Chapter XXIII: Building the Union Pacific Railway

1862-1870

When the Englishmen tore up my street-railways in England, I made a speech in which I told them I would build a railway across the Rocky Mountains and the Great American Desert which would ruin the old trade routes across Egypt to China and Japan. I pointed out then that this route would be far shorter in time than the old route, and that Europe would soon be traversing America to reach the Orient. This was no new idea, sprung at the moment in a feeling of resentment. I had suggested this route across America ten years earlier, at Melbourne, Australia.

New York, then as now, we Americans regarded as the starting point of all great enterprises, and to New York I came. I called at once upon leaders in the world of finance--Commodore Vanderbilt, Commodore Garrison, William B. Astor, Moses H. Grinnell, Marshall O. Roberts, and others, and frankly told them of my plans. One of them said to me:

"Train, you have reputation enough now. Why do something that will mar it? You are known all over the world as the Clipper-Ship King. This is enough glory for one man. If you attempt to build a railway across the desert and over the Rocky Mountains, the world will call you a lunatic."

And this was all that I received from these gentlemen! Not a word of encouragement, not a cent of contributed funds--only the warning that the world, like themselves, would call me a madman.

Unaffected by this cold reception, I kept steadily on with my task, and proceeded to organize the great railway. Congress granted the necessary charter in '62. It authorized the building of a road from the Missouri River to California, with an issue of $100,000,000 of stock and $50,000,000 of bonds--to be issued in sections, the first section to be at the rate of $16,000 a mile; and the last at $48,000 a mile, with 20,000,000 acres of land in alternate sections; and $2,000,000 to be subscribed, ten per centum to be paid into the State treasury at Albany.

My friends in Boston took the stock, but I failed to get the cash to go ahead with the road in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. At this point, when matters looked a little dark, an idea occurred to me that cleared the sky. It made the construction of the great line a certainty. In Paris, a few years before, I had been much interested in new methods of finance as devised by the brothers Emile and Isaac Perrere. These shrewd and ingenious men, finding that old methods could not be used to meet many demands of modern times, invented entirely new ones which they organized into two systems known as the Credit Mobilier and the Credit Foncier--or systems of credit based on personal property and land. The French Government had supported these systems of the Perreres, and Baron Haussmann had resorted to them in his great undertaking in rebuilding and remodeling the French capital, making it the most beautiful city of the world. I determined upon introducing this new style of finance into this country.

I found that a bill had been passed in Pennsylvania in '59, for Duff Green, granting authority for the organization of the "Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency," which, on examination, I saw could be used for my purpose. I bought this charter for $25,000. The bill had been "engineered" through the Pennsylvania legislature by a man named Hall, and others of the Philadelphia Custom-House. In order to make it suitable for our uses, I wanted its title changed, and asked to have the legislature change the title to "Credit Mobilier of America." The matter went through without trouble, and I paid $500 for having this done. When I happened to mention to William H. Harding, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, that it had cost me $500 to have the title of the charter altered, he told me he could have had it done for $50. I did not know as much of the ways of legislation in Pennsylvania then as I did later. The sum I paid for the charter was made up from $5,000 cash and $20,000 of the bonds of the Credit Mobilier. I was to have $50,000 for organizing the company. I think it worth while to call attention here to the fact that this was the first so-called "Trust" organized in this country.

Having failed to raise the money elsewhere, I went to Boston, and there succeeded in launching the enterprise. My own subscription of $150,000 was the pint of water that started the great wheel of the machinery. I give here--for it is a matter of historic interest, since the building of this road marked the opening of a new era in the United States--the list of the subscribers who were my copartners in the undertaking:

Lombard and friends $100,000
Oakes and Oliver Ames 200,000
Sidney Dillon $100,000
Cyrus H. McCormick 100,000
Ben Holliday 100,000
John Duff 100,000 400,000
-------
Glidden & Williams 50,000
Joseph Nickerson 100,000
Fred Nickerson 50,000
Baker & Morrill 50,000
Samuel Hooper and Dexter 50,000
Price Crowell 25,000
Bardwell and Otis Norcross 75,000 400,000
------
Williams & Guion 50,000
William H. Macy 25,000
H. S. McComb, Wilmington, Del. 75,000
George Francis Train, through Colonel George
T. M. Davis, trustee for my wife and children 150,000 300,000
------- ----------
$1,400,000

