“The Credit Mobilier was a corporation chartered in 1859 by the State of Pennsylvania, and authorized to build houses, buy lands, loan money, etc. Nothing of consequence was done with that company until the year 1867, when a number of men bought up whatever stock there was in it, and commenced to do a very large business. In the winter of 1867, Mr. Train came to me and showed me a list of names and subscribers to the stock of the Credit Mobilier Company, and asked me to subscribe $1,000. I should say there were fifteen or twenty members of Congress on the list, and many more prominent business men. He said that the company was going to buy lands along the lines of the Pacific Railroad at places where they thought cities and villages would grow up, and to develop them, and he had no doubt that the growth of the country would make that investment double itself in a very short time. “That was the alleged scheme that the Credit Mobilier Company had undertaken—a thing that if there is any gentleman in Warren who would feel any hesitancy in buying, it would be because he didn’t believe in the growth of the country where the business was to be done. That stock was offered to me as a plain business proposition, with no intimation whatever that it was offered because the subscribers were members of Congress, for it was offered to many other people, and no better men lived than at least a large number of the gentlemen to whom it was offered. Some of them took it at once. Some men are cautious about making an investment; others are quick to determine. To none of those men was any explanation made that this Credit Mobilier Company was in any way connected with a ring of seven men who owned the principal portion of the stock and who had contracted with the directors of the Union Pacific road for building six or seven hundred miles at an extravagant price, largely above what the work was worth. That was a secret held only by those seven men who owned the principal portion of the stock. It is now understood that Mr. Oakes Ames, who was the center of the company of seven men, sought to gain the friendship of fifteen or twenty prominent Congressmen with the view of protecting himself and the Pacific Railroad against any investigations which might be made; but it was a necessary part of his plan not to divulge that purpose or in any way to intimate to them that he might draw upon them for favors.