“There is a large number of people in the United States who use these words without any adequate idea of what they mean. I have no doubt that a great many people feel about it very much as the fishwoman at Billingsgate market felt when Sidney Smith, the great humorist of England, came along and began to talk with her. She answered back in a verysaucy way, and he finally commenced to call her mathematical names; he called her a parallelogram, a hypothenuse, a parallelopipedon, and other such terms, and she stood back aghast and said she never heard such a nasty talking man in her life—never was abused so before. Now people think they have said an enormous thing when they say that somebody had something to do with the Credit Mobilier. I ask your attention just for a few moments to what that thing is, and in the next place to understand precisely what it is that I am supposed to have had to do with it.
“The Credit Mobilier was a corporation chartered in 1859 by the State of Pennsylvania, and authorized to build houses, buy lands, loan money, etc. Nothing of consequence was done with that company until the year 1867, when a number of men bought up whatever stock there was in it, and commenced to do a very large business. In the winter of 1867, Mr. Train came to me and showed me a list of names and subscribers to the stock of the Credit Mobilier Company, and asked me to subscribe $1,000. I should say there were fifteen or twenty members of Congress on the list, and many more prominent business men. He said that the company was going to buy lands along the lines of the Pacific Railroad at places where they thought cities and villages would grow up, and to develop them, and he had no doubt that the growth of the country would make that investment double itself in a very short time.
“That was the alleged scheme that the Credit Mobilier Company had undertaken—a thing that if there is any gentleman in Warren who would feel any hesitancy in buying, it would be because he didn’t believe in the growth of the country where the business was to be done. That stock was offered to me as a plain business proposition, with no intimation whatever that it was offered because the subscribers were members of Congress, for it was offered to many other people, and no better men lived than at least a large number of the gentlemen to whom it was offered. Some of them took it at once. Some men are cautious about making an investment; others are quick to determine. To none of those men was any explanation made that this Credit Mobilier Company was in any way connected with a ring of seven men who owned the principal portion of the stock and who had contracted with the directors of the Union Pacific road for building six or seven hundred miles at an extravagant price, largely above what the work was worth. That was a secret held only by those seven men who owned the principal portion of the stock. It isnow understood that Mr. Oakes Ames, who was the center of the company of seven men, sought to gain the friendship of fifteen or twenty prominent Congressmen with the view of protecting himself and the Pacific Railroad against any investigations which might be made; but it was a necessary part of his plan not to divulge that purpose or in any way to intimate to them that he might draw upon them for favors.
“Long before any such purpose was realized, long before any pressure came upon Mr. Ames, most of the men who had been invited to purchase that stock had either declined to purchase or had purchased and realized, or had purchased and sold out. But in 1872, in the midst of the Presidential campaign, an article was published in the public journals charging that sixteen prominent members of Congress—Senators and Representatives—had sold their votes for money or stock; that they had accepted bribes. You remember that I was running for Congress in this district at that time. When that news came I was away in the Rocky Mountains. I came home, and the first day after my arrival at Washington I authorized to be published a statement concerning what I knew about the Oakes Ames business. A great many people suppose now and say—and it has been repeated a hundred times in this district, and especially in this town during the last two weeks—that Mr. Garfield hedged and denied any knowledge of the Credit Mobilier business, until finally the investigation brought it out. I repeat that immediately on my arrival in Washington I made a statement to the correspondent of the CincinnatiGazette, of which the following is a copy:
“‘Washington, September 15, 1872.
“‘Washington, September 15, 1872.
“‘Washington, September 15, 1872.
“‘Washington, September 15, 1872.
“‘General Garfield, who has just arrived here from the Indian country, has to-day the first opportunity of seeing the charges connecting his name with receiving shares of the Credit Mobilier from Oakes Ames. He authorizes the statement that he never subscribed for a single share of the stock, and that he never received or saw a share of it. When the company was first formed, George Francis Train, then active in it, came to Washington and exhibited a list of subscribers, of leading capitalists and some members of Congress, to the stock of the company. The subscription was described as a popular one of $1,000 cash. Train urged General Garfield to subscribe on two occasions, and each time he declined. Subsequently he was again informed that the list was nearly completed, but that a chance remained for him to subscribe, when he again declined,and to this day he has not subscribed for or received any share of stock or bond of the company.’
“Now I want my audience to understand that in the midst of that storm and tempest of accusation, and only a little while before the election, I started it and let it go broadcast to the daily press, that I did know something about the Credit Mobilier; that I had on two occasions discussed the matter; that I had taken it into consideration, and that finally I had declined to subscribe; that I never had owned or held a share; had never seen a certificate of the stock. Now, I am not asking you at this moment, to discuss the truth of that statement, but only to say that I stated it long before there was any investigation talked of; that I never dodged or evaded or denied having knowledge on the subject, but at the first declared plainly and finally what I did know about it.
“When Congress met, Speaker Blaine and the rest of us whose names were concerned in it, at once, on the first morning of the session, demanded a committee of investigation to go through with the whole subject from beginning to end. I want those gentlemen who talk about Mr. Garfield being got after by committees of investigation to know that no investigation into any public affair has been held in the last three years in Washington that I have not helped to organize and bring about. [Applause.]