"Train, you have reputation enough now. Why do something that will mar it? You are known all over the world as the Clipper-Ship King. This is enough glory for one man. If you attempt to build a railway across the desert and over the Rocky Mountains, the world will call you a lunatic."
And this was all that I received from these gentlemen! Not a word of encouragement, not a cent of contributed funds—only the warning that the world, like themselves, would call me a madman.
Unaffected by this cold reception, I kept steadily on with my task, and proceeded to organize the great railway. Congress granted the necessary charter in '62. It authorized the building of a road from the Missouri River to California, with an issue of $100,000,000 of stock and $50,000,000 of bonds—to be issued in sections, the first section to be at the rate of $16,000 a mile; and the last at $48,000 a mile, with 20,000,000 acres of land in alternate sections; and $2,000,000 to be subscribed, ten per centum to be paid into the State treasury at Albany.
My friends in Boston took the stock, but I failed to get the cash to go ahead with the road in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. At this point, when matters looked a little dark, an idea occurred to me that cleared the sky. It made the construction of the great line a certainty. In Paris, a few years before, I had been much interested in new methods of finance as devised by the brothers Émile and Isaac Perrère. These shrewd and ingenious men, finding that old methods could not be used to meet many demands of modern times, invented entirely new ones which they organized into two systems known as the Crédit Mobilier and the Crédit Foncier—or systems of credit based on personal property and land. The French Government had supported these systems of the Perrères, and Baron Haussmann had resorted to them in his great undertaking in rebuilding and remodeling the French capital, making it the most beautiful city of the world. I determined upon introducing this new style of finance into this country.
I found that a bill had been passed in Pennsylvania in '59, for Duff Green, granting authority for the organization of the "Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency," which, on examination, I saw could be used for my purpose. I bought this charter for $25,000. The bill had been "engineered" through the Pennsylvania legislature by a man named Hall, and others of the Philadelphia Custom-House. In order to make it suitable for our uses, I wanted its title changed, and asked to have the legislature change the title to "Crédit Mobilier of America." The matter went through without trouble, and I paid $500 for having this done. When I happened to mention to William H. Harding, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, that it had cost me $500 to have the title of the charter altered, he told me he could have had it done for $50. I did not know as much of the ways of legislation in Pennsylvania then as I did later. The sum I paid for the charter was made up from $5,000 cash and $20,000 of the bonds of the Crédit Mobilier. I was to have $50,000 for organizing the company. I think it worth while to call attention here to the fact that this was the first so-called "Trust" organized in this country.
Having failed to raise the money elsewhere, I went to Boston, and there succeeded in launching the enterprise. My own subscription of $150,000 was the pint of water that started the great wheel of the machinery. I give here—for it is a matter of historic interest, since the building of this road marked the opening of a new era in the United States—the list of the subscribers who were my copartners in the undertaking:
| Lombard and friends | $100,000 | |
| Oakes and Oliver Ames | 200,000 | |
| Sidney Dillon | $100,000 | |
| Cyrus H. McCormick | 100,000 | |
| Ben Holliday | 100,000 | |
| John Duff | 100,000 | 400,000 |
| ——— | ||
| Glidden & Williams | 50,000 | |
| Joseph Nickerson | 100,000 | |
| Fred Nickerson | 50,000 | |
| Baker & Morrill | 50,000 | |
| Samuel Hooper and Dexter | 50,000 | |
| Price Crowell | 25,000 | |
| Bardwell and Otis Norcross | 75,000 | 400,000 |
| ——— | ||
| Williams & Guion | 50,000 | |
| William H. Macy | 25,000 | |
| H. S. McComb, Wilmington, Del. | 75,000 | |
| George Francis Train, through Colonel George | ||
| T. M. Davis, trustee for my wife and children | 150,000 | 300,000 |
| ——— | ————— | |
| $1,400,000 |
