The Union Pacific Railway; a study in railway politics, history, and economics

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

CHAPTER I. — Genesis of the Pacific Railway

The Emigrant article, 13. Barlow's suggestion, 14. Clarke's article, 15. Boggs' article, 15. Benton's prediction, 15. Hunt's prediction, 15. Parker's prediction, 16. Jlills' claim, 16. Carver's claim and article, 17. Plumbe's pamphlet, 18. Advocacy of nevi^ projects, 18.

CHAPTER II.— Asa Whitney

Origin of Whitney's scheme, 19. Philanthropy, 19. First memorial to Congress, 20. Colonization scheme, 21. Whitney bill of 1850, 22. Systematic public agitation, 24. Nature of Whitney's public meetings, 24. Meetings at Philadelphia and New York, 24. Success of public agitation, 28. Sum total of Whitney's work, 28. 28th Congress, 29. Whitney's second memorial, 29. 29th Congress, 29. Whitney's third memorial, 30. 30th Congress, 30. Appropriation for surveys, 31. Whitney's book, 31. Climax of Whitney's efforts, 31. 31st Congress, 32. Last Whitney bill, 33. 32d Congress, 33. Anticipated obstacles to Pacific Railway, 33.

CHAPTER;'llI. — Sectionalism and Localism.

Pacific railway as an early national project, 35. Early absence of local question of termini, 36. Influence of annexation and development of new territory, 36. Objections to railway building by state, 37. " Storm and stress," 38. Eastern interest, 38. Saint Louis interest, 39. Memphis interest, 40. Charleston interest, 41. Texas interest, 41. North and South, 42. 32d Congress, 44. Gwin bill, 44. " Magnificence " of Gwin bill, 45. Amendments relating to routes and termini, 46. Adams, Chase and Bell amendments, 46. Bell's prophecy, 47. Rusk bill, 47. Efforts to reconcile conflicting interests, 48. Opposition of Democrats, 49. Practical political considerations, 49. New conditions in 1862 and 1864, 50. Brooke, Brodhead and Sliields amendments, 50. Death, resurrection, second death and obsequies of Gwin and Rusk bills, 51. Appropriation for surveys, 53. Annual message of President Pierce, 53. 33d Congress,

S

6 THE UNION PACIBIC RAILWAY.

S3. A "Buncombe" bill, 54. McDougall bill in house, 54- The Alleghanies, the Mississippi, and the Pacific railway, 54. Northern Pacific, 57. Surveys under Jefferson Davis, 59. Five Pacific railway routes, 59. Contents of reports, 59. Jefferson Davis' conclusion, 60. 33d Congress, 60. Douglas bill, 61. Mason's amendment, its inspiration and effect, 63. Parliamentary experience and defeat of Douglas bill, 64. "Individual confi- " dence," 66. Change from national to individual view, 66. Benton's "confidence," 67. Southern "confidence," 68. Bliss' view of Douglas bill, 68. Not the only but the first Pacific railway the question, 69. Selfassertion of people in 185S, 70. Stagnation in 34th Congress, 70. Apparent favorable conditions in 1857, 72. Democratic and Republican platforms of 1856, 72. Buchanan's California letter, 73. Inaugural address and first annual message, 73. Buchanan's view of the constitution and his Southern sympathies, 74. Annual reports of Secretary Floyd and Postmaster General Brown, 75. Disposition of President's message of 1857, 77. 35th Congress, 77. Bennett's resolution, 77. Senate bill of 1857- 1858,78. " Equality of Opportunity" bill, 78. Seward's confession, 80. "Outward expression" of North vs. South feeling, 81. Jefferson Davis' amendment, 82. Northern fear of Buchanan's Southern sympath'es, 83. Iverson's statement of attitude of South, 84. Doolittle's amendment, 86. Hale's irony, 86. Green's amendment, 86. Wilson-Bigler amendment, 86. Wilson's national amendment, 87. Passage by Senate of metamorphosed "Equality of Opportunity" bill, 87. Excitement on passage of bill, 88. Amendment of title, 89. 35th Congress, second session, proceedings in House, 89. Pacific railway corporation, 89. Buchanan's annual message of 1859, 89. Conditions in 36th Congress, 90. Curtis bill, passage by House, passage by Senate with amendments, desertion by House, 90. Gwin's opinion, 95.

