| Yours truly, | Samuel McNutt. |
Mr. McNutt tells what he knows, and gives us a correct idea of the means resorted to by these corporations to thwart the will of the people. In view of the vast wealth of these corporations, their combination and consolidation, with their absolute control of congress and state legislatures, and the centralization of power in themselves, we may well inquire whether our constitutional guarantees have not been so long disregarded as to be virtually destroyed. The question at issue between the people and these corporations is clearly marked and defined. This great railroad oligarchy is gradually but surely overturning the principles upon which our government is founded. It is substituting a personal for a constitutional government, and to achieve its purposes, it brings to bear its vast wealth and influence; it bribes and buys legislators, and maintains throughout the country a vast army of employes, many of whom occupy high official position under the government. It now boldly proclaims the doctrine, that the interests of this great government, and of railroads, are one!
On the other side of the question are the people, who begin to realize the oppressions of this oligarchy. They find themselves burdened with taxes; the value of the produce of the country consumed in unjust railroad charges; the halls of congress and of state legislatures cursed by the presence of men who take and give bribes in aid of the people's oppressors; their natural rights denied them; the guarantees of the constitution disregarded; all doubtful points decided in favor of the power that is reducing them to slavery, and making their property and the fruits of their labor of no value. They begin to realize that the final struggle must soon come, and that the question will be whether the people, the sovereign people, or their oppressors are to be the future rulers of the republic. The result is not uncertain. Legislatures and courts must restore to the people their constitutional rights. If these are denied, then, other means failing, the people, who are sovereign, must take their rights by revolution. The self-evident truth that all men are equal, that they have equal rights to enjoy and possess property, and to the protection of those rights in the courts, and that all should bear their proportionate share of the public burdens, MUST be recognized, by all classes, as the supreme law of this republic.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE "TRAIL OF THE SERPENT" IN THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT.
We have attempted to show the controlling influence of railroad corporations over the legislative department of the government, and its effect upon the people, without following it through all its various forms, our object being to present what we deemed sufficient evidence to direct the public mind to the great and growing evils resulting from this influence. We now desire to refer to the influence of these corporations over the executive department of the government.
The administration of the laws being confided to the executive department of the government, their impartial and honest administration is of the greatest importance to the people. Congress, without the constitutional right, having granted charters and made large grants of lands and bonds to railroad companies, it became necessary that the executive department should have some kind of supervision over the companies. In the issuing of bonds and certificates for land grants; the transportation of mails, troops, etc.; the appointment of government directors, inspectors, and engineers; the transmission of telegraphic dispatches, and respecting many other matters connected with these corporations, special duties were imposed upon the president and members of his cabinet. The government directors, under the statute, had a place on all business committees of the Union Pacific railroad company. They were government officers, appointed by the president, and were to report, from time to time, upon the progress of the work, and condition of the roads. They were prohibited from owning stock, or being personally interested in the roads. Their reports were to be made to the secretary of the interior. If these government directors had faithfully performed the duties laid upon them by the law, the contract of the directors of the railroad company with the Credit Mobilier company could not have taken place without their knowledge, which fact should at once have been communicated to the secretary of the interior. Nor could the directors of the railroad have organized themselves into a Credit Mobilier company and contracted with themselves to rob the government and defraud the people, without the knowledge of the government directors. And, unless we concede that they were totally unfit for the discharge of the duties imposed upon them by statute—"more sinned against than sinning"—we must conclude that they had full knowledge of all the abuses being practiced by the railroad companies, and failed to discharge their official duties. The national reputation these government directors had achieved in the halls of congress, and elsewhere, precludes the idea of their being ignorant of what they should have known, and we are forced to conclude that they had this guilty knowledge of the frauds being perpetrated upon the government and the people. Their action in the premises can only be explained on the ground that they were subject to the same railroad influences which have controlled congress and state legislatures. If their action was not governed by corrupt motives and pecuniary considerations, that persuasive influence which emanates from these corporations, blinded their minds and warped their judgments to such an extent as to induce them to wink at the frauds of the companies in the construction of their roads and the prosecution of the business connected therewith. Recent investigations show that some of those directors were controlled in their actions by pecuniary considerations; that these corporations have been able to purchase the influence of the men selected by the president to protect the public interest, and that, by reason of such purchase, the sum of $16,000 per mile, in government bonds, has been duplicated on fifty-eight miles of the Pacific road. Other abuses, such as the defective construction of the roads, unlawful payment by the government of engineering expenses, dishonest returns of the cost of the roads, and other minor but important abuses of the privileges granted to these companies, were permitted by these government directors without objection, showing, beyond all reasonable doubt, that their duties, prescribed by acts of congress, were of secondary importance when the interests of the corporations or of these government directors were to be considered.
While the reckless and dishonest transactions of the company directors were such as to call out a protest from an honest engineer employed on the road, prompting him to resign his position as chief engineer rather than be a party to fraud and scandal, these government directors seem to have remained silent and inactive. A contract had been entered into with a man by the name of Hoxie, who had neither personal means, nor position to command any considerable amount of capital, for the construction of a portion of the Union Pacific road. While this contract did not possess all the peculiarities of the contract with the Credit Mobilier, it was such an outrage upon right and justice, as to elicit from the chief engineer, Peter A. Dey, the following letter, addressed to General John A. Dix, after having tendered his resignation as chief engineer of the Union Pacific road, to General Dix, who was then president of the company. Mr. Dey says:—