Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/8

Rh Most of this is rich farming, mineral and timber land. It is now worth billions of dollars. One unacquainted with the greed of the railroad companies might think that they would have been satisfied with this gigantic steal. But not they; they are money mad; they want the whole country. It happened that some of their land grants included desert land; so, in the guise of helping poor settlers, they had a law passed allowing anyone who had received government desert land to exchange it for government farming land. Then they hastily dumped in 50,000,000 acres of desert land and took in exchange, not farming land, but 50,000,000 acres of Northwest timber land, the finest on the globe. This was a typical railroad fraud.

Besides the land grants, the Government (inspired to action by big campaigns of open bribery) gave the early railroad builders large money subsidies. These were a fruitful source of loot. For example, the men behind the corrupt Central Pacific got in land and other subsidies $86,000,000 wherewith to build their road. The total cost of building, including the greatest extravagance and graft, was $42,000,000. The remaining $44,000,000 of the Government gift they calmly pocketed. Thus the Government paid for the road twice over and still it belonged to Huntington and his fellow-crooks. These gentlemen, whose descendants are highly honored citizens, started out in 1861 with a capital of $108,987. Twenty-three years later they had succeeded in stealing 5,906 miles of railroad capitalized at $454,000,000, not to mention other properties. Up till the present time this project has yielded its owners $700,000,000 that is to say, the grafters have been paid enough to build their roads seven times over and still they own them completely.

It would be wrong, however, to leave the impression that the railroad magnates have confined their efforts to exploiting Labor and defrauding the Government. That