Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/297

OREGON AND CALIFORNIA RAILROAD 259 public lands. If the land was taken, they had the choice of other land within twenty-five miles of the track. 3. It provided for a survey and segregation of the land from the Federal domain, when maps were filed by the company. 4. Settlers under the Homestead Act were protected. 5. The land was to be sold to actual settlers at $2.50 per acre and not in lots over a quarter section. 6. Funds were to be set aside for a sinking fund, to be invested in bonds, which was to be used to redeem the first mortgage construction bonds. This fund could not be used for other purposes until the bonds were redeemed. 7. The District Court of the United States was to have original jurisdiction, concurrently, with the state courts, subject to appeal and writ of error, to enforce the pro- vision of the act. 8. Assent was to be filed within one year and at least twenty miles finished in two years and the road was to be entirely completed in six years. Thus the struggle for land closed. Let us now turn to construction and finance as carried on by the companies until their interests have become one under Ben Holla- day. To this we shall devote the next section. II. AIDS AND FINANCE It is impossible to determine with any degree of ac- curacy the finance of the railroad during the early period, in fact until after the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Before that time there was no one with sufficient power to enforce anything like a uni- form system of accounting. Railroads were left to them- selves and if they saw fit to record the facts of public interest we have them; if they did not, we are left in the dark. In addition to this the Oregon and California Com- pany suffered from the loss of records burned in the San i ItM