NEGLECT OF SUPERVISORY DUTY. 



The result has been that the company managers have, in many 

 cases, so planned the disposal of them as to promote their own per 

 sonal, rather than public ends. In some instances, where it was 

 possible to raise the funds for construction without making the lands 

 the basis of securities, the roads have been built at a heavy sacrifice 

 in the way of discounts, to be subsequently paid by the industry of 

 the country, and the lands have been wholly or almost entirely ap 

 propriated to the private use of the builders. 



So far as we have learned, the lands granted to Iowa have only in 

 a small degree lessened to the public the cost of the roads in aid of 

 whose construction they were given. 



The people of Minnesota have hardly been more fortunate. Their 

 land grants for the construction of railroads amounted to 9,965,500 

 acres. We do not find, either, that the State attempted to protect 

 the rights of the people in reference to these lands, or that railroad 

 companies upon whom they were conferred have so used them as to 

 reduce the cost of the roads. 



By the report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for 

 1873, the total quantity of land received from grants to aid railroads 

 in Wisconsin, was 3,412,358 21-100 acres. The value placed by the 

 United States upon the alternate even sections being $2 50 per acre, 

 that is the minimum given at which these lands can be estimated, 

 but it is believed that the actual value of these lands should not be 

 placed at less than double that sum, or a total of $17,061,791 05, 

 and it will probably very much exceed this amount. 



These grants of land were placed at the disposal of the State, with 

 a view to the reduction of the absolute cost of railroads to the 

 people, and thus encourage their construction. Such being the 

 case, it would seem that an essential condition on which the lands 

 were donated would require the exercise of a supervisory care over 

 the manner of their application, on the part of the State, in order 

 to be certain that they were not diverted from the objects in 

 tended, and the interests of the people neglected. By a singular 

 oversight, no such provision seems ever to have been adopted. The 

 grants were handed over to the several companies on the simple 

 condition that their respective roads should be constructed. 



In the case of the grant of 600,000 acres received by the Chi 

 cago and Northwestern Railway Company, to aid in the construc 

 tion of that part of its road extending from Fond du Lac to 

 the Michigan State line, taking the appraisal of that company 

 itself for the first two hundred and forty sections ($12 per acre), 

 and estimating the value of the balance at only $5 per acre, 

 we have a valuation sufficient to yield almost $35,000 per mile 

 for the whole distance to which the grant applies. When we 

 consider that this company applied for and received still further 

 aid from municipal corporations on the line of the road, it would 

 seem as though, at least, the ordinary precaution of seeing that 

 this munificent grant had not been needlessly mismanaged would 

 have been taken by the State, especially as section thirty of the 

 act making tbe grant contains the admonitory provision, &quot;that 

 the said lands hereby granted to said State, shall be subject to the 

 the disposal of the legislature thereof, for the purposes aforesaid, 

 and no other.&quot; 



