investments of private
individuals. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was
$48,331 a mile. Of this amount all that private individuals contributed
was $4,930 a mile above their receipts; these latter were sums which the
private owners gathered in from selling the land given to them by the
State, amounting to $35,211 per mile, and the sums that they pocketed
from stock waterings amounting to $8,189 a mile. "The unsold land
grant," says Professor Frank Parsons, "amounted to 344,368 acres, worth
probably over $5,000,000, so that those to whom the securities of the
company were issued, had obtained the road at a bonus of nearly
$2,000,000 above all they paid in."[165]

By this manipulation, private individuals not only got this immensely
valuable railroad for practically nothing, but they received, or rather
the laws (which they caused to be made) awarded them, a present of
nearly four millions for their dexterity in plundering the railroad
from the people. What set of men do we find now in control of this
railroad, doing with it as they please? Although the State of Illinois
formally retains a nominal say in its management, yet it is really owned
and ruled by eight men, among whom are John Jacob Astor, and Robert
Walton Goelet, associated with E. H. Harriman, Cornelius Vanderbilt and
four others. John Jacob Astor is one of the directors of the Western
Union Telegraph monopoly, with its annual receipts of $29,000,000 and
its net profits of $8,000,000 yearly; and as for the many other
corporations in which he and his family, the Goelets and the other
commanding landlords hold stock, they would, if enumerated, make a
formidable list.

And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact
which thrusts itself out for notice. We have seen how John Jacob Astor
of the third generation very eagerly in 1867 invited Cornelius
Vanderbilt to take over the management of the New York Central Railroad,
after Vanderbilt had proved himself not less an able executive than an
indefatigable and effective briber and corrupter. So long as Vanderbilt
produced the profits, Astor and his fellow-directors did not care what
means he used, however criminal in law and whatever their turpitude in
morals. John Jacob Astor of the fourth generation repeats this
performance in aligning himself, as does Goelet, with that master-hand
Harriman, against whom the most specific charges of colossal looting
have been brought.[