TIIE CREDIT SYSTEM OF CONSTRUCTION. 
19 
which yearly occurs; and the value of which, thus saved, would pay the interest on the whole 
cost of building it. 
To secure the advantages of becoming the sources of supply to emigration, settlements would 
grow up at the mountain terminus of the line. These settlements would become some of the 
most important of the nation. They would soon furnish those supplies to transportation which, 
in event of war, would make the defence of the Pacific coast a practicable measure, by the far¬ 
ther overland passage of trains by a wagon-road. The citizens of a narrow State would defend 
and support their railroad. The border population, thus placed five hundred (500) miles nearer 
the Pacific, would soon reach the outlying farms of the Mormons. Intercourse would take 
place with that singular people, and the weight of public opinion tend toward solving an intri¬ 
cate problem in the science of self-government. 
All these results can be obtained by the construction of a railroad at lower cost than any line 
now in operation in America, of equal length. 
The road is on the grand approach to both the Bridger’s Pass and the South Pass of the Rocky 
mountains. It is the main trunk of the whole great overland travel going west of those mount¬ 
ains. It is most advantageously situated, regarding the connexion of eastern lines. At a point 
near Fort Kearney, at the head of Big Island of the Platte, roads from Lake Superior, from the 
pine districts of Minnesota, from Lake Michigan, at Chicago from the central roads of Indiana, 
from St. Louis and the South, can favorably intersect with it on equal terms. 
These roads can there drain the traffic it has developed, and their trains make passage over 
it to the mountain terminus and the interior. The road would become, in its artificial relations 
to Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah, what the great rivers of our country have been in their natural 
advantages to the country east of the Mississippi; or, as all navigation ceases at the Missouri, a 
deficiency of nature would be supplied by the triumphs of human ingenuity; therefore, the 
general government might reasonably afford to aid the construction of this first section of a 
great railroad line in its passage towards the Pacific, where, full of important connexions, like 
the branches of a river, its arms extending upon either side, it would develop not only the nar¬ 
row region which it traverses, but the resources of distant localities, and become to the western 
portion of the American continent what the Ohio and Mississippi have been to the eastern. 
THE CREDIT SYSTEM OF CONSTRUCTION. 
In the course of these remarks, I have repeatedly referred to the credit system of construction. 
The construction of the pioneer or preliminary, rather than the permanent Grand Trunk road, 
will restrict the evils of this system to the minimum; and a mode in which the road might be 
built would, in a measure, prevent their occurrence. Without presuming to suggest to the at¬ 
tention of legislation the evils which, in my own belief, will inevitably follow the literal over¬ 
working of the land-grant system of construction, when the stock market becomes flooded with 
the scrip of unfinished roads, I will refer to the credit system as connected with the subject of 
a railroad to the Pacific. 
Returning to the legitimate discussion of this question, I shall endeavor to maintain the posi¬ 
tion, that even the construction of the first section of a Pacific railroad should not be made to 
labor under the liabilities of the land-grant and credit system of building. 
The conduct of the preliminary step in a series of experiments which shall test a great 
national project, and, in a measure, define its character, should be simple, effective, and guided 
by judicious deductions from former experience. 
The railroads of the United States are actually constructed by building contractors, under the 
direction of civil engineers. These building contractors take the works from other contractors, 
who are great stock operators, and are often even directors of the company they bargain with. 
The companies are generally formed in the following manner : 
