Not only the British capitalists made enormous profits, but our railroad corporations and speculators made still greater profits. For every dollar of the bonds they sold to the English capitalists they issued a dollar or more of the railroad stocks, so that in 1876 the amount of railroad stock reached the sum of $2,248,000,000. From 1876 to 1890 the English and European capitalists continued to invest the interest they drew upon their Government and railroad bonds in the new issues of railroad bonds, so that, in 1890, they had secured the enormous sum of $4,828,000,000 of railroad bonds, and it took $219,877,000 to pay the interest annually. During the same time the railroads had increased the amount of railroad stock to $4,495,000,000 and it took $80,000,000 to pay the dividends. The railroad people not only made vast fortunes out of the $4,495,000,000 of watered stock (for it was in reality nothing but water, for the actual cost of building the roads was no more than was received from the sale of their bonds to the English capitalists), but they made hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of the lands that had been given to them by the Government, and had not cost them one cent, not even for taxes. They ran their roads through their lands for thousands of miles, and wherever they thought proper they would lay out towns and cities and sell the lots at fabulous prices. They also induced towns, counties, and cities to issue millions of dollars of bonds and give to the companies, as a bonus, to run their roads through such towns and cities. When we look at these facts, that are matters of history and can not be gainsaid, is it not plain to every man of common sense, that the policy of the Government for the last quarter of a century has been in the interest of capitalists and speculators, and against the interest of the producing classes, who, either directly or indirectly, must pay the interest annually on this vast accumulation of wealth that is in the hands of the favored few? And to pay this vast amount of interest in gold, as these capitalists insist upon, and are trying to compel the people to do by using every means in their power to prevent the free and unlimited coinage of silver, will, in the near future, reduce the producing classes to the condition of serfs. CHAPTER XXXVI. MONTANA'S TOWNS AND CITIES. The "Bonanza" State, young as she is to-day, has more towns and cities than such old and well developed States as Wisconsin, Illinois, or Minnesota had at a period in their history at which they might easily have expected to be far better developed, as regards population, than Montana could reasonably expect.