By this amendment, the public money appropriated to private corporations, to the amount of about $65,000,000, for which security had been taken, on all the property of the companies, was left in the hands of the companies without any security; or, in other words, the servants of the people made an absolute gift of this great sum of money. The history of the country, in connection with railroad corporations, demonstrates the fact that these corporations by "watering" their stock, and other characteristic management, show, if they so desire it, no margin from the business of their roads. They permit the interest on their bonds to accumulate, until a foreclosure and sale on first mortgage bonds are necessary, and then, under a new name, but with the same persons as stockholders, the road is bought in and becomes profitable. In this case the amount of $65,000,000, and the accrued interest must be first paid, or the property of the corporation must be sold, and the public money advanced by the government will be lost. Even at the present time (as we shall show hereafter) the people are paying the interest on these subsidy bonds, and the only security they have for its repayment is the _honor_ of the company; for all precedents prove that as a rule second mortgage bonds, when a large sum of first mortgage bonds is to be paid, are of no real value. Sections fifteen and sixteen provide for a division of earnings, and a consolidation of the various companies. Sections eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, provide for the admission of the Burlington & Missouri river railroad company as a branch of the Union Pacific, with a grant of land in Nebraska. But the greatest outrage upon the rights and interests of the people, in this Pacific railroad law, will be found in the seventeenth section of this amendment. By the original act, the Union Pacific company was required to construct a branch, road from Sioux City (on the most direct and practicable route) to some point on its road to be fixed by the president of the United States (but not beyond the one-hundredth parallel) when a railroad should be constructed through Minnesota or Iowa to Sioux City. This new road was to unite with and form a part of the great monopoly, and was to receive the same amount of lands, and subsidy bonds, per mile, as the main line received. The building of this road from Sioux City west, to a proper point of connection with the main line, would have cost but little, comparatively, because of the favorable character of the country through which it would pass. For some reason, unknown to the public, it was decided to make a change in respect to this branch, not only as to its location, but also as to the company whose _duty_ it should be to build it. To effect this object, this seventeenth section contains the following provisions:--