68 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



Railroad Company, operating nearly 1300 miles of road, 

 represented by $57,000,000 of stock and indebtedness, 

 which was increased to $62,000,000 in 1871, and which 

 it had the further privilege of increasing to about 

 $73,000,000. These figures throw a very curious light 

 upon the real cost of railroad construction in America. 

 They represent a nominal outlay of but $48,000 per 

 mile, and yet it is not denied that in the amount was 

 included $20,000,000 of fictitious capital. These roads, 

 not improbably, may have cost those who constructed 

 them in cash, actually paid in either directly in money 

 or in dividends which had never been drawn out, the 

 full amount of the consolidation capital. The profits 

 had, it is true, been very unequally divided, but sub- 

 stantial justice was done in the end; what had been 

 lost in one road was made good in another, but as a 

 whole the community was, perhaps, paying for nothing 

 which it had not received. No credit on this account 

 is due to those managing the affairs of the company. 

 They undoubtedly regarded the Vanderbilt operations 

 as masterpieces of railroad management, and only re- 

 gretted that the earnings of the company under their 

 control could by no possibility justify any similar per- 

 formances; and yet the contrast between the results 

 hitherto arrived at upon this line, under a system of 

 moderate, average watering, and those achieved further 

 east by Vanderbilt, is singularly suggestive. It is pro- 

 bably safe to say that the Vanderbilt stock waterings 

 between Buffalo and New York annually cost the 

 American people not less than $3,000,000 in excess of 

 all remuneration which ever, under any construction of 

 right, belonged to the owners of the lines. Under these 

 circumstances it would seem, judging by the example 



