uary 1, 1856. Also, to apply its net earnings inviolately, to dividends on the first division thereof, (extending from Davenport to Iowa City) to meet interest so as to increase the value of the stock of that division. Instead thereof, they made their terminus outside of the town, for more than three years, and have perversely kept their depots there to this day-and have always used the revenues which were pledged to the interest fund, to promote private coal-mining and hotel speculations, and to build plug roads in the State of Illinois.

In a word, instead of managing to make our stock marketable at par and productive and self-sustaining, the purpose early became manifest and successful, to reduce it as near to a nonentity as possible, so that the Rock Island & Pacific Company (themselves in disguise) could gobble it up for less than a mere song.

And when the apple was ripe they plucked it, in this way:

Although the Rock Island road was doing the most profitable business of any road in the United States, with two exceptions, and its stock was at the head of the Wall street market-(away up to 30 premium) and although our "division" was earning as much, in proportion to cost, as the Rock Island, and although the managers of the latter were principally owners of the former-they voluntarily defaulted in the payment of their mortgage bond interest, foreclosed against themselves, and bought in their own property, (and ours) for a few cents on the dollar.

As debtors and sellers, they were the M. & M. Company-as creditors and purchasers, they were the C., R. I. & P. Company. As both, they were Tracy, Durant, Farnum & Co., experts in Credit Mobilier swindling, obtaining large sums of other people's money for nothing.

Whilst this interesting process was going on the city treasurer's books show that the hard-working people of Johnson county were paying more than seven thousand dollars a year, in the shape of interest to these sharks, to supply the place of the road earnings which belonged to us, but were purposely withheld, so as to destroy the marketable value of our stock, to suit their ulterior designs.

Finally, the county government became restive, and cast about for effectual means of escape. Suits had been brought for delinquent interest, on the municipal bonds, and pettifogging defences upon such utterly insignificant technicalities as the non-appearance of the county seal upon coupons, had stuck us for considerable sums, but had left the merits of our cause untouched. Still, as was doubtless intended by the pettifoggers, or some of them, the ever odious doctrine of estoppel began to be mouthed in respect to the principal and remaining interest of these bonds.

Two or three specimen facts may be appropriately stated here, to illustrate the way in which Johnson county was always treated as a principal stockholder in this corporation. The bonds were issued about September, 1853, in full payment of an equal amount of company stock, upon assur

ances that the company would pay the interest thereon, until dividends. from road earnings equaled, interest. Nearly eleven years afterwards, and after the people had paid more than sixty thousand dollars of interest on the bonds, without receiving a cent of cash dividends, a special committee of the Board of Supervisors (S. H. Fairall and E. Carroll), were instructed to proceed to New York and sell the stock; and were compelled to report at the June session of 1864, that their mission was a total failure, because said stock had never been subject to the control of the county, and was then wholly unavailable, for the reason that the certificates had been placed by the company "in the hands of one Flagg," who told the committee that he held them as trustee for the bondholders!!! Johnson county had never appointed any such trustee, and knew nothing of the transaction! This "man Flagg," I take to be no other than Azariah C. Flagg, whom I well knew as treasurer of the M. & M. Company, and the shadow of President Dix, and who had been a member of the ald "Albany regency in the days of Marcy and Silas Wright (see supervisor's record, book 1, page 396.)

Four years afterwards, the mysterious embargo upon this stock seems to have been removed, for Edmonds & Ransom, railroad lawyers, gobbled it, at less than six cents to the dollar.

The efforts of Johnson county to defend herself, in the multiplied suits brought on the railroad bonds, were entirely unsuccessful. Taxes and costs accumulated to such a fearful extent, that bankruptcy of the community seemed inevitable. At the same time, the roads became more unconscionable in their tariffs and discriminations, whilst enjoying invidious exemptions from equal taxation with the citizens upon their property.

The Iowa courts-inimical at first-had at last reached a final decision, that these bonds were not within the commercial law, and that the levy of taxes to pay them, unauthorized by legislation, would be perpetually enjoined. Nevertheless, it was observed that the bondholders were stiffening in their demands, and that they could find purchasers for their bonds, even under the shadow of our own court house. Finally, the supervisors determined that they would not further levy, and the community, almost to a man declared that they would no longer pay.

The process of mandamus from the U. S. Circuit Court to compel the county boards to levy exorbitant taxes, was then invoked upon the one side; while measures were taken to enlist the legislature and judiciary of the State, upon the other.

In the course of a decision, lately promulgated by our Supreme Court, [in 1868] Mr. Chief Justice Dillon makes the following declarations in reference to these bonds:

"I believe the bonds are void-that there was no semblance of power to issue them that there can be no such thing as an innocent holder of such paper-that it is the settled adjudication of this Court, having before it the question, as a Court of last resort for the State."

Railroad bond matters worked along in this mysterious way, until the month of May, 1869, when the conspirators having everything in readiness, pounced down upon the non-levying supervisors and city councilmen with a warrant for contempt, and took them bodily before the U. S. Circuit Court at Des Moines.

[Here Mr. Byington adds many personal and partisan matters, which we omit. But the upshot of it all was, that the board of supervisors went home and levied the railroad tax, (Byington says "a quarter of a million"), as required by the Federal Court.]-HISTORIAN.

