RECAPITULATION. Showing saving to the Government from the foregoing sources for 1868. On Quartermaster's stores for New Mexico......... On mails for New Mexico........ On troops for New Mexico...... Saving....... Add annual saving for transporting Indian sup plies for Interior Department, say....................... (This, it is true, is estimated, but it is believed to be not only within bounds, but, under certain contingencies, to be only a fraction of what that saving will prove to be.) Total saving to the Government in transportation by the use of Railroad from end of present subsidy in Kansas, to Albuquerque, (not including any saving due to the portion of the Road already aided between Kansas City and the 400th mile post,).... $851,880 69,420 122,572 $1,043,872 40,000 $1,083,872 Total amount of United States bonds asked of the Government by the Company, as a loan to secure the extension of its Road to Albuquerque......... $14,800,000 00 The annual interest on which (payable in cur- Total yearly payment, interest and ..... $888,000 00 187,204 33 $1,075,204 33 But the annual saving to the Government in transportation, for Military Department, mails, and Indian supplies, as already shown, $1,083,872 00 Which exceeds the entire annual obligations (due to both interest and principal) incurred by the Government on account of the aid required by this Company for the extension of its Road to the Rio Grande. It will be observed that this makes no reference to the fact that one-half of the amount due to the Railroad for all transportation is, by the act, retained by the Government to reimburse its loan, but proceeds on the supposition that the whole is paid in cash to the company as earned. To ascertain the actual saving of cash expenditure to the Government it is therefore necessary to add 50 per cent. to the above saving, or $541,936, making total amount retrenchment $1,625,808, which would wipe out the entire Government aid in less than ten years. Or should the amount of transportation to New Mexico, estimated above at twenty millions pounds, fall off one-half, the saving would still pay off the United States bonds long before the Government has agreed to pay them, (thirty years.) It is believed, however, that the amount of transportation usually exceeds the estimates, instead of falling short. Furthermore, the Pacific Railroad act requires that on the completion of the Road five per cent. of the net earnings of the Road from all sources shall be paid into the United States Treasury annually, as an entirely additional resource to meet the Government bonds. But there is still another and greater source of economy that has not been adverted to: that is by the reduction of the military force itself, rendered possible by the extension of a Railroad through these remote sections-giving to one regiment by its greater mobility the efficiency of two, and building up settlements which will protect themselves against the Indians as they now do in eastern Kansas and in California. Lieutenant General Sherman stated in his recent testimony before the Pacific Railroad Committee of the Senate, at a meeting which was attended by members of the Military Committee of the House, that of the two regiments of infantry and one regiment of cavalry now quartered in New Mexico, the annual cost of which he estimated at about...... ..... .$4,000,000 The extension of the Railroad to the Rio Grande Total annual saving in War Department by con- Showing on this basis the annual saving to the Government by aiding in the construction only of 487 miles of extension from end of present subsidy to Albuquerque...... 487,226 $2,487,226 69,420 40,000 .$2,596,646 At which rate the Government would be reimbursed for its entire loan in less than six years, and the subsequent saving in transportation would be a continuous clear gain thereafter, over and above the provisions for securing the repayment of the loan. And this provision, together with that for the retention by the Government of one-half its transportation bills, and for the prior and exclusive use of the Road by the Government whenever desired, are permanent conditions binding on the Road, no matter into whose hands it may fall, so that the United States is secured against any possible risk of loss. (See section 6 Pacific Railroad act of 1862, and sections 5 and 10 of amendments of 1864, pages 9 and 10 of this book.) 1 But this argument, strong as it is to Albuquerque, is still stronger to the Colorado river, and even to the Pacific coast, because there is as large a force stationed in Arizona and Lower California* as in New Mexico, and the cost of supplying these troops, for the protection of the miners, transporters, producers, United States mails, etc., in that district, is even greater than in New Mexico.† It is the desire of the Company to begin, simultaneously with the extension of their track west from Kansas, the construction of their Road eastward from the Colorado, which is navigable for one hundred miles above where the Kansas Pacific Railroad Survey crosses it. The effect of this will be at once to cheapen greatly the transportation required by the Government for the supply of Fort Whipple and the other military posts in Central Arizona, besides dispensing with the necessity of maintaining a considerable proportion of the existing military force in that section, by opening up to settlement the valuable mining region between the Great Colorado and the Verde River and south to the Gila, with the rich and fertile parks and pineries in the vicinity of San Francisco Mountain, and of Prescott and other parts of Central Arizona. As a measure purely of military retrenchment and economy, not taking at all into consideration the increase of taxable wealth and national power to be derived from the development of a very extensive mineral region over one thousand miles in length, reported and known to be of great wealth, and from the settlement of the pastoral, agricultural and timber districts of New Mexico and Arizona and California, or the value conferred upon the Government lands *See List of Garrisons and Distribution of Troops, page 27. †Supplies for at least half of the military posts in Arizona are now shipped from San Francisco to Guaymas, Mexico, and thence by wagon to Tucson; transportation costing, by contract, $150 per ton in gold; half of which would be a high price by rail from San Francisco to the same posts. |