CHAPTER IV.— The Charter

Republican and Democratic platforms of i860, 96. Short session and special session of Congress, 1860-1861, 97. Conditions favorable to Pacific railway, 97. Three conflicting interests, 99. Three Pacific railway bills in each House, 99. Work of House Committee on Pacific railroad, 1861- 1862, 100. Provisions of Rollins' " Union " bill, passage by House, amendments of Senate, 100. The "Initial Point," 102. Bill passed by House 1862, 103. Nature, powers and duties of corporation created, 103. Aid by land grant, 105. Aid by loan of government bonds and security for repayment, 105. Central Pacific, 107. Branch lines, 107. Consolidation of companies, 109. Lines of telegraph, 109. Congressional control of rates, 109. Reserved power of amendment, no. Annual reports of companies, no. "Saving the charter," in. McDougall bill of 1862-1S63,

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 7

III. Gauge of Pacific railway, 113. Question of "adequate inducements," 115. Inflation of national power, 115. Reaction against Pacific railway, 116. Pacific railway brigands, 116. Ransom demanded, 117. Congressional situation in 1864, 117. Passage of Senate bill, 1863-1864, 118. Guaranteed interest on bonds, 119. New "Initial Point," 119. House bill of 1864, 119. Holman amendment, 120. Washburne's philippic, 120. Pruyn's three amendments, 122. Wilson's and Dawes' amendments, 123. Passage of House bill, 123. Conference committee, 124. Act of 1864, 124. Tire lobby, 125. Hasty legislation, 125. Right of way, 126. Internal changes in corporation, 127. Increase of land grant, 127. Increased "adequacy" of loan of bonds, 128. Union Pacific, Eastern Division, I2(i,__- Reserved power of amendment, 129. The Union Pacific and the constitution, 129. Steps in constitutional advance, 131. The Union Pacific and the Rebellion, 133.

CHAPTER v.— Done!

Deification of Pacific railway, 136. Elements of adventure and romance, 137. Rapidity, difficulties and military character of construction, 138. Settlement of line, 143. Life in " Headquarters Towns," 144. Relative length of Union Pacific and Central Pacific, 148. Greatest railway race, 149. Overlapping of rival lines, 151. Point of junction, 151. Salt Lake City and the Pacific railway, 152. "Driving the last spike," 153. Date of completion of the Union Pacific, 156. Question of eastern terminus, 160. Significance of construction of Pacific railway, 161.

CHAPTER VL— Credit Mobilier.

Organization of Union Pacific Railroad Company, 163. Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency, 164. Union Pacific and Credit Mobilier, 165. Hoxie contract,

166. Boomer contract, 166. Durant quarrel, 167. Oakes Ames contract,

167. Seven Trustees, 168. Davis contract, 169. Effect of Credit Mobilier manipulation, 169. Profits of construction of Union Pacific, 17c. Disposition of Union Pacific land grant, 173. Unnecessary enhancement of cost of Union Pacific, 173. Union Pacific and Credit Mobilier as Mephisto, 174. McComb disagreement, 175. Three Ames-McComb letters, 175. Political scandal and sensation, 177. Poland and Wilson committees of investigation and their reports, 178. Report of Committee on the Judiciary, 179. Roll of implicated members and ex-members, 180. Resolutions of expulsion of Ames and Brooks, 1S8. Butler's resolution, 18S. Agreement to Sargent's resolution of condemnation of Ames and Brooks, 1S9. Senate resolution of expulsion of Patterson, 190. Death of Ames and Brooks, 191. Credit Mobilier edict, 191. United States vs. Union Pacific Railroad Company, et al., 193. Inglorious end of Credit Mobilier sensation, 196. Typical character of Credit Mobilier, 196. Origin of construction companies, 197. Sectionalism and localism in Congress, 200. Oakes Ames philosophy, 201. " Satan rebuking sin," 202.

