DEAR SIR: The progress of the railroad question is remarkable in our own state. As a member of the Iowa legislature, for ten consecutive years, I have had occasion to note that progress, and to observe the advancement of that interest from struggling infancy to vigorous growth--from feebleness to a strength that is fearful to contemplate.
The people of Iowa, through their legislature, have always been eminently friendly to the construction of railroads and the promotion of the railway interests. In proof of this, witness the whole history of our legislation; witness our magnificent land grants, subsidies, bonds, subscriptions, and taxes, to the amount of five per cent of our entire valuation, in one year, as free gifts to railroad corporations. And yet some of these corporations have cheated us as people never were cheated before. We have afforded immunities to capital invested in railroads that are not afforded to any other kind of capital in the state. Witness the hitherto almost entire exemption from taxation of that kind of property. But, more than this, we have laws regulating the charges to be made by those engaged in several of the industrial pursuits, while up to the present time there has been no law upon our statute books interfering with the charges made by railroad corporations; and only _the right_ to interfere has been claimed in cases of public necessity, where those corporations are guilty of gross extortion or unjust discrimination.
The first grant of lands to aid in the construction of railroads in our state is known as the "Iowa Land Bill," which passed congress and was approved by the president, May 15th, 1856. Under this act there has been certified to the state, to aid the four original land grant roads, as follows: to the Burlington & Missouri River railroad, two hundred and eighty-seven thousand acres; to the Mississippi & Missouri (now part of the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific) railroad, four hundred and seventy-four thousand six hundred and seventy-five acres; to the Iowa Central (afterwards the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River) railroad, seven hundred and seventy-five thousand and ninety-five acres; and, to the Dubuque & Sioux City railroad, one million two hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred and fifty-nine acres. On the 12th of May, 1864, congress passed an act granting lands to aid in the construction of another railroad across the state, from the city of McGregor, westward, on or near the forty-third parallel, to Sioux City. The lands in this grant were supposed to exceed a million of acres, but were found afterwards to be less than half a million. On the 12th of July, 1862, congress authorized the diversion of a portion of the Des Moines River Improvement company's land grant to the Des Moines Valley railroad company, the amount of which I have not before me. It is safe to say that all these railroad land grants, taken together, amount to _over four millions of acres_, or nearly one-eighth of the land of the state; or, more approximately, _one acre out of every eight and a half acres_ of the entire area of Iowa has been given away to railroad corporations. In addition to this immense subsidy, the people along the several lines contributed largely toward their construction.