No stock, no bonds, no fraudulent construction companies came with us. We did not deal in dollars nor peddle securities.
We had naught but labor to expend, and pretended nothing more. But we had all that labor makes and thousands of willing hands.
When we built our road we offered it for use as the creature of labor and not the creature of capital.
To build it and equip it we began at the very foundation. The ore we mined, and smelted it in our own furnaces. We fashioned our own plough and with it turned the furrow. We made the harrow and followed it afield. We planted the grain and when it ripened in the golden sun we harvested it with blades our own hands wrought. We delved again, and from the mines we brought the ore, and in the blazing furnaces we moulded the steel automata which, at our bidding, amid the Shoshone’s roar, reduced our wheat to flour, or wove the wool of our own flocks to cloth.
Then we made rails of steel, and of the pulp of straw made paper ties, and threw up grades, or hewed our way through rock-ribbed hills. And so our road was built to Minnesota’s line and we proposed to build it through that state and onward to Chicago.
It can be seen that our own road could, when completed, be operated far cheaper than any of the competitive class. We had our coal in Idaho at first cost; our iron at first cost; our steel rails, ties and all necessary equipments at first cost. No brokers or speculators intervened.
Our railroad force wore clothing which we made, and no retailer exacted from our employe a profit. We fed him with our own home-grown and home-made flour, sugar, beef and supplies. How could the competitors compete with that?
We did not delay long at Minnesota’s boundary. The Brotherhood in that state soon organized a company under the laws of the state and its stock was nearly all conveyed to our Association, except just enough to enable us to have nominal officers in the state as the law required. The same course was pursued in Wisconsin and Illinois and our road was completed in due time.
Similar consequences followed the completion of this road that followed the establishment of our department store and hotel at Boise City.
The business of nearly all the roads to the coast came to the Co-opolitan. The other roads could not compete with us.