CHAPTER VII.— Thurman Act

Union Pacific among wolves, 203. Dawes resolution, 203. Joint resolution of April, 1869, 205. Removal of causes, 206. Question of rates, 207. Interest question, 208. Opinon of Attorney General Akerman, 210. Action of Congress and the Treasury Department, 210. Hostile legislation of 1873,210. Decision of "interest case," 211. Net earnings question, 212. Decision of "net earnings cases," 214. Thurman Act, 215. Definition of "net earnings," 216. Sinking fund, 216. Prohibition of dividends, 217. Reserved power of amendment, 218. Decision of "sinking fund cases," 219. Contrast of moral and legal views of decision, 220. Failure of sinking fund scheme, 222. Remedies suggested, 223. United States Pacific Railway Commission, 224.

CHAPTER VIII.— Present and Future

Rapid increase of Pacific railway debt to government, 225. Three ways of disposition open to Congress, 226. General considerations, 227. Extraordinary circumstances, 227. Theoretical attitude of Congress to railways, 229. Unreasonable inferences from Pacific railway history, 230. Erroneous popular impressions, 231. Preservation of sovereign dignity of United States, 232. " Winding up " plan, 232. " Sinking fund " plan, 239. " Refunding " plan, 240. Future possibilities, 242.

NOTE. — The Receivership and Reorganization, - 243

Introduction

The work of the student of history has heretofore been confined almost wholly to the political, religious and literary development of peoples ; their industrial development has been subjected to inexcusable neglect. Yet the pillars of the dominance of the Anglo - Saxon race are its superior industrial attributes. What a people accomplishes industrially and how it accomplishes it go far to determine how it will be governed, what it will think and feel, and what it will write. The freedom of the individual that was the product of the eighteenth century has been more emphatically manifested in the field of industry than in any other field of human activity. The growth of constitutional government in England is easily traced to the want of harmony between the old political status and the newly developed industrial status of English society. The increasing tendency to submit international disputes to arbitration is attributable not so much to a more enlightened repugnance to warfare as to the mere human fear of destruction of wealth and interference with industries occasioned by it. The Annapolis Convention had its origin in the desire of the American states "To consider how far a uniform system in their commercial relations" might "be necessary to their common interests." The slavery question was largely an industrial question, and its solution was industrial, not political or moral ; the event of the Rebellion was not a decision that Webster was a more skillful interpreter of the Constitution than was Calhoun, or that slavery was morally wrong and freedom morally right, but simply that the North was stronger than the South, that a form of society based on free labor was stronger than one based on slave labor, and had produced greater material results. If the political, religious and literary conditions of the present day may be understood aright, it is only by studying them in the light of past and present industrial conditions. From this point of view, the study of the origin, growth and present status of the Union Pacific Railway as a type of the transcontinental railway systems of the United States — the result, and reactively the cause of industrial conditions of the greatest moment — can hardly fail to be productive of more than passing benefit. The internal development of the Union Pacific and its relations to the individual citizen have been so similar to those of other American railways that little space will be given to them in these pages; its relations to the whole people and to the United States, the political embodiment of the people, will receive most attention.

