Transactions Of The Board Of Trustee

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Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780484895811
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (958 download)

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Download or read book Review of the Transactions of the Credit Mobilier Company written by and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-02-14 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Review of the Transactions of the Credit Mobilier Company: And an Examination of That Portion of the Testimony Taken by the Committee of Investigation and Reported to the House of Representatives at the Last Session of the Forty-Second Congress, Which Relates to Mr. Garfield On the face of this agreement, the part to be performed by the Credit M obilier Company as a corporation was simple and unobjectionable. It was to advance money to the contractors and to receive therefor about ten per cent. As interest and commission. This explains how it was that in a suit in the courts of Pennsylvania in 1870, to collect the State tax on the profits of the company, its managers swore that the company had never declared dividends to an aggregate of more than twelve present. The company proper did not receive the profits of the Oakes Ames contract. The profits were paid only to the seven trustees and to such stockholders of the Credit Mobilier as had delivered to them the proxies on their Pacific Railroad stock. In other words, a ring inside the Credit Mobilier obtained the control both of that corporation and of the profits of the Ames contract. By a private agreement made in writing October 16, 1867, the day afte1 the triple contract was signed, the seven trustees pledged them selves to each other so to vote all the Pacific Railroad stock which they held in their own right or by proxy, as to keep in power all the members of the then existing board of directors of the railroad company not ap pointed by the President of the United States, or such other persons as said board should nominate. By this agreement, the election of a majority of the directors was wholly within the power of the seven trustees. From all this it resulted that the Ames contract and the triple agreement made in October amounted in fact to a contract made by seven leading stockholders of the Pacific Railroad Company with them selves; so that the men who fixed the price at which the road was to be built were the same men who would receive the profits of the contract. The wrong in this transaction consisted, first, in the fact that the stockholding directors of the Pacific Railroad, being the guardians of a great public trust, contracted with themselves; and, second, that. They paid themselves an exorbitant price for the work to be done; a price which virtually brought into their own possession, as private individuals, almost all the property of the railroad company. The six hundred and sixty-seven miles covered by the contract included one hundred and thirty-eight miles already completed the profits on which inured to the benefit of the contractors. (see Report of Credit Mobilier Committee No. 2. P. Xiii.) 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.