EIGHTH: The Union Pacific Railway Company, including the Central Pacific (same system),[151] was cunningly presented—scot free—one-half of all the land within twenty miles of the right-of-way, and “all the timber, iron and coal within six miles” of the right-of-way,—a total of 25,000,000 acres of land. “At $2.50 per acre,” says President E. B. Andrews (University of Nebraska),[152] “the land values alone would more than build the road.” The _Northern_ Pacific Company received, just two years later, 47,000,000 acres of land as a gift which a land expert[153] estimated to be worth probably $990,000,000 and possibly $1,320,000,000,—which gives us some idea of the value of the 25,000,000 acre gift to the _Union_ Pacific. It is worth the space to add: That “the promoters of the Northern Pacific, through unfair construction contracts and other frauds, made the capitalization of 600 miles of that line constructed down to 1874 amount to 143 millions on an actual expenditure of twenty-two millions.”[154] NINTH: Again and again the Union Pacific, when it suited its purpose to do so, refused to comply with the treasonably easy terms of its charter; but always the patriots in Washington and the distinguished railway gentlemen cunningly “got together,” made some “gentlemen’s agreement”—and the charter was not revoked. As suggested above, this charter, as amended by the Senate and in the form signed by the President, July 1, 1862,—was, when it was finally “considered” in the House of Mis-Representatives, voted 104 to 21 “without a single syllable of debate.”[155] Professor Parsons sums up the case thus:[156] “The promoters got from Congress more than the cost of the road, bonded it again to private investors for all it was worth, issued stock also beyond the cost of construction, sold and gave away a good deal of it, and still had the road and the control of its earnings for themselves.” The magnitude of this statesmen-patriot-thieves’ masterpiece (“for love of country and home and God”) can not be realized without a further word concerning the land grants. Seventy-nine land-grant railroads (twenty-one of them “direct beneficiaries of Congress”) have been granted 200,000,000 acres of land (reduced by forfeiture to 158,286,627 acres). “OVER ONE-HALF OF THIS ACREAGE WAS GRANTED BY ACTS PASSED BETWEEN 1862 AND 1864.”[157] That is to say, during twenty-four terrible months, just while the nation was sweating blood from every pore, while the people were not looking at anything except the war, precisely at that time, patriotic statesmen gave away to railway promoters who shed no “blood for the flag,” gave to these “gentlemen of push and enterprise” a sufficient amount of the people’s lands to provide a hundred and twenty-five-acre farm for every one of the 800,000 men mustered out of the Union armies in 1865.