Talk:Crédit Mobilier scandal

Wikipedia Ambassador Program assignment

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Drake University supported by WikiProject Politics and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

Above message substituted from {{WAP assignment}} on 15:26, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Initial messages

Ummmmm.... im workin on a school project... and frankly i don't get it *sweatdrop* — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.198.39.86 (talk) 00:27, 8 April 2005 (UTC)

hmm. Who is James Brooks? uberblue 03:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Crédit Mobilier of America scandal - Donald Trump?

Donald Trump involved in Crédit Mobilier of America scandal? 170.141.68.2 (talk) 19:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Jerms

That is called vandalism. Like some punk spray painting your car. Just remove it.

References

I am taking out the reference citation. I added references and more information. {Cmguy777 (talk) 19:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)}

This article needs a lot more references. Every paragraph should be referenced. This is wholly inadequate. > Best O Fortuna (talk) 22:32, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

"railroad to nowhere"

Additionally, words and statements like "railroad to nowhere" need to be cited. I doubt that this phrase existed in the 1800s. This is a contemporary phrase, in the last 20-years, and thus it being the article smacks of WP:OR and WP:POV.

Who said this in the 1860s:

"that the project had no regard for trying to create a worthwhile and profitable transportation enterprise, when it was completed."

????

And in regards to this:

"replaced as head of the firm"

Which firm? UP or CMofA? > Best O Fortuna (talk) 22:32, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Aftermath

There needs to be an "Aftermath" section.

What happened as a result of this? Was legislation or corporate law changed in any way? Did anybody go to jail? Did anybody get their money taken away or given back? What was the short-term and long-term fallout? > Best O Fortuna (talk) 22:32, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

This is an important topic. The tragedy is that no one, as far as I know, ever went to jail over this massive government fraud, just reputations damaged. It is unknown whose hands the millions of dollars it went into, possibly Jim Fisk. Cmguy777 (talk) 04:22, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Credit Mobilier of America scandal--Reason for revisions

The paragraph that had a possible neutrality problem was removed due to its contents of opinion and speculation with no known and respectable source. As for the Aftermath topic I have added a "Outcome" section to wrap up the scandal.

{Kimmy Askelson (talk) 17:41, 20 November 2011}

Kimmyroo, I reverted your edit:

1) Please put new topics on discussion pages at the bottom, not the top. SEE: Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines

2) With headings in Wikipedia, you do not capitalize any words after the first word unless they are proper nouns. SEE: MOS:HEAD

3) Don't remove taglettes unless you satisfy the requirement (s) of why they are there. "Refimprove" means just that, improve references. Not delete the taglette and move on. (SEE: Resolving Content Disputes)

4) Please, use the "Edit summary" please to explain your edits.

5) And most important: Please, please, please, do not remove references. We should be adding references, not removing them.

There are rules for this playground. Stay out of the rough. > Best O Fortuna (talk) 23:58, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect, it might be more helpful for Kimmy (not "Kimmyroo," unless you perhaps know her in real life?) if your comments, especially the last one, were a little less condescending. I'm sure it was all done in good faith. Jtodsen (talk) 02:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Plagiarism

The third paragraph, under "Background" sounds almost exactly like the wording in Steven Ambrose's book. The book is listed under the references, but the wording is not in quotations, nor is credit given to Ambrose for the phrasing. I know some words are changed, but this is not enough, IMHO, to justify such obvious "borrowing" from another's work. 98.170.214.134 (talk) 01:08, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Garbled explanation of finances

This article doesn't make any sense. The government paid $94,650,287 to Union Pacific and $50,720,959 to Credit Mobilier of America (CMA), generating a profit of the difference of those two? It doesn't make any sense. Also, selling stock at par is very different from selling bonds at par. Maybe the explanation of what happened should be made as much as possible with contemporary terminology. I'm going to fix the article up to at least make basic logical sense.Eujin16 (talk) 19:20, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Greetings fellow Wikipedians ... I agree this is a tough article to follow. Partly because there isn't a separate article on CMA itself. I would propose retitling the article to Credit Mobilier of America (CMA) and making the "scandal" a section of it. At the very least developing another article on CMA itself and its ties to the Union Pacific Railroad. I agree with Eujin16 that the financial posed by CMA were very complex for the 19th century and need to be developed. I also think the conflict of interest and self-dealing issues need to be addressed as well as part of the broader 19th-century accounting crises that the railroad industry faced. Cheers ... Risk Engineer (talk) 15:11, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 13 February 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. (non-admin closure)  samee  converse  16:07, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

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Crédit Mobilier of America scandal → Crédit Mobilier scandal – Per WP:COMMONNAME, Google Scholar demonstrates that "of America" is superfluous. Only six articles use it, vs. 508 which use "Crédit Mobilier scandal".--TM 19:01, 13 February 2019 (UTC)--Relisting. B dash (talk) 00:12, 21 February 2019 (UTC)--Relisting. B dash (talk) 13:04, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

OPPOSED: I am ok with the idea of a move to "Crédit Mobilier" but not to a scandal. Yes, there was a financial scandal but there was also more than just the scandal. I would suggest a new main article with that title "Crédit Mobilier scandal" referenced inside the current article. Many thanks for your edits Namiba. Cheers Risk Engineer (talk) 14:08, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

• • Looking at the results on Google Scholar, it seems highly likely that both the scandal and the company are notable. With that being said, this article is definitively about the scandal, so the discussion should be about whether to include "of America" or not.--TM 23:19, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Clear common name for this historical event. I doubt whether a standalone article could be written about the company apart from the scandal. The company in itself is the scandal. Mackensen (talk) 14:19, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the comment. I made these notes earlier and I think there is more than just the scandal. ...
    • "I agree this is a tough article to follow. Partly because there isn't a separate article on CMA itself. I would propose retitling the article to Credit Mobilier of America (CMA) and making the "scandal" a section of it. At the very least developing another article on CMA itself and its ties to the Union Pacific Railroad. I agree with Eujin16 that the financial posed by CMA were very complex for the 19th century and need to be developed. I also think the conflict of interest and self-dealing issues need to be addressed as well as part of the broader 19th-century accounting crises that the railroad industry faced." Cheers Risk Engineer (talk) 14:59, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Also, the construction company does not appear to be notable in and of itself. Only the scandal is notable. That's what all the sources appear to be about. So that's all we should have the article be about. I'm open to being convinced there are sufficient sources about the company independent of the scandal to warrant a separate article about the company, but as of right now I don't see it. --В²C ☎ 23:32, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Poorly done

The article is poorly done and misleading. The Credit Mobilier was not a fraud --it successfully built one of the world's great railroads and opened up new farm lands that have paid lots of $$$ in federal and state taxes. The Union Pacific did not cost the Federal government of the taxpayer anything. (Washington loaned US bonds to the RR, which it paid back with interest.) It ignores its own sources: "The scandal caused intense excitement throughout the country, and the Mobilier Company met with almost universal execration; but subsequent investigation has shown that the charges were greatly exaggerated, and were at least never conclusively proved." says New Intl Ency. Maury Klein, Union Pacific has the fullest treatment. He says (p 300) no fraud but some bribery of Congress. Rjensen (talk) 13:09, 18 July 2022 (UTC)