Another authority thus:[[150]]
“Oakes Ames, member of Congress, from Massachusetts, and a promoter of the Union Pacific and its bills before the national legislature, distributed Credit Mobilier stock to influential Congressmen on the understanding that it should be paid for out of the dividends, which dividends depended largely on the passage of the bills giving grants of land and money to the U. P. The bills were passed. The dividends of the very first year paid for the stock and left a balance to the credit of the donees; and the total construction profits were $43,925,328 above all expenses, in which profits the stock-holding Congressmen who passed the railroad grants had an important share.”
Seventh: The statesmen-business men cunningly agreed that when the government used the road (which it had furnished more than sufficient means to construct) one-half the regular rate should be paid in cash and the other half should apply as credit on the government loan.
Eighth: The Union Pacific Railway Company, including the Central Pacific (same system),[[151]] was cunningly presented—scot free—one-half of all the land within twenty miles of the right-of-way, and “all the timber, iron and coal within six miles” of the right-of-way,—a total of 25,000,000 acres of land. “At $2.50 per acre,” says President E. B. Andrews (University of Nebraska),[[152]] “the land values alone would more than build the road.” The Northern Pacific Company received, just two years later, 47,000,000 acres of land as a gift which a land expert[[153]] estimated to be worth probably $990,000,000 and possibly $1,320,000,000,—which gives us some idea of the value of the 25,000,000 acre gift to the Union Pacific.
It is worth the space to add: That “the promoters of the Northern Pacific, through unfair construction contracts and other frauds, made the capitalization of 600 miles of that line constructed down to 1874 amount to 143 millions on an actual expenditure of twenty-two millions.”[[154]]
Ninth: Again and again the Union Pacific, when it suited its purpose to do so, refused to comply with the treasonably easy terms of its charter; but always the patriots in Washington and the distinguished railway gentlemen cunningly “got together,” made some “gentlemen’s agreement”—and the charter was not revoked.
As suggested above, this charter, as amended by the Senate and in the form signed by the President, July 1, 1862,—was, when it was finally “considered” in the House of Mis-Representatives, voted 104 to 21 “without a single syllable of debate.”[[155]]
Professor Parsons sums up the case thus:[[156]]
“The promoters got from Congress more than the cost of the road, bonded it again to private investors for all it was worth, issued stock also beyond the cost of construction, sold and gave away a good deal of it, and still had the road and the control of its earnings for themselves.”
The magnitude of this statesmen-patriot-thieves’ masterpiece (“for love of country and home and God”) can not be realized without a further word concerning the land grants.