amount all that private individuals contributed was $4,930 a mile above their receipts; these latter were sums which the private owners gathered in from selling the land given to them by the State, amounting to $35,211 per mile, and the sums that they pocketed from stock waterings amounting to $8,189 a mile. "The unsold land grant," says Professor Frank Parsons, "amounted to 344,368 acres, worth probably over $5,000,000, so that those to whom the securities of the company were issued, had obtained the road at a bonus of nearly $2,000,000 above all they paid in."4
By this manipulation, private individuals not only got this immensely valuable railroad for practically nothing, but they received, or rather the laws (which they caused to be made) awarded them, a present of nearly four millions for their dexterity in plundering the railroad from the people. What set of men do we find now in control of this railroad, doing with it as they please? Although the State of Illinois formally retains a nominal say in its management, yet it is really owned and ruled by eight men, among whom are John Jacob Astor, and Robert Walton Goelet, associated with E. H. Harriman, Cornelius Vanderbilt and four others. John Jacob Astor is one of the directors of the Western Union Telegraph monopoly, with its annual receipts of $29,000,000 and its net profits of $8,000,000 yearly; and as for the many other corporations in which he and his family, the Goelets and the other commanding landlords hold stock, they would, if enumerated, make a formidable list.
And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. We have seen how John Jacob Astor of the third generation very eagerly in 1867 invited Cornelius Vanderbilt to take over the management of the New York Central Railroad, after Vanderbilt had proved himself not less an able executive than an indefatigable and effective briber and corrupter. So long as Vanderbilt produced the profits, Astor and his fellow-directors did not care what means he used, however criminal in law and whatever their turpitude in