Crédit Mobilier scandal

For more information on Crédit Mobilier scandal, visit Britannica.com.

In the boom years after the Civil War, Congress made large land grants and appropriated funds to help the privately owned Union Pacific Railroad build a transcontinental railroad line. Union Pacific organized a construction company called Credit Mobilier to lay the track. Union Pacific's chief Washington agent, Representative Oakes Ames (Republican-Massachusetts), distributed stock in Credit Mobilier to key members of Congress, where, as he explained, “it will do the most good for us.” The company expected that those members who got the stock would look favorably on the project and support the company's future needs. The story did not break in the newspapers until the Presidential election of 1872. “How the Credit Mobilier Bought Its Way Through Congress,” read one headline in the New York Sun. The press revealed that stocks had gone to the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and leading members of the House and Senate. House and Senate investigations led to the censure of Representatives Ames and James Brooks (Democrat-New York). The Credit Mobilier scandal damaged or destroyed many other political reputations and left a stigma of corruption on the Congress of the Gilded Age.

See also Scandals, congressional

Sources

• W. Allan. Wilbur, “The Credit Mobilier Scandal, 1873”, in Congress Investigates: A Documented History, 1792–1974, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Roger Bruns (New York: Bowker, 1975)