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Updated: July 8, 2025
Indeed, not one of the shufflers gained anything by the course that he had pursued. The public reasoned, and reasoned justly, that they would have kept the money if they had dared to do so. Similar conduct ruined many of the members of Congress who were beneficiaries of the Credit Mobilier scheme. Mr.
And he listened to discussions and talks covering every phase of the work, from the Credit Mobilier to the Chinese coolies that were advancing from the west to meet the Paddies of his own division. How strange to realize that the great railroad had its nucleus, its impetus, and its completion in such a center as this!
In 1869 about the time the Credit Mobilier Company was about to turn the finished road over, disgruntled stock and bondholders under the leadership of "Jim Fisk" endeavored to wrest possession from the Union Pacific Railway Company.
In order to avoid personal liability and give their movement the semblance of legality, the directors purchased the charter of the "Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency," and changed its name to the "Credit Mobilier of America." At this time two million dollars of stock had been subscribed to the railroad company, and two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars paid in.
Their investigations disclosed the fact that Ames, then a member of the House of Representatives, the principal stockholder in the Union Pacific, and the soul of the enterprise, had organized, under an existing Pennsylvania charter, a construction company called the Credit Mobilier, whose shares were issued to Ames and his associates.
Finding legislation necessary, and knowing how difficult it was to secure the attention of Congressmen to schemes which did not benefit them or their constituents, he distributed shares of this Credit Mobilier, to use his own words, "where it would do the most good."
Nor is it likely that politicians who lived in the days of the Credit Mobilier and the Whiskey King would falter at a bargain which would affect the election of a president. Republicans looked upon the Democrats as being so wicked that they were justified in "fighting the devil with fire."
Many of these commissioners were politicians, working in close touch with the directors, and not averse to bleeding the Credit Mobilier. All the engineers, including the chief, though he was noncommittal, were bitter about this expert-commissioner law. If a good road-bed had been surveyed, the engineers knew more about it than any one else. They were the pioneers of the work.
Then the directors of the railroad company, through certain middle-men, awarded the contract for building the road to the Credit Mobilier, in other words, to themselves, for from twenty thousand dollars to thirty thousand dollars per mile more than it was worth.
Louis, Des Moines and Northern Railway, Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, etc. Peter A. Dey was the first engineer of the line, but left in 1864. He was not able to accept the methods of enormous expenditures the Company and the Credit Mobilier were adopting and retired on the ground that the Hoxie contract was made against his recommendation.
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