But the singular continuity does not end here. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. The railroads now controlled by a few men, among whom the large landowners are conspicuous, were surveyed and built to a great extent by public funds, not private money. As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. Little by little, scarcely known to the people, laws are altered; the States and the Government, representing the interests of the vested class, surrender the people's rights, often even the empty forms of those rights, and great railroad systems pass into the hands of a small cabal of multimillionaires. To give one of many instances: The Illinois Central Railroad, passing through an industrial and rich farming country, is one of the most profitable railroads in the United States. This railroad was built in the proportion of twelve parts to one by public funds, raised by taxation of the people of that State, and by prodigal gifts of public land grants. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. Of this 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."[165] 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.