Great Fortunes from Railroads | Page 8

Appendix, 172-531.] were often outwitted by this class of adventurers,
and were only too glad to treat with them as associates, on the
recognized commercial principle that success was the test of men's
mettle, and that the qualities productive of such success must be

immediately availed of.
In other instances a number of tradesmen and landowners would
organize a company having, let us say, $250,000 among them. If they
had proceeded to build a railroad with this sum, not many miles of rail
would have been laid before they would have found themselves
hopelessly bankrupt.
Their wisdom was that of their class; they knew a far better method.
This was to use the powers of government, and make the public
provide the necessary means. In the process of construction the
$250,000 would have been only a mite. But it was quite enough to
bribe a legislature. By expending this sum in purchasing a majority of
an important committee, and a sufficient number of the whole body,
they could get millions in public loans, vast areas of land given outright,
and a succession of privileges worth, in the long run, hundreds upon
hundreds of millions of dollars.
A WELTER OF CORRUPTION.
So the onslaught of corruption began and continued. Corruption in
Ohio was so notorious that it formed a bitter part of the discussion in
the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1850-51. The delegates were
droning along over insertions devised to increase corporation power.
Suddenly rose Delegate Charles Reemelin and exclaimed:
"Corporations always have their lobby members in and around the halls
of legislation to watch and secure their interests. Not so with the
people--they cannot act with that directness and system that a
corporation can. No individual will take it upon himself to go to the
Capitol at his own expense, to watch the representatives of the people,
and to lobby against the potent influences of the corporation. But
corporations have the money, and it is to their interest to expend it to
secure the passage of partial laws." [Footnote: Ohio Convention
Debates, 1850-51, ii: 174.]
Two years later, at one of the sessions of the Massachusetts
Constitutional Convention, Delegate Walker, of North Brookfield,
made a similar statement as to conditions in that State. "I ask any man

to say," he asked, "if he believes that any measure of legislation could
be carried in this State, which was generally offensive to the
corporations of the Commonwealth? It is very rarely the case that we
do not have a majority in the legislature who are either presidents,
directors or stockholders in incorporated companies. This is a fact of
very grave importance." [Footnote: Debates in the Massachusetts
Convention, 1853, iii: 59.] Two-thirds of the property in Massachusetts,
Delegate Walker pointed out, was owned by corporations.
In 1857 an acrimonious debate ensued in the Iowa Constitutional
Convention over an attempt to give further extraordinary power to the
railroads. Already the State of Iowa had incurred $12,000,000 in debts
in aiding railroad corporations. "I fear," said Delegate Traer, "that it is
very often the case that these votes (on appropriations for railroads) are
carried through by improper influences, which the people, if left alone,
would, upon mature reflection, never have adopted." [Footnote:
Constitutional Debates, Iowa, 1857, ii: 777.]
IMPOTENCE OF THE PEOPLE.
These are but a very few of the many instances of the debauching of
every legislature in the United States. No matter how furiously the
people protested at this giving away of their resources and rights, the
capitalists were able to thwart their will on every occasion. In one case
a State legislature had been so prodigal that the people of the State
demanded a Constitutional provision forbidding the bonding of the
State for railroad purposes. The Constitutional Convention adopted this
provision. But the members had scarcely gone to their homes before the
people discovered how they had been duped. The amendment barred
the State from giving loans, but (and here was the trick) it did not
forbid counties and municipalities from doing so. Thereupon the
railroad capitalists proceeded to have laws passed, and bribe county and
municipal officials all over the State to issue bonds and to give them
terminal sites and other valuable privileges for nothing. In every such
case the railroad owners in subsequent years sneaked legislation
through in practically every State, or resorted to subterfuges, by which
they were relieved from having to pay back those loans.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, exacted from the people in taxation,
were turned over to the railroad corporations, and little of it was ever
returned. As for the land grants to railroads, they reached colossal
proportions. From 1850 to 1872 Congress gave not less than
155,504,994.59 acres of the public domain either direct to railroad
corporations, or to the various States, to be transferred to