the north line was adopted by the company and accepted by the government. Brigham Young called a conference of his church and refused to accept the decision; prohibited his people from contracting or working for the Union Pacific, and threw all his influence and efforts to the Central Pacific, which just at that time was of great moment, as there was a complete force of Mormon contractors and laborers in Salt Lake valley competent to construct the line 200 miles east or west of the lake, and as the two companies had entered into active competition, each respectively to see how far east or west of the lake they could build, that city being the objective point and the key to the control of the commerce of that great basin. The Central Pacific Company entered upon the examination of the lines long after the Union Pacific had determined and filed its line, and we waited the decision of their engineers with some anxiety. We knew they could not obtain so good a line, but we were in doubt whether, with the aid of the Mormon church and the fact that the line south of the lake passed through Salt Lake City, the only commercial capital between the Missouri river and Sacramento, they might decide to take the long and undulating line; and then would arise the question as to which (the one built south, the other built north, and it would fall to the gov ernment to decide) should receive the bonds and become the transcontinental line. However, the engineers of the Central Pacific, Clements and Ives, took as strong ground, or stronger than we in favor of the north line, and located almost exactly upon the ground the Union Pacific had occupied a year before; and this brought the Mormon forces back to the Union Pacific, their first love. The location of the Union Pacific was extended to the California State line, and that of the Central Pacific to the mouth of Weber Canon. The Union Pacific work was opened and most of the line graded to Humboldt Wells, 219 miles west of Ogden, and the Union Pacific met the track of the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit, 1,186 miles west of the Missouri river and 638 miles east of Sacramento, on May 9th, 1869, to the wonder of America, and the utter astonishment of the whole world-completing the entire line seven years before the limit of time allowed by the gov ernment. On the occasion of the completion of the road there assembled on the bleak mountain side representatives of nearly all civilized nations. As the last spike was driven, connection was made with every telegraph office between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and every blow was heard throughout the land. To the representatives of the road there came over the wires the congratulations of authorities, officials and eminent people of every country that could be reached by wire, and among them all was one that I prized above all others-the telegram which I have already read in your hearing. You who know what it is to receive commendation and promotion on the field of battle, in the face of your enemy, can appreciate the satisfaction conferred by such a message from such a source. How well we did our work I leave to the committee, who, after an exhaustive examination of it, submitted its report to the government to say, as follows: "The foregoing shows that the location of the Union Pacific railroad is in accordance with the law, as a whole and in its different parts, the most direct, central and practicable that could be found between Omaha and the head of Great Salt Lake. "Taken as a whole, the Union Pacific railroad has been well constructed. The general route for the line is exceedingly well selected, crossing the Rocky mountain ranges at some of the most favorable passes on the continent, and possessing capabilities for easy grades and favorable alignments unsurpassed by any other railway line on similarly elevated grounds. The energy and perseverence with which the work has been urged forward, and the rapidity with which it has been executed, are without parallel in history. In the grandeur and magnitude of the undertaking, it has never been equaled, and no other line compares with this in the arid and barren character of the country it traverses, giving rise to unusual inconveniences and difficulties, and imposing the necessity of obtaining almost every requisite of material, of labor and of supplies for its construction, from the extreme initial point of its commencement. "Deficiencies exist, but they are almost without exception those incident to all new roads, or of a character growing out of the peculiar difficulties encountered or inseparably connected with the unexampled progress of the work, a matter of the greatest importance and highly credible to the able managers of the company; and they can all be applied at an outlay but little exceeding that which would have obviated them in the first instance, but at the cost of materially retarding the progress of the work. Under the circumstances, it is much more a matter of surprise that so few mistakes were made and so few defects exist than it would be, had serious deficiencies been of more frequent occurrence; and the country has reason to congratulate itself that this great work of national importance is so rapidly approaching completion under such favorable auspices. "We are, very respectfully, your obedient servants, G. K. WARREN, Brevet Major-General, U. S. A. Special Commissioners Union Pacific Railroad. "Hon. O. H. BROWNING, Secretary of the Interior." Another and even greater testimonial to the proper construction of the road is the fact that when the Canadian Pacific was about to be built, the Dominion government some time in 1873 or 1874 examined the Union Pacific railroad carefully and, in making its contract for the building of the Canadian Pacific, used the Union Pacific as its standard; and there occurs a clause in their contract which provides that the Canadian Pacific when completed, shall be equal in all its parts (in road-bed, structures, alignments and equipment) to the Union Pacific as found in the year 1874-and that government is now making a settlement with its contractors and claiming that the Canadian Pacific has not yet been brought to that standard. When we consider that England and its colonies have the reputation of building the most substantial roads in the world, this fact must certainly go to the credit of the builders of the Union Pacific, and is a severe comment upon the attacks that have been made upon the Pacific railroads by our own government and people. The day for estimating the benefit of these lines to the nation or comparing them with anyone's foresight or predictions of the revolution they would make in the trade, commerce and population of the country, has long since passed. Some of the benefits derived from the building of these roads are: 1. The change of climate. 