pposition; and for party purposes the
administration would certainly favor the construction of such lines as
were clearly needed, and it is high time that only such should be
built; and what instrumentality so fit to determine this as a
non-partisan commission acting as the agent of the whole people?

The sixth objection is that lines built by the government would cost
much more than if built by corporations.

Possibly this would be true, but they would be much better built and
cost far less for maintenance and "betterments," and would represent
no more than actual cost; and such lines as the Kansas Midland,
costing but $10,200 per mile, would not, as now, be capitalized at
$53,024 per mile; nor would the President of the Union Pacific (as
does Sidney Dillon, in the _North American Review_ for April,) say
that "A citizen, simply as a citizen, commits an impertinence when he
questions the right of a corporation to capitalize its properties at
any sum whatever," as then there would be no Sidney Dillons who would
be presidents of corporations, pretending to own railways built wholly
from government moneys and lands, and who have never invested a dollar
in the construction of a property which they have now capitalized at
the modest sum of $106,000 per mile. After such an achievement, in
making much out of nothing, it is no wonder that Mr. Dillon is a
multi-millionnaire and thinks it an impertinence when a citizen asks
how he has discharged his trust in relation to a railway built wholly
with public funds, no part of which Mr. Dillon and his associates seem
in haste to pay back; their indebtedness to the government, with many
years of unpaid interest, amounting to more than $50,000,000, which is
more than the cash cost of the railway upon which these men have been
so sharp as to induce the government, after furnishing all the money
expended in its construction, to accept a second mortgage, and now ask
the same accommodating government to reduce the rate of
interest--which they make no pretence of paying--to a nominal figure,
and to wait another hundred years for both principal and interest. To
make sure that the government's second mortgage shall be no more
valuable than second mortgages usually are, and to make it more
comfortable for the manipulators, Messrs. Gould and Dillon now propose
to put a blanket first mortgage of $250,000,000 on this property,
built wholly from funds derived from the sale of government lands and