It will be found that the Union Pacific is an exceptional manifestation of a rapidly expanding people's economic need of industrial instruments, and of its willingness to overleap political barriers to obtain them and strain legal principles to control them. The agencies through which this particular instrument was obtained and applied to use will be found seriously out of harmony with settled political and moral principles, and the latter distended and strained to subserve unusual industrial purposes. Finally, settled principles of law will be found to have been inadequate in this case to attain the ends of abstract justice, and the term justice itself

INTRODUCTION. 1 1

to have been offered a new and strange definition in response to the demand of a dangerous industrial outgrowth. In the uncertain groping of statesmen, jurists and "industrial captains," manifestoes and edicts in place of laws and judgments, and "manipulations" in place of free individual activity, have afforded convincing proof of the obscurity in which the relations of social principles are involved.

The present practical question of the Pacific railway debt is of the highest importance m that it involves the possible loss to the United States of one hundred and twenty -five millions of dollars, with the dangerous alternative of a radical departure from the previous industrial policy of the government and people of the United States. If one hopes to discover a true solution of the question, it is only by a scientific study of the subject in its origin, development and present status.

Chapter I. Genesis Of The- Pacific Railway

Though the idea of uniting the Atlantic and Pacific by a railway, or system of railwa3's, or connecting railways and waterways, may have occurred to several minds in different places at about the same time, and though it was the natural result of industrial and political conditions, it was probably first given public expression in the Emigrant, a weekly newspaper published at Ann Arbor, ^Michigan (Territory) from November i8, 1829, to December i, 1834. The writer of the article, found in the editorial columns of number XII. of Volume III., issued February 6, 1832, is unknown, though it should probably be accredited to Judge S. W. Dexter, the publisher and one of the editors of the paper. Under the title of " Something New," the unknown writer, after a quite profuse apology for suggesting a scheme that might be regarded by an incredulous public as chimerical and visionary, and after consoling himself with the reflection that "it is nobler to fail in a great undertaking than to succeed in a small one," elaborates his proposed scheme in the following paragraphs :

"The distance between New York and the Oregon is about three thousand miles, — from New York we could pursue the most convenient route to the vicinity of Lake Erie, thence along the south shore of this lake and of Lake Michigan, cross the Mississippi between forty-one and forty-two of north latitude, cross the Missouri about the mouth of the Platte, and thence on by the most convenient route to the Rocky Mountains, near the source of the last named river, thence to the Oregon, by the valley of the south branch of that stream, called the southern branch of Lewis' river.'"

"We hope the United States will not object to conducting

this national project But if the United States

would not do this Congress would not, we presume,

object to the organization of a company and a grant of three millions of acres for this purpose."

This article was to be the first of a series of articles,'' but the succeeding articles, if published, cannot be found, though many of the later issues of the paper are lost or destroyed and the writer's intention may have been executed.^

Soon after the appearance of the article in the Emigrant, Samuel Bancroft Barlow, a practising physician at Granville, Massachusetts, contributed to the Intelligencer, a newspaper published at Westfield, Massachusetts, an article in which he proposed the execution of the project of a railway to the Pacific by the following means :

" I have a method to propose by which this work can be accomplished by our general government at the expense of the Union." " Let preliminary measures be taken for three years to come, such as making examinations, surveys, lines, estimates, etc., etc., at the end of which time, the public debt being paid, the national treasury overflowing (I presume also that the present duties and taxes, indeed every source of revenue, be continued at their present rates), then let the work proceed with all possible and prudent speed and vigor, to a speedy and perfect completion, and let six, eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen millions

' It is remarkable how closely this suggested line has been followed in later days. Beginning at New York, the line would be by the Erie or New York Central and Hudson River to Buffalo, the Lake Shore to Chicago, one of the Chicago-Omaha lines to Omaha, and the Union Pacific and its Oregon short line to Ogden and Portland. See map (i) at end of volume.

= The article concludes, " we shall examine this subject more in detail in some future number.''

3 The original files of the Emigrant, or such of them as it has been possible to find, are among the collections of the Washtenaw County Pioneer Association, at .\nn Arbor, Michigan.

GENESIS OF THE PACIFIC RAILWAY. 1 5

of dollars of the public money be appropriated to defray the expense annually until it is finished."'

