The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-03-06


Our advices from the West continue the old
story about the Pacific railways. There is
another drift Of snow on the line Of the Union
Pacific, and we have no idea when we shall
have another mail from California. The
exact nature of this obstruction Is unknown,
and something must be conceded to the in
clemency of the weather We have an unu-
sual season for March, but there is no reason
why we may not have series of winters like
the one now taking its furious departure for
twenty years to come.
If ships were made for summer seas and the
economy Of society contemplated only pleas
ant skies we could understand how this virtual
division of q continent would be regarded as
dispensation Of Providence. But this is a
world for summer and winter, for storm and
sunshine. Our ships are meant for hurri-
canes, our houses to keep out the rain, our
railways to drive through snow and hail.
When we build ships-ol-war we expect them
to sail all the year round; otherwise our
pleasure yachts and the gorgeously deco
| rated barges on the Hudson would
be an all sufficient navy. Enterprise
and science only do their work when they
overmaster nature-when they bridge streams,
and lay speaking cable in the ocean caverns,
and tunnel the Alps, and dig the Suez Canal.
So when. our government in its wisdom
yielded to the general demand and endorsed
a Pacific railway it was expected that we
should have railway for winter and summer.
The unity of the country seemed to demand
this railway. The discovery of gold in Cali
fornia had suddenly attracted Commonwealth
to the Pacific coast. A climate of unusual
mildness, scenery that surpassed the Alps,
agricultural resources of incredible extent,
and, above all, the supreme temptation of
| gold, had made California the Ell Dorado Of
the young American. Thither went our
friends and brothers, by the tedious passage
around the Horn through the narrow,
miasmatic isthmus, and now and then in some
| of the caravans that covered the Plains. A
Commonwealth arose as far from the East
as we are from Australia or Buenos Ayres,
and grave men feared that time and intrigue
and restlessness would weaken the political ties
that bound the Pacific and the Atlantic. The
telegraph was the first strand in the new bond
of union; the railway came after. In building
the railway Congress acted with generosity
| that became reckless through ignorance. We
had been taught to believe that the railway
route to the Pacific was beset with unimagin-
able and insurmountable difficulties; that
Nature, in her moods of volcanic fantasy, had
so upset and tumbled around these inner West
ern regions-had strewn the way with 80
many canyons and precpices and mountains
and lakes and streams-that road could not
be built unless at four times the cost of road
in the older States.
The money was given and the road was
built. The country in time came to see that the
cost was four times as much as it should have
been but the fact that there was really q
road, that the two oceans had finally been
united, was too pleasing to the American mind
for us to ask many questions. If questions
had been asked it would have been found that
this Pacific Railroad scheme, with the various
| phases with which it has since blossomed, was
the most stupendous fraud ever perpetrated
on free country. Instead of using the funds
and lands granted to them to bnild the road the
men who held the franchise formed Ring,
put the governm ent endowment into their
pockets, and made as shabby road as the
government could be brought to accept. The
audacty, the foresight, the intrepidity of this
Ring was Napoleonic. 1t carried everything.
Presidents of the United States did its bidding
by appointing commissioners to examine the
road who would make satisfactory reports.
President Johnson had no better appointments
in his gift, according to the market quotations
of the lobby Vice Presidents made them
selves advertising agents of the Ring. Speak
ers Of the House, like Colfax and Blaine, APP
pointed Pacific Railway committees who would
be acceptable to the Ring Newspapers were
subsidized here and there, and members of
Congress amassed large sums by having q
knowledge of the movements of the Ring. As
the representative director of one road admit
ted, he had spent half million of dollars in
| Washington upon business so confidential"
that he declined to give the Board the items.
Even with this enormity we should have been
patient, despairing of any proper or practical
remedy, had the Ring given us railroad
| to the Pacific. Such a road does not exist.
We have summer road-a pair of Indifferent
iron tracks that will answer in midsummer
| Otherwise we are as far from San Francisco
as from London, and the midsummer accom-
mediation cannot in these attitudes be de-
pended upon for day. Travel to the Pacific
is an experiment And yet money enough
as paid to have laid steel double track the
whole way, and cover every exposed point
with snow sheds In this period of investiga-
ton the time has come for an outraged and
robbed nation to ask questions. If Mr.. Sumner
and Mr. Schurz mean to have investigations
worthy Of the name, let them order an inquiry
into the building of this Pacific Railway, the