A. L. Bishop — The State Worhs of Pennsylvania. 243 



ical power, unknown to the constitution, moved by common 

 impulse, and operating upon the public mind at any time they are 

 so disposed, in state conventions and at the ballot box, in solid 

 column, and with almost irresistible sway. But it is not as a 

 dangerous political machine that it is viewed in its worst aspects, 

 nor as an exhausting drain upon the public purse; its malign 

 influences upon the morals of the community are even more to be 

 dreaded than all other evils, and powerfully cooperate to make it a 

 festering disease upon the public. At every stage, complaints have 

 been made of the extravagance, fraud, and speculation in the con- 

 duct of the works, and the most honorable agents have been stig- 

 matized with odium by an indignant public, smarting under the 

 known abuses and heavy burthens they have generated. Attempts 

 to reform, however loudly professed and honestly made, have 

 been unavailing to eradicate evils inherent in the system. . . . 

 That practices at war with the established systems of political 

 economy have resulted in debt, taxation, extravagance, mortifica- 

 tion and disappointment is a misfortune. Had the object of this 

 anomalous system been to destroy and not to build up the revenues 

 and the morals of the state, it could not have been more ingeniously 

 devised."* 



Again, William Bender AVilson, in his "History of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Eailroad Company," in speaking of the public works, said :• — f 



"Millions of wealth were squandered in construction, the 

 public were punished or rewarded as they denounced or sided with 

 those in position, employees were plundered by so-called assess- 

 ments, and the ballot-box polluted for the purpose of perpetuating 

 power. All the avenues of government were completely corrupted, 



* Eeport upon the Public Works of a Select Committee — read in the Senate,' 

 February 4th, 1854, aiid found in L^slative Documents, 1854, p. 329. 



A pamphlet published at Philadelphia in 1857 consisting of a series of 

 letters oi'iginally published in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin advocating 

 the sale of the main line contained, page 47, the following: "A well managed 

 commonwealth never corrupts her children. Yet on Pennsylvania's public 

 improvements thousands of employees have wrecked their characters, and 

 hundreds of her most promising sons have had sad and real reason to curse 

 the day they ever learned that Pennsylvania had a line of railroad or canal 

 on which to seduce to crime. Under the necessarily loose and irresponsible 

 mode of transacting business upon these works, this evil has been, and is 

 being done. While the works remain in her hands, they will be the home of 

 partisans and swindlers who ^^•ill ruin themselves, disgrace the state, and 

 spread a moral desolation among the people. Change of administration does 

 not cure the evil. It is inherent in the thing, and will be manifested while 

 human nature remains as prone to evil as at present." 



t Vol. I, p. 40. 