Lewis Gaylord Clarke, in an article in the Knickerbocker Magazine, in 1836, claimed the honor of having originated the idea of a Pacific railway.

The claim of Lalburn W. Boggs, once governor of Missouri, has been advanced by his son, W. N. Boggs, of California, who has an article written by his father in 1843 ^or the Saint Louis Republican, but never published, in which the author urged the building of a Pacific railway and presented an estimate of the cost.^

In a speech delivered in Saint Louis in 1844, Thomas H. Benton predicted that men full grown at that time would yet see Asiatic commerce crossing the Rocky Mountains by rail.^

In Hunfs Merchants' Magazine for January, 1845 (Volume XXL, page 80), the editor, in discussing the commercial relations between England and China, predicts, " Those persons are now

'Dr. Barlow's article may be found quoted in full in E.V. Smalley's History of the Northern Pacific Railway, pages 52-56. The first paragraph is as follows : " An able v, riter in the Emigrant, . . . in a series of numbers

of which it has fallen to my lot to see only the first, is endeavoring to draw the attention of the public to the scheme of uniting New York and the mouth of the Columbia River by railroad." But with reference to the priority of the two articles in the Emigrant and Intelligencer, Mr. Smalley observes : " Evidently the article was written as early as 1834 and perhaps in 1833, and the articles in a Michigan paper to which it refers are supposed to have been called out by others previously written by him." (History of Northern Pacific Railway, page 52). And later he adds : " Perhaps there were earlier advocates of a Pacific railway than Dr. Barlow, but if so, the author of this volume has not been able to identify them, and therefore accords to him the first place." In the face of Dr. Barlow's own acknowledgment, however, -it is difficult to find a justification of Mr. Smalley's statement. To this unwarranted conclusion by Mr. Smalley, attention was also called by General Granville M. Dodge in a valuable paper on Transcontinental Railways, read by him before the Society of the Army of the Tennessee at its twenty-first annual reunion at Toledo, Ohio, September 15, 1888.

" Bancroft, History of California, Volume VII., page 500, note. 3 Ibid.

i6

THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY.

living who will see a railroad connecting New York with ^ the Pacific, and a steam communication from Oregon to China.'"

In 1835, Rev. Samuel Parker, a missionary sent out by a Presbyterian church in Ithaca, New York, to convert the Indians in Oregon and on the Pacific coast, wrote in his journal after he had crossed the Rocky Mountains : " There would be no difficulty in the way of constructing a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, there is no greater difficulty in the whole distance than has already been overcome in passing the Green Mountains between Boston and Albany ; and probably the time may not be far distant when tours will be made across the continent, as they have been made to Niagara Falls to see Nature's wonders.'"

In 1838, the idea of a Pacific railway had ceased to be novel and the execution of the project was freely suggested, predicted, and urged in newspapers and magazines from that time.

The timidity with which the project of a Pacific railway was suggested by the early writers may be pardoned when it is considered that the Stockton and Darlington railway had been open only since 1825, and the Liverpool and Manchester railway only since 1829, that there was not a mile of railway in New England until 1834, and that the Baltimore and Ohio was still considered an experiment in 1840.^

In a memorial presented by Robert Mills to Congress in 1845,

'See also Volume XVII., page 385 (October, 1847), of the same magazine, where reference is made to the efforts of Whitney to accomplish the object.

^ Quoted in History of Northern Pacific Railway, E.V. Smalley, pages 43-44.

3 The following table shows the number of miles of railway built in the United States in each year before 1836 :

Total.

