Excerpt from The Pacific Railroads and the Relations Existing Between Them and the Government of the United States Dear Sir: I understand that you have prepared a paper concerning the legal relations of the Union Pacific Railroad Company to the Government under the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Not doubting from your connection with the enterprise in its incipient stages, and from the attention you have given to the subject to the present time, that your paper will be calculated to correct some prevailing misapprehensions, I trust it will find its way to the public. I have had no stock in the Company since my resignation as President ten years ago; nor have I been concerned in any way with its transactions, or any outside movements relating to it. But I regard it as one of the great enterprises of the age, the rapid accomplishment of which caused more astonishment in other countries than anything we have achieved, and as a larger contributor to our growth and prosperity than any one other cause. I do not doubt that it will continue to be so, whatever combinations may be formed by speculators in Wall Street to enhance or depress the market value of its stock. I did not, as you know, approve or assent to the Credit Mobilier contracts, which were made while I was in Europe; but this is a matter entirely apart from the legal relations of the Company to the Government. These should be understood by the whole community - not only for the purpose of removing misconception, by which the public mind is unjustly prejudiced, but to prevent legislative bodies, under the influence of the prevalent and not unnatural jealousy of large corporations, from being misled and hurried into ill-considered and unauthorized enactments. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.