I had offered an interest in the road to old and well-established merchants of New York and other cities--the Grays, the Goodhues, the Aspinwalls, the Howlands, the Grinnells, the Marshalls, and Davis, Brooks & Company; and even to some of the new men, like Henry Clews--agreeing to put them in "on the ground floor," if I may use an expression from the lesser world of finance. But they were afraid. It was too big. Only two of them, William H. Macy and William H. Guion, would take any stock.

There was a meeting of the stockholders in Gibson's office in Wall Street, for the purpose of electing a board of directors. By this time the importance of the road had become recognized, and there was an active desire on the part of the chiefs of the trunk lines leading to the West to obtain control of the charter. They had their representatives there, and I saw from the first that an attempt would be made to capture the Union Pacific Railway as a trophy of one of these powerful Eastern lines. Fortunately, as I perfectly well knew, they were not quite powerful enough, in the circumstance, even with a united front, to accomplish their purposes.

William B. Ogden was in the chair, and a hasty calculation convinced me that probably $200,000,000 were represented by the men gathered in the little office. Of the great trunk lines represented I can recall now the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the New York Central. It was from the forces of the last that the lightning came.

As soon as the meeting had been called to order, and the purpose of it stated by the chair, a gentleman arose and began speaking in a wheezy, squeaky voice. But he had a way of saying what he wanted, and of saying it shrewdly, adroitly, and very effectively. I could see that he was accustomed to win in the Shakespearian way--"by indirections find directions out." He said that as everything was ready for the election of a board, he would suggest that the chair should appoint a committee of five which should then name a board of thirty members. I saw that this was an adroit move to put one of these big roads in control of the committee and, of course, in control of the Union Pacific. The chair immediately named five men, three of whom were representatives of the New York Central.

I turned to a gentleman sitting next me and asked who was the wheezy-voiced man who had just taken his seat. "That is Samuel J. Tilden," said he.

Matters now went as I had foreseen. Of course, the three New York Central men on the committee named a New York Central board of directors. They thought they had quietly and effectively bagged the game. But I held in my pocket the power that could overturn all their schemes. In fact I had offered the presidency of the road to Moses Taylor, founder of the City National Bank, now controlled by Mr. Stillman, and to A. A. Low, father of the present Mayor of New York. But both had laughed at me, thinking it absurd that I should presume to have so much power. I then made up my own list of officers, and named John A. Dix as president, and John J. Cisco as treasurer. Afterward I made a short speech, in which I said that I held the control of the road in my hands.

The vote was called for by the chair, and out of the $2,000,000 of stock represented, the New York Central influence cast $300,000 and I the vote of $1,700,000. This completely surprised those present, and they left the office as rats fly from a sinking ship. I was indignant, and shouted: "You stand on the corners of Wall Street again and call me a 'damned Copperhead'; but don't forget that I kicked $200,000,000 worth of you into the street!" And that is the reason why they called me "crazy"!

I went out West in the autumn of '63 to break ground for the first mile of railway track west of the Missouri river. None of the directors was with me; I was entirely alone. I made a speech at Omaha in which I predicted that the road would be completed by '70, and in which I forecast the great development of Omaha and the Northwest. This speech was printed all over the world, and I was denounced as a madman and a visionary. I had, every one said, prophesied the impossible. And yet every word of that speech was true, both as to its facts and as to its prophecies. I give here a few extracts from it, as it was published in the Omaha Republican, December 3, '63, and as it has been republished in that paper and others many times since:

America is the stage, the world is the audience of to-day. While
one act of the drama represents the booming of the cannon on the
Rapidan, the Cumberland, and the Rio Grande, sounding the
death-knell of rebellious war, the next scene records the booming
of cannon on both sides of the Missouri to celebrate the grandest
work of peace that ever attracted the energies of man. The great
Pacific Railway is commenced, and if you knew the man who has
hold of the affair as well as I do, no doubt would ever arise as
to its speedy completion. The President shows his good judgment
in locating the road where the Almighty placed the signal
station, at the entrance of a garden seven hundred miles in
length and twenty broad.

