A Nineteenth-
Century Conspiracy along the Black Forest Canal depicts a conspiracy to 
sabotage part of the Erie Canal system along the Black River Canal.
  A Publisher's Weekly Review called the work ``carefully researched 
and nimbly written . . . Doyle's account of a 19th-century conspiracy 
to sabotage part of the Erie Canal system is a delight to read. 
Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was an engineering marvel that vastly 
improved commercial transportation. In 1856, canal boats carried over 
four million tons of goods--more that twice the load of the railroads. 
But by 1869, the tide had turned in favor of New York's railroads; the 
canal had fallen into disrepair and was subject to costly breaks that 
flooded the countryside. In 1895, New York voters approved $9 million 
in improvements--but a subsequent investigation revealed that all but 
$25,000 of the money had been spent, but only one third of the work was 
complete. The subsequent scandal made heads roll, including the 
governor's. After Theodore Roosevelt was elected in 1898, he appointed 
Colonel John N. Partridge as superintendent of public works. Aware that 
Forestport in Oneida County (which was along the Black River feeder 
canal) had acquired an unsavory reputation, Partridge hired the 
Pinkerton Detective Agency to investigate. The locals fought the 
Pinkertons as enemies of the working man, but the latter eventually 
uncovered a plot that involved nearly every family in Forestport (and, 
in the words of one prosecutor, had `no parallel in viciousness') in 
which the canal was `the plaything of the politically connected' while 
the working men assigned to protect it damaged it for a tiny slice of 
the pie. In the end, 13 men went to jail for

[[Page E944]]

sabotaging the canal in an effort to rob the state treasury. History 
and mystery fans should enjoy this well-told tale.''
  Again, I would like to thank Michael Doyle for his continued service 
to the Central Valley of California and the general public through his 
work in journalism and his latest example of literary excellence in The 
Forestport Breaks: A Nineteenth-Century Conspiracy along the Black 
Forest Canal, enlightening us to some of the history that marks the 
only time New York state officials have charged men with conspiring to 
destroy canal property and detailing the evolution of this important 
transportation waterway.

                          ____________________