very low order, and it is no wonder, that after
having for so many years had the use of such a sum without payment of
interest, Mr. Dillon and his associates are very wealthy, and, like
others who are retaining what does not belong to them, think it an
impertinence when the owner inquires what use they are making of
property to which they have no right. Had the nation built the Union
Pacific there would have been no "Credit-Mobilier" and its unsavory
scandal, and it is safe to say that the road would not now be made to
represent an expenditure of $106,000 per mile, and that Mr. Dillon and
some others would not have so much money as to warrant them in putting
on such insufferable airs. When it is remembered what use Oakes Ames
and the Union Pacific crew made of issues of stock, it is not at all
surprising that the president of the Union Pacific should think it an
impertinence for a citizen to question the amount of capitalization or
the use to which a part of such issues have been put, some of which
are within the knowledge of the writer, so far as relates to issues of
that part of the Union Pacific lying in Kansas and built by Samuel
Hallett, who told the writer that he gave a member of the then federal
cabinet several thousand shares of the capital stock of the "Union
Pacific Railway, Eastern Division,"--now the Kansas Division of the
Union Pacific--to secure the acceptance of sections of the road which
were not built in accordance with the requirements of the act of
Congress, which provided that a given amount of government bonds per
mile should be delivered to the railway company when certain officials
should accept the road; and it was a quarrel with the chief engineer
of the road in relation to a letter written by such engineer to
President Lincoln, informing him of the defective construction of this
road, that caused Samuel Hallett to be shot down in the streets of
Wyandotte, Kansas, by engineer Talcott. It is within the knowledge of
the writer that the member of the cabinet to whom Mr. Hallett said he
gave several thousand shares of stock, held an amount of Union Pacific
shares years afterwards, and that many years after he left the cabinet
he continued to draw a large salary from the Union Pacific Company.
Mr. Hallett also told the writer what were the arguments applied to
congressmen to induce them to change the government lien from a first
to a second mortgage of the Pacific Railway lines, and what was his
cont