ern Washington, including the important Yellowstone Park branch. The forces employed by the several companies formed a total of over twenty-five thousand railroad men, mechanics, and laborers, including fifteen thousand Chinamen, and the total disbursements on all accounts reached fully four millions of dollars a month. He aimed at an achievement the like of which had never before been attempted in the civilized world—nothing less than the completion of not far from two thousand miles of new road in two years, or nearly three miles a day, including scores of miles of tunnels, bridges, and trestles. No man in this country, indeed, had ever before at one time had supreme charge of such gigantic operations, extending from the Upper Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, and from Puget Sound to the northern boundaries of California.
After protracted negotiations with the Union Pacific officials in the early part of 1883, Mr. Villard finally induced them to agree definitely to construct their Oregon Short Line to the Snake River as fast as possible, in consideration of which he undertook to continue the Baker City branch of the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company to a junction with their extension. The enlargement of the construction programme of the latter company had called for another issue of $6,000,000 stock in 1882, and the agreement with the Union Pacific now led to a third issue of the same amount, so that the total outstanding stock capital was $24,000,000. As the net earnings of the company had risen in the first three years of its existence from less than a million to nearly three millions, the successive issues of stock were readily absorbed. The company was then the only one in the United States that met all its pecuniary requirements without putting out a single additional bond after the first issue, of which fact its president was justly proud.
Mr. Villard spent many months, both in 1882 and in 1883, on the road in personal visits to the principal construction columns. In April, 1883, occasion arose for him
