RAILROAD LAND GRANTS. 1Q1 



adopted in no manner recognizing its existence 

 Congress entered upon its career of land robbery and 

 waste, in response to the demands of corporate specu- 

 lators and gamblers, that, as John Randolph, with 

 biting sarcasm yet bitter truth, declared, have neither 

 souls to damn nor bodies to kick, and the nation has 

 now commenced to reap its harvest of repentance and 

 restitution. 



Of the 255,000,000 acres that have been granted by 

 the general government and the State of Texas, quite 

 one half has gone into the hands of what are sub- 

 stantially not more than five great corporations, viz. : 

 the Central Pacific, 15,260,000 acres; the Union 

 Pacific, 16,115,000 acres; the Northern Pacific, 

 42,000,000 acres ; the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 

 Fe, 25,667,200 acres ; the Texas Pacific, 13,000,000 

 acres. Total, 112,042,000 acres. 



These five corporations are really controlled and 

 represented by not more than twenty-five men, who, 

 out of their great wealth, their more than princely 

 revenues derived from these grants the gift of the 

 government by the plunder of the people contribute 

 nothing for the support of government or the general 

 welfare. This monstrous exhibition of our govern- 

 mental fatuousness, or corruption, will become the 

 wonder of nations, and pass into history as the mon- 

 ster fraud of the nineteenth century. 



The results of these unguarded, unprotected, but 

 monstrous donations are fraught with the greatest 

 present damage to the people, and ultimate peril to 

 the nation. 



The first result is the practical destruction of the 



