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Show ! HISTORY OF A RAILROAD. ( ! The Southern Pacific, which had its origin in the old Central Pacific road from Ogden to flan Francisco, has grown to the pro-, pro-, portions of a mighty corporation. J The old Central Pacific was started as an enterprise of six men, j the strongest characters of whom were Huntington and Stanford, j The combined wealth of the six was not over $250,000, but they were J ! a resourceful group and were able to talk others into subscribing money to meet the expenditures. They obtained county aid in California Cal-ifornia and finally received from the general government a subsidy sufficiently large, in itself to construct the road and leave a margin of profit for the construction company which they organized for the purpose of absorbing all the government's prodigal generosity. In addition, ad-dition, they were granted an empire, every other section for twenty miles on each side of the road. When tho time approached for the Central Pacific to pay its government bonds, Huntington and his colleagues proceeded to make the Central Pacific an undesirable asset. They drained the road of all its resources and applied the money to the Southern Pacific in California and south to New Orleans. The wrecking of the road from Ogden to the coast was one 'groat factor in retarding the growth of this city and tributary country, coun-try, and yet congress allowed the outrage to be perpetrated because nearly every western senator and congressman was the servile tool of these railroad politicians. Out of the earnings and resources of the Central Pacific came the millions which today have made the Southern Pacific a billion-dollar corporation. The last statement of the company shows values of $1,084,000,000. The history of a number of our large railroads is a story of .such trickery, deception, corruption and outrageous trifling with the welfare of the people as to prove startling- and to cause one to wonder why the people were so slow in enacting legislative safeguards, safe-guards, such as the interstate commerce commission, whereby the iron hands of the monsters of greed might be held within bounds. I |