While Congress was considering ways and means for enforcing some adequate provision for the eventual repayment of the government’s advance to the Pacific railroads, the Central Pacific declared dividends which amounted to no less than $18,453,670 in the five years from September 13, 1873, to October 1, 1877. In 1873, 3 per cent was declared; in 1874, 5 per cent; in 1875, 10 per cent; and in 1876 and 1877, 8 per cent. To see earnings divided among a group of financiers who were believed to be already overpaid, while the unpaid interest on the government subsidy bonds piled up, was all the more exasperating because of the apparent helplessness of Congress. Some action, however, was presently to be taken. In 1874 a bill was introduced in the Senate to alter and amend the Acts of 1862 and 1864 so as to safeguard the government equity. In 1876 Mr. Thurman, of Ohio, presented another bill, which was reintroduced in 1877, referred to the Committee on Judiciary, and ultimately reached the Senate in March, 1878. This bill ultimately became the Thurman Act of 1878.[529] The situation as it appeared in 1878 was succinctly presented by Mr. Thurman on the floor of the Senate. The government’s loan to the Central and Western Pacific amounted to $27,855,680. The interest upon that sum for thirty years would be $50,140,224, making a total of $77,995,904. The probable reimbursement from the 5 per cent of net earnings and the half of the transportation accounts would be about $15,000,000, leaving probably due at the maturity of the government loan, should the laws remain unchanged, the sum of $62,995,904, which, added to the amount that would probably be due from the Union Pacific, made an aggregate of $119,248,979.[530] To this amount there was also to be added in estimating the payments which the Central Pacific, Western Pacific, and Union Pacific would be called upon to make in the late nineties, the amount of the first mortgage bonds of the three companies, the lien of which was prior to the lien of the subsidy bonds. It seemed manifest to Mr. Thurman in March, 1878, that the bare statement of the amount for which the government would be the creditor of the Pacific railroad companies ought to satisfy anyone that some step should be taken by Congress to secure the government from loss. This point of view was not seriously contested. Objection to any action there was, indeed, but not based on any denial of the assertion that the security of the government was becoming impaired. Thurman Bill