Public Aid — Historical. 
357 
to Snake Hollow 1 has been plowed, sowed, fenced, and is bear¬ 
ing forty bushels of wheat. Upon this basis estimates of the 
importance of the road for transportation of wheat are made. 
Such estimates are quite delusive. It takes money to make a 
great waving wheat field of Wisconsin. It takes money to make 
railroads. It takes money to make the mare go; much more the 
Iron horse. Capital is greedy. It looks to immediate profit. 
Railroad capital will not wait for dividends to originate. It 
may be short sighted; but it is sure sighted. It acts upon reali¬ 
ties ; not upon probabilities. ” 2 3 Commenting on a bill which 
had been introduced in the Assembly, repealing an act author¬ 
izing Milwaukee to tax its citizens in aid of railroads, the editor 
of the Fond du Lac Journal 3 says: “Although not pecuniarily 
interested in this road, as a matter of principle we should like 
to see it built by some other means than robbing a portion of 
the community. Our government is one of limited powers, and 
is generally supposed to be democratic in its principles and 
operation, and it is stretching the constitution a little too far 
to permit the taxing of a people for the advancement of the in¬ 
terests of a corporation over whose actions and purse strings 
they have no control. These rail and plankroad taxes are anti¬ 
democratic in principle, unconstitutional, unjust in every par¬ 
ticular, and a forcible resistance to similar injustice once caused 
a revolution which gave America her freedom. . . .We 
trust for the honor of the state, and of the-party? that 
no more odious railroad taxes will be fastened upon the people.” 
The Milwaukee Sentinel of January 7, 1851, contains a call for 
.a public meeting signed by nearly one hundred representa¬ 
tive citizens, such as Ludington, Hathaway, Preusser, and 
Mitchell. The question w r hich was being agitated at that time 
was an amendment to the charter authorizing the city to lend 
its credit for larger amounts. “ Unless some check is given to 
the robbery that is practiced upon the people in the shape of 
1 Walker’s Point was the site of the old Union Depot in Milwaukee, and, 
according to the Grant County Herald of October 16,1847, Snake Hollow 
was a “ sunny ravine ” —now the site of Potosi. 
2 Grant County Herald, January 10, 1847. 
3 February 1, 1851. 