2. The bringing under cultivation of millions upon millions of acres of plains-land, making homes for the numerous immigrants to the country. 3. The development of vast mineral belts that now supply the world with gold, silver and copper. 4. The development of immense quantities of coal, anthracite and bituminous, that are already supplying the population and industries between the Missouri river and the Pacific. 5. The discovering, yearly, of immense beds of all kinds of ores that go into the iron, tin, earthen and other industries. There seems to be no metal that the Rocky mountains cannot furnish the ore to produce. 6. The empire that the roads have made possible will, in the near future, exceed in occupied territory, population, wealth and savings, all those of the country east of the Missouri river as measured to-day. In the last two years the financial strides have been remarkable. The government is daily adding to its treasury more than all the interest upon all the sums it has expended in developing it, and does not yet know what it has acquired; nor does it comprehend in any degree what it will in years to come pay into our treasury. It has already built up four great commercial centres, each controlling territory 500 miles in diameter-one on the Missouri river, one in Colorado, one in Salt Lake basin and one on the Pacific coast; and three more are in their infancy-one on the Rio Grande, one in Montana and another in Oregon. The banking capital and deposits in the centres illustrate their progress. They amount to over one hundred millions of dollars to-day. On the completion of the road, at the request of the Board of Directors, we made an estimate of earnings for five and ten years after completion. By claiming the overland trade of all the British islands, of China and Japan, and taking that of the entire Pacific coast, we estimated the annual earnings in five years at $5,000 per mile. We gave eighty per cent. of this to through traffic, and twenty per cent. to local. Within ten years the local development brought the earnings up to $12,000 per mile, and to-day the through traffic is not 5 per cent. of its gross earnings. In 1887, the Union Pacific system earned a grand total of $28,557,766; the Central and Southern Pacific, $37,930,162; the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, $18.461,366; the Northern Pacific, $12,789,447; and the Texas & Pacific, $6,200,000. Nearly one-half as much more was earned by local roads that developed a portion of each state and territory, but were not part of the continental system. The trade, traffic and development of that vast empire, not yet thirty-five years old, has passed beyond all figures, and we simply look upon it as two great commercial zones following that other great empire, between the lakes and the Missouri river, whose development has been the admiration and wonder of the world. The building of the Pacific roads has changed the climate between the Missouri river and the Sierra Nevada. In the extreme west it is not felt so much as between the Missouri river and the Rocky mountains. Before settlement had developed it, the country west of the Missouri river could raise very little of the main crops, except by irrigation. From April until September no rain fell. The snows of the mountains furnished the streams with water and the bunch-grass with sufficient dampness to sustain it until July, when it became cured and was the food that sustained all animal life on the plains, summer and winter. I have seen herds of buffalo, hundreds of thousands in number, living off bunch-grass that they obtained by pawing through two feet of snow on a level. It was this feature that induced the stocking of immense ranches with cattle. Buffalo never changed the character of the grass, but herds of cattle did, so that now, on the ranges, very little of the bunch or buffalo grass remains. Since the building of these roads, it is calculated that the rain belt moves westward at the rate of eight miles per year. It has now certainly reached the plains of Colorado, and for two years the pioneers of that high and dry State have raised crops without irrigation, right up to the foot of the mountains. Salt Lake since 1853 has risen nineteen feet, submerging whole farms along its border and threatening the level desert west of it. It has been a gradual but permanent rise, and comes from the additional moisture falling during the year-rain and snow. Prof. Agassiz in 1867, after a visit to Colorado, predicted that this increase of moisture would come by the disturbance of the electrical currents, caused by the building of the Pacific railroads and settlement of the country. The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific were fortunate in selecting a class of young men for their work, some of them hardened by five years' experience in the war, whose whole soul and interest were in it. They commenced first in the exploring and engineering parties, and finally landed as chiefs in some part of the work. On the Union Pacific were Dey, Reed, Hurd, Blickensderfer, Morris, McCartney, Eddy, House, Hodges, Hudnut, Maxwell, |