Public Aid — Historical. 
301 
is so supremely unique as to extort attention. The actors seem 
not to have been mindful of the fact, that no lid was ever large 
enough to completely cover up itself. ” 1 
Up to 1870 there was no limit to the amount of indebtedness 
which a town, city, or county might contract. Section 12, 
Chapter 24 of the General Laws of 1870, places the limit at 
five thousand dollars per mile. This was amended in 1871 so 
as to prevent any indebtedness exceeding five per cent, of the 
assessed value of the town; while Section 1, Chapter 182 of the 
General Laws of 1872, authorizes towns and other political unit 8 
to subscribe to the amount of ten per cent, of the assessed valua" 
tion. This was finally settled in 1874, by an amendment to the 
state constitution which fixed the maximum indebtedness at five 
per cent, of the assessed value of the taxable property in any 
town, village, county, or city. 
Of the amount of public aid granted the re seems to exist no a u 
thentic record. The report of the Wisconsin railroad commis¬ 
sioner for 1874, states the total land grants as 3,343,458 acres; 
county, town, and municipal bonds, paid or held for collection, 
representing 36 counties and 71 towns and cities, $6,910,552.00; 
3,785 farm mortgages distributed among 27 counties, $4,079, 
433.00. Valuing the land at $3 per acre the total aid extended 
up to 1874 amounted to $21,227,160.00, or enough to have built 
one-half of the total mileage in this state on Jan. 1, 1874. 2 The 
town, county, and city indebtedness incurred in aid of railroads 
up to 1875, amounted to nearly two per cent, of the assessed 
valuation of the taxable property in Wisconsin; and the farm 
^he Appendix to Assembly Journal , 1858, contains the reports of the 
investigating committees as well as the testimony in the case of the Mil - 
waukee and La Crosse and the Milwaukee and Lake Superior land grants. 
It reveals not only the methods employed in the legislature, but also the 
manner in which the unsophisticated farmers were robbed of their farms 
The material there presented gives in detail the machinations of Wiscon" 
sin’s first crop of railroad boomers. The newspapers of 1857-58, during the 
session of the legislature, devote columns to this subject. And many of the 
facts presented in the Milwaukee and Superior Railroad case have been 
verified by verbal reports given to the writer by farmers who lived along 
the proposed road. 
2 Compare Railroad Commissioner’s Report, 1874, pp. 20, 76, 77. 