The cry then became universal that the payment of the taxes thus levied, could not and should not be enforced.

Mr. Cloud of Muscatine (who had been Attorney General), issued a programme of resistence, for the people of that county, who were in the same boat with us. Men of all occupations, and every persuasion, declared they would not voluntarily pay; and such was the pressure, that county treasurer Hershire announced that he would take no measures to enforce payment, or charge up delinquent interest. This feeling became contagious, and spread to nearly every county in eastern and central Iowa. Among others ex-Governor Kirkwood put himself upon record, in several masterly essays, in which he upheld the non-tax-payers' purposes with the most irrefragable arguments.

[See article headed wrestling with the railroads.]

From this time until after the ensuing session of the legislature, the bond battle raged all along the line with unabated fury.

In a foot note in his history, dated June 18, 1874, Mr. Byington says: NOTE.-Mr. county treasurer Swisher certifies to me that from the manner in which the books of his office were kept, he cannot, without immense labor, ascertain the amount of levies for railroad bonds previous to 1869, but that for '69, '70, '71, '72 and '73 the county levies for that purpose aggregate $228,093.64, and the city levies, same years, amount to $82,814.67. Total for five years, three hundred and ten thousand nine hundred and eight dollars!

NOTE BY THE HISTORIAN.-This historian found the same difficulties which Mr. Swisher alludes to, in trying to get hold of connected, systematic and complete data in regard to the railroad impositions practiced upon the county. They are not to be found; but the people had to pay the money, all the same. Johnson county, in common with many others, has suffered the gravest and deepest wrongs through the greed and chicanery of railroad speculators, who took advantage of the trusting eagerness of the people to do anything that was proposed which promised to secure them a railroad. Johnson county, or more especially Iowa City, seems always to have had more "leading men" to the square acre than was healthy for her; hence they jostled and crowded and elbowed each other to death, while some were blind leaders of the blind, and leader and led

all fell into the railroad ditch together. Some had political or financial axes to grind for themselves; some were ignorant or stupid in such matters, and easily used as tools by others; some were enthusiasts, over-zealous, over-confident, and missed their aim; some were jaundiced, sour, suspicious, off-ox sort of men, always croaking and hindering; some were narrow, short-sighted, pig-headed, but honest; some were cunning and far-reaching plotters for personal gain; some were public-spirited, discreet, and true to the public trust reposed in them. But each is accused of being to blame for some swindle upon the county, or the loss of some railroad which Iowa City paid for but never got. We will "never, never tell," the dozen or more names which have been given us confidentially as the particular scape-goat of the county or city's woe in particular cases. We assume that each man did what he thought at the time would be best. But of course when a man in public position makes a big mistake, though perfectly honest in his intention, the whole community suffers by it. An honest mistake can be forgiven, for the best and wisest are liable to err in judgment; but for complotters, connivers or perpetrators of fraud, LET NO GUILTY MAN ESCAPE, in Johnson county.

CHAPTER III.-PART 3.

FINANCIAL HISTORY.

First Tax List, 1838-First Taxes Collected, 1839-First County Orders-Financial Reports-A Loan Voted-A Lost Record-Financial Troubles in 1861, Etc.-Statistics of 1881--Finances in 1881-'82.

FIRST TAX LIST OF JOHNSON COUNTY.

The capital of Wisconsin Territory was in 1837 the same as now-the city of Madison. But the act to organize Johnson county was passed at a special session of the Wisconsin Territorial legislature, held at Burlington, [then in Wisconsin Territory] commencing June 11, 1838.

Johnson county had been formed or designated as to name and boundaries, by an act of the Wisconsin Territorial legislature, approved December 21, 1837; but it was not "organized," or given a system of county government of its own, until the act passed at the Burlington special session above mentioned had taken effect. Meanwhile, it was nominally under the authority of Cedar county, or "attached to Cedar county for civil purposes." Accordingly, the sheriff of Cedar county, James W. Tallman, brought the tax list for 1838 to S. C. Trowbridge, deputy sheriff of Johnson county, for collection, the business of assessing and collecting taxes being at that time part of the public duties devolving on sheriffs. While looking up the men named in this list, Trowbridge had the special object secretly in view, of showing to the legislature that Johnson county

had enough population to entitle it to be organized as a civil jurisdiction by itself; hence the hunt for noses to count was made very thorough, for home use, but no names were reported to the Cedar county authorities except those who had some taxable personal property. There could not be any real estate tax, for no man had yet obtained title to his land claim. But the people of Johnson knew that they were soon to be in shape to "run their own machine," and they were not willing to pay in as taxes a lot of money to be carried off to the coffers of Cedar county. Hence that tax was never collected. However, the list as made out, has a rare historic value, for it shows who were property owners in Johnson county at that time, being the first tax list that was ever made here; it shows what personal property and live stock there was in the county then, and what valuation was put upon them. We are indebted to Col. Trowbridge for the use of the original paper in the handwriting of Robert G. Roberts, clerk of Cedar county, which he had preserved among his own private relics of the pioneer days; and here we print it for preservation as a choice bit of Johnson county history. It has never been published before: