“The Crédit Mobilier made a great deal of talk, although comparatively few people knew what it was about. Under various acts of Congress granting aid to the Union Pacific Railroad, that corporation was to receive 12,800 acres of land per mile, or about 12,000,000 acres in all, and government 6 per cent. bonds for the amount of $12,000 per mile for one portion of the road; $32,000 per mile for another portion; and $48,000 per mile for another. In addition to these subsidies, the company was authorized to issue its own first-mortgage bonds to an amount equal to the government bonds and to organize a capital stock not to exceed one hundred million dollars. All of this constituted a magnificent fund, and it soon became evident that the road could be built for at least twenty million dollars less than the resources claimed. The honest way would have been to build the road as economically as possible and give the government the benefit of the saving. Instead, the directors concocted a scheme whereby they could command the whole amount, and after building the road, divide the surplus. They decided to become contractors and hire themselves to build the road. “To complete their fraud successfully, without exciting public attention, and to cover their tracks, was a complicated matter. They secured several attorneys skilled in the intricacies of railroad fraud, and with falsified statements and some advice, the machinery of the transaction was arranged satisfactorily. Samuel J. Tilden was their attorney. In order to avoid personal liability and give the movement the appearance of legality, the directors purchased the charter of the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency and changed its name to the Crédit Mobilier of America. This was in 1864, and at this time two million dollars’ worth of stock had been subscribed to the railroad company and two hundred eighteen dollars paid in. Samuel J. Tilden had personally subscribed twenty thousand dollars. The first thing the Crédit Mobilier did was to buy in all of this stock and to bring the Railroad Company and the Crédit Mobilier under one management and the same set of officers. Then the directors of the Railroad Company, through certain middlemen, awarded the contract for building the road to the Crédit Mobilier; in other words, to themselves, for from twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars per mile more than it was worth. Evidence which afterwards came to light in the Congressional investigations showed that the Crédit Mobilier made a cash profit in the transaction of over thirty-three million dollars, besides grabbing up the stock of the road at thirty cents on the dollar, when the law plainly provided that it should not be issued at less than par.