ABSTRACT
The looting of the Erie Railroad was accomplished with the help of the easily corruptible legislatures of only two states, New York and New Jersey. It was a fairly simple business. But to loot the immense federal project of the Union Pacific Railroad required far more sophisticated talents. Stockholders of the two companies were identical. They proceeded to contract with themselves to build the road at a cost calculated to exhaust the resources of the Union Pacific. The so-called profits were to be divided among Credit Mobilier stockholders. Mile upon mile, thousands of working-stiffs sweated beneath the great cruel sun of the Plains and were frostbitten when the skies turned gray and winter came down from Canada. Mile upon mile, many of them died in accidents, and others died of brawls in the jerry-built Sodoms that followed the end-of-steel across Nebraska into Colorado, into Wyoming, and so into Utah.
