Fogel calculates the average accumulated investment in both the Union Pacific and Credit Mobilier at $2,704,000 and the lower level of profit from the Credit Mobilier at $13m with the upper level at $16,501,760. He did not distinguish between the promoters' investment in the Union Pacific and their investment in the Credit Mobilier.
Fogel, Union Pacific, 70-73.
According to the best estimates of accountants who later examined the Central Pacific's books, Crocker and Company had received $13,657,624.70 in securities and cash, while the Contract and Finance Company had received $32, 615,452. These figures represented the discounted value of stock. In the case of Crocker & Company, the par value of the stock was $14,701, 710.22 and in the case of the Contract and Finance Company $23,726,000. The discounted value of the Crocker & Co. stock was $5,121,609; it was all turned over to the Contract and Finance Company. The accountants put the discounted version of stock held by the Contract and Finance Company at $8,889,452.
There was a charter for a railroad of 165 miles linking the oceans at one of the continent's narrowest points at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. There was a British line from Vera Cruz and a charter for a road from Vera Cruz to an unspecified terminus on the Pacific coast in Oaxaca, Guerrero, or Michoacán, and another linking the Gulf Coast between Tecolutla and Tampico to the Pacific Ocean somewhere between Zacatula and San Blas.
Such expressions were relatively mild. In the United States denunciations of Mexicans as backward, racially inferior, and hopelessly unprogressive were commonplace. American governors and senators spoke as if military intervention by the United States was prerequisite of development.
Pletcher, Rails, Mines, and Progress, 37-49.
Hart, Empire and Revolution, 10-16, 31-34, 40-41, 37-39, 80.
The battle against the French and the Archduke Maximilian had been for Mexicans the equivalent of the American Civil War, forging national and personal interests in a complicated amalgam where one could later be mistaken for the other. Desperately in need of money for weapons, Romero had brokered Mexico's future by helping to sell Mexican bonds issued by a government in virtual exile at deep discounts to New York capitalists. Many of the bonds guaranteed land and other concessions should the Mexican government default.