THE BRIBERY PERSISTENTLY CONTINUES.
When the act of 1864 was passed, Congress plausibly pointed out the wise, precautionary measures it was taking to insure the honest disbursements of the Government's appropriations. "Behold," said in effect this Congress, "the safeguards with which we are surrounding the bill. We are providing for the appointment of Government directors to supervise the work, and see to it that the Government's interests do not suffer." Very appropriate legislation, indeed, from a Congress in which $436,000 of bribe money had been apportioned to insure its betrayal of the popular interests.
Buts Ames and his brother capitalists bribed at least one of the Government directors with $25,000 to connive at the frauds: [Footnote: Document No. 78, Credit Mobilier Investigation: xvii] he was a cheaply bought tool, that director. And immediately after the railroad was built and in operation, its owners scented more millions of plunder if they could get a law enacted by Congress allowing them exorbitant rates for the transportation of troops and Government supplies and mails. They corruptly paid out, it seems, $126,000 to get this measure of March 3, 1871, passed. [Footnote: Doc. No. 78, etc., xvii.]
What was the result of all this investigation? Mere noise. The oratorial tom-toms in Congress resounded vociferously for the gulling of home constituencies, and of palaver and denunciations there was a plenitude. The committee confined itself to recommending the expulsion of Oakes Ames and James Brooks from Congress. The Government bravely brought a civil action, upon many specified charges, against the Union Pacific Railroad Company for misappropriation of funds. This action the company successfully fought; the United States Supreme Court, in 1878, dismissed the suit on the ground that the Government could not sue until the company's debt had matured in 1895. [Footnote: 98 U.S. 569.]
Thus these great thieves escaped both criminal and civil process, as they were confident that they would, and as could have been accurately foretold. The immense plunder and the stolen railroad property the perpretrators of these huge frauds were allowed to keep. Congress could have forfeited upon good legal grounds the charter of the Union Pacific Railroad Company then and there. So long as this was note done, and so long as they were unmolested in the possession of their loot, the participating capitalists could well afford to be curiously tolerant of verbal chastisement which soon passed away, and which had no other result than to add several more ponderous volumes to the already appallingly encumbered archives of Government investigations of the stock of the Union Pacific Railroad was at a very low point. The excessive amount of plunder appropriated by Ames and his confederates had loaded it down with debt. With fixed charges on enormous quantities of bonds to pay, few capitalists saw how the stock could be made to yield any returns—for some time, at any rate. Now was seen the full hollowness of the pretensions of the capitalists that they were inspired by a public-spirited interest in the development of the Far West. This pretext had been jockeyed out for every possible kind of service. As soon as they were convinced that the Credit Mobilier clique had sacked the railroad of all immediate plunder, the participating capitalists showed a sturdy alacrity in shunning the project and disclaiming any further connection with it. Their stock, for the most part, was offered for sale.