building of needed lines.

While such objection is inconsistent with the fourth it may have some force; but as the greater part of the country is already provided with all the railways that will be needed for a generation, it is not a very serious objection even if it is as difficult as asserted to procure the building of new lines. It is not probable, however, that the government would refuse to build any line that would clearly subserve public convenience, the conduct of the postal service negativing such a supposition; and for party purposes the administration would certainly favor the construction of such lines as were clearly needed, and it is high time that only such should be built; and what instrumentality so fit to determine this as a non-partisan commission acting as the agent of the whole people?

The sixth objection is that lines built by the government would cost much more than if built by corporations.

Possibly this would be true, but they would be much better built and cost far less for maintenance and “betterments,” and would represent no more than actual cost; and such lines as the Kansas Midland, costing but $10,200 per mile, would not, as now, be capitalized at $53,024 per mile; nor would the President of the Union Pacific (as does Sidney Dillon, in the North American Review for April,) say that “A citizen, simply as a citizen, commits an impertinence when he questions the right of a corporation to capitalize its properties at any sum whatever,” as then there would be no Sidney Dillons who would be presidents of corporations, pretending to own railways built wholly from government moneys and lands, and who have never invested a dollar in the construction of a property which they have now capitalized at the modest sum of $106,000 per mile. After such an achievement, in making much out of nothing, it is no wonder that Mr. Dillon is a multi-millionnaire and thinks it an impertinence when a citizen asks how he has discharged his trust in relation to a railway built wholly with public funds, no part of which Mr. Dillon and his associates seem in haste to pay back; their indebtedness to the government, with many years of unpaid interest, amounting to more than $50,000,000, which is more than the cash cost of the railway upon which these men have been so sharp as to induce the government, after furnishing all the money expended in its construction, to accept a second mortgage, and now ask the same accommodating government to reduce the rate of interest—which they make no pretence of paying—to a nominal figure, and to wait another hundred years for both principal and interest. To make sure that the government’s second mortgage shall be no more valuable than second mortgages usually are, and to make it more comfortable for the manipulators, Messrs. Gould and Dillon now propose to put a blanket first mortgage of $250,000,000 on this property, built wholly from funds derived from the sale of government lands and bonds, and to pay the interest on which bonds the people are yearly taxed, although Mr. Dillon and his associates contracted to pay such interest. In his conception of the relations of railway corporations to the public, Mr. Dillon is clearly not in accord with the higher tribunals which hold, in substance, that railways are public rather than private property, and that the shareholders are entitled to but a reasonable compensation for the capital actually expended in construction and a limited control of the property; and in this connection it may be well to quote briefly from decisions of the United States Supreme Court, which, in the case of Wabash Railway vs. Illinois, uses this language: “The highways in a State are the highways of the State. The highways are not of private but of public institution and regulation. In modern times, it is true, government is in the habit, in some countries, of letting out the construction of important highways, requiring a large expenditure of capital, to agents, generally corporate bodies created for the purpose, and giving them the right of taxing those who travel or transport goods thereon as a means of obtaining compensation for their outlay; but a superintending power over the highways, and the charges imposed upon the public for their use, always remains in the government.” Again, in Olcott vs. the Supervisors, it is held that: “Whether the use of a railway is a public or private one depends in no measure upon the question who constructed it or who owns it. It has never been considered of any importance that the road was built by the agency of a private corporation. No matter who is the agent, the function performed is that of the State.”

Mr. Justice Bradley says: “When a railroad is chartered it is for the purpose of performing a duty which belongs to the State itself…. It is the duty and prerogative of the State to provide means of intercommunication between one part of its territory and another.”

If, as appears, such is the duty of the State (nation) why should not the State resume the discharge of this duty when the corporate agents to which it has delegated it are found to be using the delegated power for the purpose of oppressing and plundering a public which it is the duty of the government to protect?

The abilities of the man who cannot become a multi-millionnaire with the free use, for twenty-five years, of $33,000,000 of government funds, must be of a very low order, and it is no wonder, that after having for so many years had the use of such a sum without payment of interest, Mr. Dillon and his associates are very wealthy, and, like others who are retaining what does not belong to them, think it an impertinence when the owner inquires what use they are making of property to which they have no right. Had the nation built the Union Pacific there would have been no “Credit-Mobilier” and its unsavory scandal, and it is safe to say that the road would not now be made to represent an expenditure of $106,000 per mile, and that Mr. Dillon and some others would not have so much money as to warrant them in putting on such insufferable airs. When it is remembered what use Oakes Ames and the Union Pacific crew made of issues of stock, it is not at all surprising that the president of the Union Pacific should think it an impertinence for a citizen to question the amount of capitalization or the use to which a part of such issues have been put, some of which are within the knowledge of the writer, so far as relates to issues of that part of the Union Pacific lying in Kansas and built by Samuel Hallett, who told the writer that he gave a member of the then federal cabinet several thousand shares of the capital stock of the “Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division,”—now the Kansas Division of the Union Pacific—to secure the acceptance of sections of the road which were not built in accordance with the requirements of the act of Congress, which provided that a given amount of government bonds per mile should be delivered to the railway company when certain officials should accept the road; and it was a quarrel with the chief engineer of the road in relation to a letter written by such engineer to President Lincoln, informing him of the defective construction of this road, that caused Samuel Hallett to be shot down in the streets of Wyandotte, Kansas, by engineer Talcott. It is within the knowledge of the writer that the member of the cabinet to whom Mr. Hallett said he gave several thousand shares of stock, held an amount of Union Pacific shares years afterwards, and that many years after he left the cabinet he continued to draw a large salary from the Union Pacific Company. Mr. Hallett also told the writer what were the arguments applied to congressmen to induce them to change the government lien from a first to a second mortgage of the Pacific Railway lines, and what was his