East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1906-01-03
CRAFT OF THE RAILROAD LAND GRANTS

Generous and prodigal as the gov
eminent has been in it's grants and
donations the most lurld example of
shameful wastefulness of the national
domain and government patrimony is
found in the grants and other aids to
the great transcontinental roads. the
Union-Central Pacific, the Southern
Pacific, the Northern Pacific, and
others.
1t has been stated that upward of
1S0,000,000 acres of land We're in
cluded in the Pacific land grants The
government had, on June 80, 1904,
already decided to the several roads
direct over 6S,OOO,0O0 acres. to say
nothing of what reached them indi-
rectly through the states, and of those
lands the title is still allowed to be in
abeyance in state and nation to escape
taxation, and for other questionable
purposes.
OF all Pacific railroads, the Union
Pacific with its attendant outlet to
the Pacific, the Central Pacific) de-
veloped in its promotion and construc-
ton the most extraordinary record of
private and official venality and spoil
alton. 1t was indeed the pioneer in
more fields than one. The cost of the
S414.92 miles of road involved in the
double-headed scheme Uncluding the
Kansas Pacific from Kansas City to
Denver, as much as was then con-
structed of the road to Portland. Or,
and some smaller branch lines) was in
1879 reported by competent authority
as $S1S,S52,SSS, or $93,224 per mile.
The estimated cost of duplication in
1879 was given at $2S,624 per mile, or
an aggregate of less than 500, ,00O. 600.
The excess was garnered in by thrifty
promoters, the Credit Mobilier Con-
struction company, with its Aladdin
lamp and its princely dividends of
spoil, and by brazen and profligate
lobby and its even more shameless
victims.
The records show that in 1879 up
ward of s25, 100000 had been realized
by the UnionCentral Pacific from the
sale of land grant lands at an average
price of $40 per acre, and that about
24,000.OO0 acres still remained in the
hands of the companies. The title to
these lands, for reasons already stat
ed, was thriftily allowed to stand in
the United States until business exi-
gencies made their transfer advisable
or imperative.
Congress at an early day had been
manipulated to pledge the government
credit in additional aid of these Sc
ductive colossi, as follows:
Government subsidy, U. p.
Council Bluffs to ogden. $27,2S6,O72
Government subsidy, X p,
Kansas City to Denver. 100000
Government subsidy, C. p,
Ogden to San Francisco. 25.SS519O
Government subsidy c. p,
Oakland to San Jose 1,97O.5OO
or total of bonds loaned by the
United States in the aid of this one
system of $61,394,692, a sum. as
shown, almost alone enough to have
built the road.
On this sum the government had by
1897 paid in interest the enormous
aggregate of $S5, 900, thus making
a total outlay of cash or its euuivalent
on behalf of the private enterprise of
almost $15O,OOO,OOO
The reimbursement to the govern
ment hereon amounted at that time
to about $4,000, 900, being about five
or six million dollars in cash and the
balance in transportation services at
exorbitant rates. The government
mad therefore twice paid for the con-
struction of the Union-Central system,
once in land and once in cash.
The reward to the nation for its
generous pledge of the national credit,
not to mention the prodigal sacrifice
OF the public domain, was a dastardly
betrayal of its best interests. Private
greed and official duplicity conspired
to subordinate the government lien