PACIFIC RAILROAD.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 70, 12 June 1869, Page 5

PACIFIC RAILROAD.

It seems that the Pacific Railroad, now approaching completion) is something more than a gigantic enterprise. It is also a stupendous job. The eastern division of it is being constructed by seventy persons, constituting what is • known as the " Pacific Railroad Ring." Its cost will not exceed £20,000,000 sterling, but the stock and bonds issued by the Ring will represent £64,000,000 sterling, and the passengers and goods traffc rates will be so adjusted as to pay a dividend often per cent., upon- a capital upwards of two-thirds of which is fictitious ; while the company — or, in other words, the "Eing." — receives a subsidy of £6,000 a mile from, the Government, besides- a land grant of 12,800 acres a mile to say nothing of donations of real estate from the cities ' it passes, or of the million of dollars which are earned upon such sections of the line as- are already opened, and which are applied for- purposes of construction. What is the native of tliis Hin> ? Ih is thus described in the last number of the " North American Review " :—": — " The members of it are in ! Congress ; they are the trustees for the bond-holders; they are stockholders, they are contractors. In Washington, they vote the subsidies, in Isew York they receive them, uporr the plains they expend them, and on the Credit Mobilier they divide them. Ever shifting characters, they are ever übiquitous — now engineering a bill, and now a bridge — they receive money into one hand as a, corporation', and pay it iato the other' as a contractor." "When we come to investigate the origin, of this "Ring,"* we find it to have taken- its rise in fraud and felony. Such, at least, is the account given of it by the ablest and most high-toned publication in the United States. " The paternity of this institution-," observes the " Review " just quoted from, "• is currently supposed to be between General Duff Green and the irrepressible" George- Francis Train; or rather to speak more exactly, some intelligent broker is supposed to have stolen from Green, the charter under which the association was organised, and Train applied the stolen* property to the purposes of the Pacific railroad construction," Of all the " Rin<rs " which have been organised! in the United 1 States for the spoliation of the public or the robbery of the revenue, the Pacific railroad "Ring" appears to be the most ingenious, the most comprehensive, and the most efficient in its operations." As- stock-holders they own the road, as mortgagees they have a lien upon it, as directors they contract for its construction, and a"s members of the Credit Mobilier they build it." As these seven-ty men will share among- them upwards of £40,000,000 sterling, the proceeds of bonds issued over and above the sum actually disbursed or required for the construction of the line, they will eventually become one of the richest corporations in the world, and' as the " North American Review " justly remarks', "will surely hereafter constitute a source of corruption in the politics- of the land, and resistless power in its legislature."