Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — Railroads. [ARTICLE]

Railroads.

A writer in the American Miller knows what he is about. In the January number he thus describes the way railroads have been built, and the way the public are swindled after they are built. The writer might have added that when the abused public endeavor to call the railroad gentry to an account for their abuse of public confidence, as they have in Wisconsin, the roads start up the cry: Capital is sensitive, and you must let us swindle you so as to make 25 per' cent, od our investment, or you shall not have any more roads;” and there are poor cravens to be found in almost every iarge city and town who ask to let them swindle. But to the extract: “ A road is proposed to be built, a few capitalists combine to get a charter lobbied through the Rt ate Legislature giving to the corporation all the privileges to which it is presumed the public will submit. Calls are then made for subscriptions along the line of the proposed route. The great advantages to accrue to the farmers and land-owners, counties and towns are brilliantly set forth; the farmers subscribe; the townspeople subscribe, the town and county subscribe in the way of bonds, and from 40 to 65 and even a larger per cent, of the cost of building is thus secured. The officers are elected, preliminary survevs are made, and all the money and bonds that can be wheedled out o’s a too-confiding public secured. This obtained, it is found necessary to issue bonds on the road covering the entire property of the corporation, to secure funds for its completion. “ These bonds are sold anywhere from 75 to 90 cents on the dollar, and draw interest yearly at the rate of 7 to 8 per cent. The few leading schemers in the ring so manage the construction that the interest on the bonds for one or two years shall be defaulted before the road is put into working condition, so they cannot pay the interest from the earnings, and the road is put in the hands of a receiver and sold out. “ Who buys it? Who but the thieving ring who have so managed that subscribers along the line who have paid for half the cost' of building the road lose their entire subscription, and Mr. Capitalist secures the road for half its original cost, and very soon thereafter the* road becomes a dividend-paying institution. “The watering system now commences. As soon as a showing, forced or otherwise, justifies the action, a scrip dividend is declared of from 20 to 50 per cent., and this is repeated every few years, so that in time the road has to earn a dividend of three or four times its original cost, and the public is forced to pay it. “ This is no fancy picture. It is a fact on record that the stock of one of the strongest railroad corporations in the country has been increased on the plan above stated from $35,000,000, original cost, to $117,000,000; or, in other words, the public are compelled to pay such rates as will earn a dividend on $117,000,000 when they should be Compelled to pay less than one-third that amount. Yet these long-suffering, persecuted, much-abused monopolies, under such outrageously dishonest management, are the benefactors of the people.”— lndies• trial Age.