The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-15 00:00:00

RAILWAY INTEL LIGE NOE.

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THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.
es those
said to be the construction of a railroad across the
continent, while the future prosperity of the terri-
tories lying between the Missourri river and the
Sierra Nevada mountains hangs entirely upon it.
The work itself is the greatest which the engineer-
ing skill of the century has devised or the extraor-
dinary enterprise of this nation grappled with. The
idea of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
by an iron road is grander than the wildest dreams
of the earlier navigators; and the visions of the
North-west passage, so long the lode-star of dis-
coverers, pale their ineffectual fires before this prac-
tical, sober design of nineteenth-century contrac-
tors. The short cut to Cathay which Columbus
dreamed of, and Cabot and Hudson sought to find,
is to be achieved not by discovery of navigable bays
or rivers, but by surmounting nature's most rugged
difficulties, by traversing desert wastes and climb-
ing mountain heights. And that this great work
will be accomplished in our day and generation we
seem to have the strongest proof. It can be re-
tarded by the universal passion for stealing which
marks all railroad enterprises ; but it will be accom-
plished. And yet we have fears that the work,
apparently progressing so rapidly, is in danger of
suspension from this very cause. Our railroad
magnates are, unfortunately, possessed of the idea
that they must make large fortunes in the prosecu-
tion of the work. They are not willing to await its
completion and the natural effects which would
inevitably arise out of so grand an enterprise. They
think they must bag immense sums as they go along.
The Government has granted to three roads now
in progress from this side subsidies of $16,000 per
mile and enormous gra;its of the public lands, and
the whole policy of the ':,.mtleinen into whose hands
these grants have fallen seems to be directed towards
getting all they can and doing for it as little as
possible. The Central route from Atchison west-
ward is completed forty miles, and the contractors
and their friends have just returned from a grand
jollification over the opening. We should consider
it better taste in those gentlemen to postpone their
junketing until the length of road they had finished
bore some decent proportion to the work they had
yet to do. But Congress is to be importuned again
this winter for fresh grants, and Indian treaties are
to be made, and this is one of the methods used to
blow their own trumpets and exalt their particular
work. This same Atchison and Pike's Peak Rail-
road is contracted for to a distance of one hundred
miles, the contractors in general being the president
and directors of the company and their friends. To
the contractors has been turned over the immense
grant of lands, the $16,000 per mile given by the
Government, and a like sum of first mortgage bonds.
It is calculated by these gentlemen that their profits
on the work of building this one hundred miles of
road will exceed the princely sum of five million
dollars. And yet these greedy people are not con-
tented. They want more. They sigh after fresh
fields and pastures new. They already possess the
regal domain of the Kickapoo Indians, for which
they have promised to pay the red men one dollar
and a quarter per acre, and which they now hold
at ten dollars per acre. But they are too astute to
offer their lands for sale. If they did, the aboriginal
owners of the tracts for which they pine might have
their sleepy eyes opened to the fact that their patri-
monial acres were worth more than a dollar and a
quarter each. Congress will be importuned this
winter,g and accomplished lobbyists will pervade the
national Capital, to provide fresh profits for these
philanthropic gentlemen. It is time that the whol e
subject received the attention which it deserves. It
would be well to know what Senators and what
Senators' friends are interested in these schemes,
and it would be desirable to have a committee ap-
pointed to examine into all of this Pacific Railroad
business. It needs examination. If one hundred
miles pay a profit of five million dollars, almost all
of which is derived from the national exchequer,
what will the whole road cost ? It is a very simple
sum in common arithmetic, which it does not need an
acquaintance with the higher branches of mathe-
matics to demonstrate. The objections to great
works undertaken by the Government are great and
many, but we doubt if the construction of the Pacific
Road by the Government could produce a worse re-
sult than this. And this is only the beginning.
This is only for a small part of the distance.
These persons who have made so pleasant a specu-
lation over the first hundred miles will and do desire
a fresh lease of power and new opportunities for
obeying the Shakespearean precept, " Put money
in thy purse." So long as Congress can be pur-
suaded into sixteen thousand dollars a mile, and a
credulous public will take bonds to a like amount,
and so long as these two items cover the cost of
building the road, the gentlemen interested will
continue to build. Why should they not do so? By
such a course they secure the magnificent land
grant on either side of the road for nothing. But
a time will come when mountain passes have to be
cut and tunnelled, and impetuous rivers bridged,
afar out in the plains, when the cost will be larger
than the two items we have just mentioned. Labour
will be more costly, subsistence dearer, and the
great difficulties of the enterprise before them. The
lands, too, in these distant deserts are not so much
sought after as the fertile slopes that border the
Missouri. When this state of facts exists the fol-
lowing question will become a pertinent one : Will
the gentlemen who have secured without cost those
fertile axles care to obtain at a considerable price
barren and sterile ones ? We think it needs no
great amount of foresight to enable us to answer
this question in the negative. Therefore we think
l tion by which the public
that any further legislation
domain or the public money may be granted for
the purpose of building
the Pacific Railroad should
be coupled with conditions which shall render the
grants nugatory should the work for any reason
fail to be completed. We would make all grants
upon conditions, and in the event of the conditions
failing we would have the grants fail also.—Tlic
Ro and Table.