Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20.djvu/718

710 a hundred dollars each. Furthermore, the hitherto unwieldy board of direction was limited to fifteen members. On the other hand, the Kansas organization obtained the privilege of making their own road the grand trunk route, connecting with the Central Pacific, in case they should anticipate the Nebraska line in reaching the one hundredth meridian, and the latter road should not appear to be proceeding in good faith.

As the act which bestowed such signal favors had granted an extension of a year for the completion of the first division of each road, the Union Pacific was under no absolute compulsion to hasten its work. Nevertheless, surveying parties were kept in the field, and the contract for the construction of the road to the one hundredth meridian was signed in August. This agreement, though nominally known as the Hoxie contract, derived the guaranty of its performance from the Credit Mobilier, —an organization with an actual capital of two millions and a half, recently created upon the model of the great Paris corporation, and in the hands of a few moneyed men whose enterprise and energy were admirably proportioned to their large wealth. Its heaviest capitalists were also stockholders in the projected road; and as payment was to be made in bonds and shares, the Credit Mobilier at once became an overshadowing stockholder in the Union Pacific. The arrangement at a subsequent period may not have been wholly beneficial; but at the date of the contract the alliance was of incalculable importance. Although two millions of stock had been subscribed, the Nebraska line had in reality only twenty thousand dollars in its treasury. Without the Credit Mobilier, it would have faltered on the threshold of success. Even with this powerful auxiliary, it was not yet strong enough to prevent an unexpected and vexatious delay.

The first forty miles west from Omaha had been intrusted to Peter A. Dey, an engineer of some experience in the West. This gentleman, whose ideas seem to have been limited to a straight line, had constructed a track satisfactory in its alignments, but with a maximum grade of eighty feet per mile, and involving a temporary grading of one hundred and sixteen feet at several points of the route. A later survey, made under the supervision of Colonel Seymour, demonstrated the existence of a far better line, with forty-feet grades and but nine miles longer. Placed upon abstract grounds, there was no question of the relative advantage of the two routes. The combined opinion of several of the most skilful railroad managers in the country was unanimous for the lower grade, as essential to rapid and economical transportation. But there was another element in the case which gave a different aspect to the affair, Dey’s line terminated at Omaha; Seymour’s, at Bellevue. If the new route were selected, all the magnificent dreams of the Omaha land speculators would be summarily dispelled. The territorial population caught the alarm. Public meetings were called. A committee was sent post to Washington. It was asserted, on grounds that were not destitute of plausibility, that the change was attributable quite as much to motives of a stock-jobbing order, as to economic considerations. To this charge Dr. Durant indignantly replied, but this did not appease the clamor. Nor was the dispute ended until after five months of tedious investigation, and a guaranteed promise on the part of the company, that, in adopting the newline, there should be no alteration of terminus.

While Omaha was still in the whiteheat of excitement, the contractors had been steadily employed in collecting material for a grand industrial campaign. Distant, in the line of travel then open to them, more than sixteen hundred miles from New York, with the Missouri River as their main avenue for the transportation of rolling stock and machinery west of St. Louis, the men who had undertaken to build the road bent themselves to the task with a vigor and celerity heretofore unequalled in railroad history. Iron from New