Maine

2.00

2.00

Mas.sachusetts

31.60

64-5=;

96.15

New York

22.20

21. 41

10.59

3&-61

20.82

III .63

New Jersey

34-17

15-07

27.00

76.24

Pennsylvania

Maryland and District Columbia

14.80 15.00

30.00

46.50

41.04 11.00

3-00

91.64

12.00

4.20 31.00

184.68 115.50

Virginia - - - -

31.68

27.32

59.00

15.25

South Carolina

10.00

52.00

75.00

Ohio -

— -

15-25

191.30

130-98

198.8=;

GENESIS OF THE PACIFIC RAILWAY. 1/

in which the author asked Congress to appropriate money for testing the qualities of an improved form of roadway, he claimed to have "' had the honor of being perhaps the first in the field to propose to connect the Pacific with the Atlantic by a railway from the head navigable waters of the noble rivers disemboguing into each ocean" in a book published in 1819. In his memorial, he discouraged the use of railways as being expensive to build, unable to ascend steep grades, and slow ; in place of them he proposed the building of improved public roads, over which " steam carriages" as well as other vehicles might be propelled or drawn. In his memorial he advocated the construction of such a road from the mouth of the Platte River over the Rocky Mountains near the source of the Missouri River and thence to the head of navigation on the Columbia River. He can hardly be regarded as the advocate of a Pacific railway.

Bancroft is authority for the statement that, in 1832, Hartwell Carver, of Rochester, New York (grandson of Jonathan Carver, the early explorer of the Northwest), published articles in the New York Courier and Enquirer in favor of a transcontinental railway with its western terminus on the Columbia River, and that he afterwards memorialized Congress in behalf of such a project from 1835 to 1839. He is said to have asked Congress to grant him and his associates a perpetual and exclusive charter for a railway and telegraph from Lake Michigan to the South Pass and branches to San Francisco and the Columbia River, with a sufficient land grant and the privilege of purchasing eight millions of acres of selected public lands at gi. 25 per acre, to be paid for in stock of the company as fast as the railway and telegraph should be completed ; the time of travel from New York to San Francisco was estimated at five days, and the trains were to be provided with sleeping cars sixteen feet long, and saloon and dining cars.' An article on the subject by Carver is found published in the Courier and Enquirer in 1837.-

' See Bancroft's History of California, Volume VII., pages 498-499. This claim appears to have been made later by Carver himself, and is doubtful of verification. Smalley, in his History of the Northern Pacific, rejects it (page 52). The proceedings of Congress contain no record of the alleged memorials.

John Plumbe, of Dubuque, Iowa, advocated in a pamphlet in 1836, a railway from Lake Michigan to Oregon, and a meeting of his townsmen was held in March, 1838, for the consideration of his scheme. On the anniversary of that meeting, another meeting, held in Dubuque in 1847, and presided over by Plumbe himself, resolved "that this meeting regard John Plumbe, Esquire, our fellow-townsman, as the original projector (about nine years ago) of the great Oregon railroad."' In 1840, Plumbe is said to have visited Washington with a memorial from the legislature of \\"isconsin, praying for an appropriation of alternate sections of public land on each side of a prospective railway to be constructed by a company composed of all who should desire to participate in the work, with a capital of $100,000,000.00 divided, into 200,000 shares of J500.00 each, payable in installments of twenty-five cents as often as needed until the railway should be completed at the rate of one hundred miles per annum ; this scheme is said to have been defeated by the opposition of Southern representatives.'

The history of great and novel projects is much the same. First is the timid suggester, expressing his ideas cautiously, regarded by most people as hair-brained, and giving vent to his innovations in articles in obscure publications ; next in line is the zealous agitator, overstepping in his enthusiasm the bounds of common sense, moving about among the people and advocating ridiculous means of promoting the projects ; then last comes — sometimes slow, but always sure — the great mass of humanity with a consensus of opinion not far from the right and with the energy to enforce it.

In this study of the Union Pacific Railway, the period of invention or inception, exemplified in the writer in the Emigrant, has been passed, and the period of agitation and ferment, exemplified in Asa Whitney, will properly follow in the next chapter.

■Bancroft, History of California, Volume VII., page 499. = Ibid, pages 499-500.

