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 his 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 1 he public burdens, MUST be recognized by all classes as the preme law of this republic.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT" IN THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT.

W

E 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 holding 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 govern

ment 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 pecularities 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:

I look

"My views of the Pacific railroad are peculiar. upon its managers as trustees of the bounty of congress. I cannot willingly see them take a step in the incipiency of the project that will, I believe, if followed out, swell the cost of construction so much that by the time the work reaches the mountains the representative capital will be accumulated so much that at the very time when the company will have need for all its resources, of capital as well as of credit, its securities will not be negotiable in the market. From my very boyhood I have associated Mr. Cisco and yourself with Mr. Bronson and Mr. Flagg, men whose integrity, purity, and singleness of purpose have made them marked men in the generation in which they lived. Of course my opinion remains unchanged. You are, doubtless, uninformed how disproportionate the amount to be paid is to the work contracted for. I need not expatiate upon the sincerity of my course, when you reflect

upon the fact that I have resigned the best position in my profession this country has ever offered to any man.

Mr. Dey protested against the extravagant amount agreed to be paid Hoxie. The cost of the sections of the road contracted to Hoxie was $7,806,181. The amount agreed to be paid Hoxie for the work was $12,974,416. Mr. Dey saw that this man Hoxie was a straw man, and that near $5,000,000 were to be divided among the directors as the profit on this contract, and, as engineer, he protested against it. Yet these government directors, whose sole duty it was to look after and protect the interests of the government and the people, failed to discover and report these abuses to the secretary of the interior; or if the same and the Credit Mobilier transactions were so reported, then the influence of these corporations controlled the department of the secretary. The truth is, the position of these government directors was such that without a total disregard of the statutes, and their duties under it, it was not possible to keep all knowledge of these gross abuses from the department. But one conclusion can be drawn from the facts, which is, that the government directors, influenced by these powerful monopolies, were unfaithful to the trust confided to them by the presi dent.

Under the statute, the secretary of the interior has the general control of the issue of bonds, certificates for lands, rights of way, etc. The government directors were bound to report to him. If the duties imposed under the law had been faithfully discharged by him, the great abuses practiced by the Pacific railroad companies would have been prevented. The Hoxie contract, the Ames Credit Mobilier contract, and the Davis contract were all made for about double the cost of building the respective sections of the road covered by these contracts, the actual cost of these respective sections being $50,720,957, and the amounts allowed the contractors being $93,546,387. In this amount is included $1,104,000, which was a duplicate payment allowed Ames for work done, and once paid for under the Hoxie contract. These three jobs put