In this interval the prostrated and nearly bankrupt corporations were in no condition to conduct themselves offensively. In 1874 a state board of three railroad commissioners was created. Mr. Edgerton was retained as a member, with Ex-Governor Marshall as one of his colleagues. Under their powers they made and published a complete schedule of reasonable maximum fares and rates according to distances, and reported at the close of the year a general and substantial compliance on the part of the companies. Their representatives showed such good nature and made such fair showing of their meagre profits that the commissioners found good reason to allow them all they could reasonably claim. This led to the suggestion that the commissioners had been deluded or corrupted by the smart and able railroad men. The next legislature (1875) accordingly replaced them with a single commissioner to be chosen by the electors, with such meagre powers as to justify a guess that some ingenious railroad attorney drafted the bill. Ex-Governor Marshall held the office for six years, discharging the duties with admirable discretion. As an example of the liberality, not to say criminal recklessness, with which railroad operators in the decade following the Civil War made use of other people’s money, it will be well to follow the fortunes of one of the great land grant companies. The Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company was one of the four corporations created by special act in 1857 to receive the colossal land grant made in that year to aid railroad building in Minnesota. This company was obligated to build from Stillwater via St. Anthony to Breckenridge, and from St. Anthony to St. Vincent, a hamlet on the Red River near the crossing of the Canadian boundary. Along with the rest it defaulted, and in the summer of 1860 its property and franchises were sold to the state upon foreclosure. An effort to recover these by conforming to conditions imposed by the legislature as already stated, proved abortive. In 1862, however, the franchises, rights of way, the land grant, and other property thus forfeited were bestowed upon a new corporation styled the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company, which built ten miles of road that year and opened business between St. Paul and St. Anthony. The year after, seventeen and one half miles of track were added, and trains run to Anoka. This rate of progress did not satisfy the corporation nor the expectant people. Circumstances not now well known opened the way for borrowing money in Holland. To give the great enterprise a less tremendous aspect, it was resolved to separate it, so that the portions of road lying in districts already settling up might be immediately “financed,” while those running to distant regions known only to hunters and Indian traders might be left to the future. Accordingly in 1864, under legislative authority, a new and separate corporation was formed by the interests controlling the existing company, under the