MONOPOLY OF TRANSPORTATION. 587 



books they have never paid for, while drawing dividends 

 'on it for eighteen years and defaulting regularly on their 

 obligations to the government all this while with the 

 knowledge and consent of a supine and recreant Congress! 



"The states, territories, cities and villages have been 

 assessed and taxed to build up roads for private persons, 

 who charge double and treble for rates and fares. There 

 has been no idea on the part of the beneficiaries to recipro- 

 cate. On the contrary, they have contrived in every way 

 to bleed the public. They have monopolized territory, 

 made exorbitant charges, diverted trade, and prevented 

 competition just as it suited their own interests. They 

 are now starving out the Union Pacific road, so that they 

 may have no net earnings, and that the government may 

 thus be cheated out of its own percentage under the Thur- 

 man act. All the trade of the Pacific slope business is 

 diverted into the Southern Pacific, built out of the profits 

 of the Central Pacific, which is controlled exclusively by 

 the Huntington - Stanford - Crocker - Hopkins combination, 

 and to which the Thurman act does not apply. And yet 

 this Southern Pacific road, and the numerous other roads 

 (eighteen in all) controlled by the syndicate referred to, 

 were built by money owing and withheld from the govern- 

 ment. They were built out of earnings which under the 

 law should have been paid into the national treasury. Not 

 only that, but the public money has been used to bribe 

 steamship companies to extort exorbitant charges, to sub- 

 sidize lobbyists, to corrupt legislatures, and to debauch the 

 public life of the country. All this and more is proved by 

 figures recently printed. 



"The 'combine* in control of the roads have pocketed 

 probably $150,000,000 in the way of dividends on stock 

 for which they have never paid more than i per cent, of the 

 face value. Why have these subsidized companies been 

 allowed by Congress to divide tens of millions of earnings 



