Huntington to Colton, Jan. 22, 1878, Jan. 28, 1878, Feb. 5, 1878, Feb. 12, 1878, Feb. 19, 1878, Feb. 25, 1878, Octopus Speaks, 454, 457-58,465, 468, 470, 472.
For California Railroad Commission, see Deverell, Railroad Crossings, 51-52.
Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 60-62.
If the Boyd bill represents payment for votes, it was most likely votes bought in an unsuccessful attempt to block a procedural motion to suspend the rules and bring S 238 extending the time for the construction of the Northern Pacific to a vote of the Committee of the Whole. It passed 133 to 104.
The money also, however, could have been spent on a speakership fight raging among the Democrats or to block an attempt to get T.P. legislation to the floor.
Boyd to CPH, March 5, 1879, CPH, r. 17, ser. 1.
Congress had to decide who was responsible for paying for the survey of a railroad land grant for without a survey, the land could not be patented. Congress then had to determine when a patent could be issued and if the railroads had to apply for a patent. The courts had to rule on whether unsold lands in a railroad grant were open for preemption -- the right to settle on unsurveyed land -- as the grants themselves usually explicitly stipulated. Only in 1910 did Congress finally require railroads to deposit the money to complete the surveys of the grants.
Mills noted the government's reluctance to grant patents in the early 1880s without giving the reasons. The Northern Pacific worked feverishly to stop Congress from rescinding its grant.
The Union Pacific admitted it sold lands without survey to avoid taxes.
Decker, Railroads, Lands, and Politics, 73-86, 97, 113.
W.H. Mills to Stanford, June 20, 1887, PRC, 5:2563.
On the other hand, the Southern Pacific was interested in protecting the Texas & Pacific land grant, which it claimed to have inherited.
CPH to Crocker, Dec. 22, 1881, Jan. 19, 1882, v. 29, CPH Papers, ser. 2, r. 6.
"Thirty-Second Parallel Pacific Railroad, Remarks of CPH . . .Before the Committee on Public Lands of the U.S. Senate, Feb. 2, 1884, on House Bill 3933" (New York, John C. Rankin, Jr. Printer, 1884).