But neither Mills nor Sharon, who were leading officers of the bank, ever knew how Ralston gathered in nearly a million dollars after banking hours that day. All the satisfaction they ever got was that a kind friend had come to the bank’s assistance.
CHAPTER XVIII.
“Big Four” Intervenes and Sets Up Obstacles; Ralston Acts as Mediator and Is Badly Gold-Bricked.
Railroad Madness Results in the Narrator Securing Franchise for Line From Sausalito to Humboldt.
Way back in 1868, the Legislature passed a bill giving a franchise to a corporation organized under the name of the San Francisco & Humboldt Bay Railroad Company, to construct a railroad from an indefinite point on the bay of San Francisco to Eureka, in Humboldt county. The franchise was coupled with a provision that the electors of the counties through which it passed should be authorized to vote a subsidy in bonds of $5,000 per mile, payable as every section of 25 miles was completed. That was about enough to pay for the rails. The franchise was later extended to the waterfront of Sausalito, but that was surrendered to the Sausalito Land and Ferry Company.
The franchise was held by Fred McCrellish of the Alta; J. F. McCauley, a well known business “rustler”; General Connor, a temporary sojourner from the Northwest, and I think H. T. Templeton had a small interest. None of them had any capital to speak of, and they had no other design than to peddle the franchise to someone who had.
Of course, the promoters had done nothing in the way of construction, and the rights were in a fair way to lapse, when Fred McCrellish drew my attention to this paper property and asked me to make an offer. The Central Pacific was then nearing completion. Like most people in the State, I was railroad mad, and being on the lookout for everything good, I referred his proposition to an expert. The report of the engineer was very favorable and when I found they wanted only $20,000 for all their rights and franchises for a railroad from Sausalito to Humboldt Bay, I readily closed the bargain and bought them out, all except one-tenth, which J. F. McCauley owned.
Then I looked into the proposition seriously. I went over the ground in person, realized the vast opportunities presented, particularly in the great forests of the Eel River country, which were still Government land. The way things were going then, it would have been no trick at all to introduce a bill in Congress asking for a land grant through a country to be traversed by a railroad, and get half a million acres or more just for the asking. It seemed to me a bigger game than all the gold mines, speculations and investments I had ever seen or dreamed of. I tried to interest Ralston, but he said I was visionary, and made some remarks about “back lands” and “coyote ranges.”
That did not deter me in the slightest. I had abundant capital of my own, and very important financial connections, and had no doubt that I could complete the undertaking on my own account. With a good corps of engineers I began to rush the work of surveys and locations with my customary impetuosity. In a short time I had the dirt flying at Petaluma and several other points north. I contracted for fifty miles of ties as a start and bought fifty miles of rail, some ten miles here and the rest in England. I was perfectly infatuated with the railroad business and determined to devote my life and energies to the work.