* * * * *

Before the first century of the nation's birth, we may see in the
New York depot some strange Pacific railway notice.

"_European passengers for Japan will please take the night
train._

"_Passengers for China this way._

"_African and Asiatic freight must be distinctly marked: For
Peking via San Francisco._"

* * * * *

Immigration will soon pour into these valleys. Ten millions of
emigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years.

I had predicted that the railway would be completed in '70. On May 10, '69, the "golden spike" was driven at Ogden, Utah. Among the papers throughout the world that had ridiculed me as being mad or visionary because of my speech at Omaha in '63, was the Hongkong Press, which said that it was generally thought in China during my visit there in '55-'56 that I was a little "off," and that this speech, which predicted a railway across the Rocky Mountains, clearly proved that I was both visionary and mad. On my journey around the world in '70, after the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, I stepped into the office of the Hongkong paper and asked for the editor. When he came out, I asked him to show me the file of his paper containing my Omaha speech. He brought it out, and we turned to the column. "Do you know Train?" he asked me. "Why, I am Train," I said, "and it seems that you did not know me in Hongkong in '55-'56. I have just come through the Rocky Mountains over that road."

The tremendous importance of the Union Pacific Railway is now too well known to need any further comment here from me. It is enough to say that it was through my suggestion and through my plans and energy that this mighty highway across the continent, breaking up the old trade routes of the world, and turning the tide of commerce from its ancient eastern tracks across the wide expanse of the American continent, was created.

NOTE.--Albert D. Richardson in his once famous book Beyond the
Mississippi, writing of the development of Omaha and the
Northwest, due to the building of the Union Pacific Railway,
says: "Here was George Francis Train, at the head of a great
company called the Credit Foncier, organized for dealing in lands
and stocks for building cities along the railway from the
Missouri to Salt Lake. This corporation had been clothed by the
Nebraska legislature with nearly every power imaginable, save
that of reconstructing the late rebel States. It was erecting
neat cottages in Omaha and at other points west.

"Mr. Train owned personally about five hundred acres in Omaha,
which cost him only one hundred and seventy-five dollars per
acre--a most promising investment. He is a noticeable, original
American, who has crowded wonderful and varied experiences into
his short life. An orphan boy, employed to sweep the
counting-room, he rose to the head of a great Boston shipping
house; then established a branch in Liverpool; next organized and
conducted a heavy commission business in Australia, and
astonished his neighbors in that era of fabulous prices, with
Brussels carpets, and marble counters, and a free champagne
luncheon daily in his business office. Afterward he made the
circuit of the world, wrote books of travel, fought British
prejudices against street-railways, occupying his leisure time by
fiery and audacious American war speeches to our island cousins,
until he spent a fortune, and enjoyed the delights of a month in
a British prison.

"Thence he returned to America; lectured everywhere; and now he
is trying to build a belt of cities across the continent. At
least a magnificent project. Curiously combining keen sagacity
with wild enthusiasm, a man who might have built the pyramids, or
been confined in a strait-jacket for eccentricities, according to
the age he lived in, he observes dryly that since he began to
make money, people no longer pronounce him crazy! He drinks no
spirits, uses no tobacco, talks on the stump like an embodied
Niagara, composes songs to order by the hour as fast as he can
sing them, like an Italian improvisatore, remembers every droll
story from Joe Miller to Artemus Ward, is a born actor, is
intensely in earnest, and has the most absolute and outspoken
faith in himself and his future."

[At the time Richardson saw me at Omaha, in '64, another noted
journalist, William Hepworth Dixon, editor of the London
Athenaeum, called on me, traveling with Sir Charles Dilke, who was
writing Greater Britain. I introduced him to Richardson.--G. F.
T.]