"With respect. "PETER A. DEY." Mr. Dey protested against the extravagant amount agreed to be paid Hoxie. The cost of the sections of the road contracted to Hoxie was $7,806,181. The amount agreed to be paid Hoxie for the work was $12,974,416. Mr. Dey saw that this man Hoxie was a _straw man_, and that near $5,000,000 were to be divided among the directors as the profit on this contract, and, as engineer, he protested against it. Yet these government directors, whose sole duty it was to look after and protect the interests of the government and the people, failed to discover and report these abuses to the secretary of the interior; or, if the same and the Credit Mobilier transactions were so reported, then the influence of these corporations controlled the department of the secretary. The truth is, the position of these government directors was such that, without a total disregard of the statutes, and their duties under it, it was not possible to keep all knowledge of these gross abuses from the department. But one conclusion can be drawn from the facts, which is, that the government directors, influenced by these powerful monopolies, were unfaithful to the trust confided to them by the president. Under the statute, the secretary of the interior has the general control of the issue of bonds, certificates for lands, rights of way, &c. The government directors were bound to report to him. If the duties imposed under the law had been faithfully discharged by him, the great abuses practiced by the Pacific railroad companies would have been prevented. The Hoxie contract, the Ames Credit Mobilier contract, and the Davis contract, were all made for about double the cost of building the respective sections of the road covered by these contracts, the actual cost of these respective sections being $50,720,957, and the amounts allowed the contractors being $93,546,387. In this amount is concluded $1,104,000, which was a duplicate payment allowed Ames for work done, and once paid for, under the Hoxie contract. These three jobs put into the pocket of the Credit Mobilier company a net profit of $43,929,337, a large part of which was in subsidy bonds issued by government. These bonds could only issue after the approval, by the secretary of the interior, of the report of the government directors. If the secretary had discharged his duty, or if the interest of the people, which he was supposed to be protecting, and not the interest of these companies, had controlled his action, _duplicate bonds_ would not have been issued at the rate of $16,000 per mile, for more than fifty miles of the road. Nor would certificates for land have issued to the companies while they were openly cheating, defrauding, and robbing the government and people. Let the reader look at the laws of congress chartering the roads, with the