though still less than the 6 per cent carried by the subsidy bonds themselves.[538] Passage of Bill The Thurman bill was carefully considered by the Senate before its enactment, and may fairly be said to embody the best judgment of Congress at the time of its enactment. The final vote in the Senate was taken on April 9, 1879. Forty Senators voted for the bill, and twenty against it.[539] If paired votes for and against the act be included, the vote was forty-four to twenty-six. Twenty-seven Democrats voted for the bill, and six against it. Yet in spite of this strong Democratic party support and the opposition of Senators Blaine and Conkling, nearly as many Republicans went on record for the bill as voted or were paired against it. In the House there were but two votes against the bill compared with 243 in favor of it.[540] In neither house was there marked party or sectional division. Doubtless the passage of the act was made easier by the general unpopularity of railroad enterprise in 1878, although adequate reasons for additional legislation undoubtedly existed. It was the period of the aftermath of the panic of 1873—the epoch of Granger legislation and railroad control bills, of revelations regarding rebates and construction frauds. Sentiment ran strongly against great railroad corporations. Railroads still had stalwart supporters, but it is putting it mildly to say that the presumption in doubtful cases was against them. Feeling of Railroad Men There is plenty of evidence, nevertheless, that railroad men felt very bitter that the Thurman bill should ever have been passed. Stanford declared that no act so destructive to private right had ever before been attempted in this country, and that only two examples of such atrocity could be found in English history; one being the suppression of the order of Templars in the time of Edward the Second, and the other, the suppression of the religious houses in the time of Henry the Eighth. Undoubtedly, also, the railroads were active in Congress in the attempt to prevent the passage of the Thurman Act. The reader’s attention has already been directed in a previous chapter to correspondence relating to the Thurman bill which passed between Huntington and Colton in 1877 and 1878. It will be recalled that in January, 1878, Huntington wrote that matters did not look well at Washington. He thought, however, that the railroad would not be much hurt, although “the boys are very hungry, and it will cost considerably to be saved.” Some time before this, in May, 1877, Huntington wrote: We must have friends in Congress from the West Coast, as it is very important. I think that we can kill the open highway, and get a fair sinking fund bill by which we can get time beyond the maturity of the bonds that the Government loaned us, to pay the indebtedness.[541] Again, in November, Huntington said: