Year: 1870

roads and offers them for sale at So 90 per
acre, is sufficient guaranty that the rail
road companies will not hold their lands
at an exorbitant figure; and the fact that
the business and success of the roads will
DEPEND very largely upOn the rapidity
with which the adjacent lands arc settled,
is ample warrant that the railroads will
not long hold their lands out of the mar
ket. Selfinterest ard the public good
will here harmOniZe.


The Northern Pacific Company, in
coming before Congress and asking for
the recent legislation, which has Occa-
stoned so much discussion and misunder-
standing, requested four things: a. That
the original land grant, voluntarily con-
ferred by Congress six years ago, be made
good by permitting the Company to ap-
propriate other public lands to c0mpen-
safe for those belonging to the grant,
which lad been taken up by settlers and
spectators; (2) That the short branch
road to be constructed from Portland,
Oregon. to Puget Sound be entitled TO
the saEio land subsidy as the main line /;
g that the company be permitted to
make the junction of its two western
branches at point further east than the
original charter speciied.-this in order
to avoid engineering difficulties in the
mountain region; and q } that specific
authority be given the company to make
a single mortgage covering all its proper
ty and rights of property. This last re-
quest was made in order to avoid the ne
cessity of making fresh mortgage every
time a new instalment of land came into
the hands of the company by the compile
tion of each twenty-fve-mile section of
road. Under the legislation recently en-
acted, the lands OF the North Pacific
grant will pass under the general mort
gage TO the bondholders just as fast as by
the completion of successive portions OF
the road, they pass into the control and
ownership of the company-and no faster.
The current assertion that the bill author
ICES the company to mortgage its lands In
advance of the construction OF the road,
is without foundation and absurd. The
charter provides when and on what con-
ditions the lands OF the grant shall be-.
come the property of the company, and
the recent legislation does not change the
charter in this regard, nor authorize the
company to mortgage that which is not its
property.


The fact that the application Of the





tional legislation named above was pre-
ceded and followed by the introduction in
Congress of a swarm of petty land grant
schemes for local and imaginary roads
schemes having no merits and no claims
to consideratiOn-should not be allowed
to pre- iudice great and genuine enter
prise, which the people are really desirOus
to aid, because it will aid them in return.
Undoubtedly the country wishes Congress
to limit the application of the land sub
sidy policy to the three trunk lines of
Pacific railroad. Here the line of dis
tinction should be drawn, and here the
nation should put down its foot. Let the
continent be tTaversed by Northern, a
Central and Southern Pacific Railroad,
opening up the western wilderness, III
three broad belts, to settlement and cul-
ture, travel and trade; then let local rail
roads be built by private enterprise as fast
az population and business demand them.
The land grant system, as applied to these
three main routes, is common sense and
sound economy. Carried to the extreme,
aud applied to the numberiess local cor
porations that are clsmoriDg for aid at the
doors of Congress, il is indefcnsible waste.