In the most notorious instance of corruption connected to the railroads, Union Pacific Railroad executives formed a sham construction company, Crédit Mobilier, that submitted bills for nearly double the construction cost of the eastern portion of the Transcontinental Railroad and pocketed the overcharges.
What construction company was involved in a corruption scheme with the railroads?
Crédit Mobilier of America construction companyThe Crédit Mobilier scandal (French pronunciation: [kʁedi mɔbilje]) was a two-part fraud conducted from 1864 to 1867 by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company in the building of the eastern portion of the first transcontinental railroad.
Which of these examples of government corruption?
Types
- Bribery.
- Trading in influence.
- Patronage.
- Nepotism and cronyism.
- Gombeenism and parochialism.
- Electoral fraud.
- Embezzlement.
- Kickbacks.
What were corrupt railroad bosses known as?
Railroad tycoons were just one of many types of so-called robber barons that emerged in the Gilded Age. These men used union busting, fraud, intimidation, violence and their extensive political connections to gain an advantage over any competitors.
What was the relationship between railroads and government?
Receiving millions of acres of public lands from Congress, the railroads were assured land on which to lay the tracks and land to sell, the proceeds of which helped companies finance the construction of their railroads. Not all railroads were built with government assistance, however.
How did the construction of the railroad lead to government corruption?
What were the negative effects of the construction of the transcontinental railroad?
But there was also a dark side to the historic national project. The railroad was completed by the sweat and muscle of exploited labor, it wiped out populations of buffalo, which had been essential to Indigenous communities, and it extended over land that had been unlawfully seized from tribal nations.
What does government corruption lead to?
Corruption is one of the most pervasive types of crime: it fuels transnational crime, wastes public resources, destabilizes countries, and impedes good governance.
How does government corruption happen?
In summary, political corruption can be attributed to strong urban traditions of ethnic voting, semicorrupt police, and bribe-offering contractors along with decentralized and inefficient law enforcement machinery.
What was a negative effect of the building of the transcontinental railroad?
A Disaster for Native AmericansThe transcontinental railroad was not the beginning of white settlers' battles with Native Americans. Nor was it the final nail in the coffin. But it was an irrevocable marker of encroaching white society, that unstoppable force which would force Indians onto reservations within decades.
What good and bad came with the building of the railroad?
Good and badThe railroad is credited, for instance, with helping to open the West to migration and with expanding the American economy. It is blamed for the near eradication of the Native Americans of the Great Plains, the decimation of the buffalo and the exploitation of Chinese railroad workers.