Leland Stanford.
Leland Stanford, one of California’s United States Senators, is worth from thirty to forty million dollars. He was born in Albany county, New York, March 9, 1824. He received an academical education and entered a law office in Albany in 1846, and, after three years’ study, was admitted to practice law in the Supreme Court of the State of New York. He removed to Port Washington, in the northern part of Wisconsin, and there engaged in the practice of his profession for four years. In 1852 fire destroyed his law library and other property, whereupon he went to California and became associated in business with his three brothers, who had preceded him in seeking fortune on the Pacific Slope. His first business venture was in Michigan Bluffs, but in 1856 he removed to San Francisco to engage in business enterprises on a large scale. His business at one time, it seems, was in oil, and, later, in various manufacturing and agricultural ventures. He was elected Governor of California in 1861. He insisted upon being inaugurated as provided by the State constitution, at the Capitol building, though the locality was under water by reason of floods. He became President of the Central Pacific Railroad and superintended its construction over the mountains, building 530 miles of it in 293 days. He was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1884, and his term does not expire till 1891. He is still the President of the Central Pacific Railroad and of several of its associated lines, while he is a director in others. He owns a princely domain in California, known as Palo Alto ranch, comprising six thousand acres, which he has devoted to the site of an Industrial University for both sexes, as a memorial of his only son, who died some years ago. He has richly endowed this great educational institution, setting aside for it about ten million dollars. Here both sexes will be fitted to fill a useful part in the battle of life; they will be instructed in mechanical arts and agricultural as well as in other branches of education, which will start the student fairly in life. He found, as President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, that many bright young men of collegiate education were not specially fitted for any particular work in the great school of life, and those who are familiar with great cities know that thousands of men have really wasted their years in obtaining a collegiate education which never enabled them to earn more than barely enough to live upon. They become, in many cases, ill-paid book-keepers, entry clerks, salesmen, car conductors, postmen, and sometimes find themselves obliged to turn their hands to hard manual labor, or else starve. Senator Stanford’s beneficent plan, then, of giving the young such a practical education that they can face the world with confidence and with a reasonable certainty of remunerative employment, or with the requisite knowledge to guide them in enterprises of their own, is worthy of the highest commendation, and his example is likewise worthy of the emulation of gentlemen with millions to spare in all parts of the country. If Samuel J. Tilden had endowed a university of this kind he would have been a far greater benefactor in many respects than he has undoubtedly shown himself in his will. Governor Stanford’s great ranch, which is to become a seat of learning, is situated about 32 miles from San Francisco, and promises to be the educational Mecca of the Pacific Slope. His fortune, notwithstanding this princely donation, is still enormous, amounting to twenty-five or thirty million dollars.