Chapter II. Asa Whitney

A NARRATIVE of the life of Asa Whitney from 1840 to 1850 is the history of the development, during that period, of the Pacific Railway project. The aim and object of his life \yas the building of a railway from Lake Michigan or the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and he devoted his fortune and energies to that aim and object with all the zeal and persistence of a fanatic. He was a merchant in New York City, and had spent some years in China, Japan and the East. In the second memorial presented by him to Congress in 1846, he says that while riding on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad in England, in 1830, and observing the speed and facility with which its work was done, he foresaw the great future of railways, and predicted the important part they would perform in abbreviating the distance between China and the markets of England. In 1842, while on a voyage to China, his attention was more forcibly called to the matter by information of the recent conclusion of a peace with China, and the opportunity afforded by it for a more extensive commerce. He spent about two years thereafter in China, during which time he accumulated much information concerning the commerce of the East; and in 1844 he returned to America fully impressed with the importance of constructing a Pacific railway.

Whitney did not look upon his scheme purely and simply as a business project, but crowned it with the halo of an enthusiastic's fancy. In a pamphlet published by him in 1849, he describes his attitude in the following words : "My desire and object have been to carry out and accomplish this great work for the motives, -as here and everywhere else by me declared, to give my country this great thoroughfare for all nations without the cost of one dollar ; to give employment to and make comfortable and happy millions who are now destitute and starving, and to bring all the world together in free intercourse as one nation. If it is feared that the remuneration will be disproportionate to the extent and importance of the work, then I am ready to relinquish any claim I may have for compensation, and let the people give me anything or nothing, as they please. If they will but allow me to be their instrument to accomplish this great work, it is enough; I ask no more. I am willing to have my acts scanned, but I feel that I ought not to be doubted when I say that what I have done, and what I propose to do, is not for the gain of wealth, or power, or influence, but for the great good which I am persuaded it must produce to our whole country. I have undertaken this mighty work because I know someone's whole life must be sacrificed to it."'

He first brought the project to the attention of Congress, January 28, 1845, in a memorial presented by him to the Senate through Senator Dickinson, and to the House of Representatives through Congressman Pratt. Whitney's plan, as set out in this memorial, was to build a railway from Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon, though he afterwards modified his plan, when Wisconsin had become a state, so that it should begin at Prairie du Chien and end at Puget's Sound; and he was even willing to modify it in later days, when California had become a part of the United States, so that it should begin at almost any point on the Mississippi and end at San Diego, San Francisco, the mouth of the Columbia, or Puget's Sound, on the Pacific Coast.= His plan for building the railway was unique and visionary. He estimated that the railway would cost S50, 000,000. 00, and that incidental expenses and expenses of management till completion would amount to $15,000,000.00. The public domain was to be the source of the means needed for

'Quoted in Report of Committee on Roads and Canals, H. R. Reports, 1st Session, 31st Congress, 140.

''See map (i) at end of volume.

the work', and the railway, when completed, was to be Whitney's private property, but practically free, though such tolls and fares were to be charged as would be sufficient to pay the expenses of maintenance and management. Whitney's idea of the ownership of his railway was peculiar. He expected that for some years the railway would not pay expenses, but was willing to undertake its management until it should pay expenses, and then submit it to the control of the general government ; if there should be any surplus of earnings over expenses, he expected it to be devoted to educational and other public purposes. "Your memorialist is induced to pray," he concludes, "that your honorable body will grant to himself, his heirs and assigns, such tract of land' the proceeds of which to be strictly and faithfully applied to the building and completing the said railroad, always with such checks and guarantees to your honorable body as shall secure a faithful performance of all the obligations and duties of your memorialist, and that, after the faithful completion of this great work, should any lands remain unsold, any money due for lands, or any balance of moneys received for lands sold, and which have not been required for the building of this road, then all and every of them shall belong to your memorialist his heirs and assigns forever."