In his letter to his friend Colton, of June 20th, '78, he exclaims: “I think in the world's history never before was such a wild set of demagogues honored by the name of Congress. We have been hurt some, but some of the worst bills have been defeated, but we cannot stand many such Congresses,” etc.
The thing that annoyed Mr. Huntington the most was that he could not persuade Governor Stanford to tell the bare-faced falsehood, that the Southern Pacific did not belong to the owners of the Central Pacific.
Again and again Mr. Huntington urged the necessity of this falsehood being told, childishly forgetting the fact that such prevarications would have been useless, as all Californians knew the truth.
In the Congressional Committees, however, he himself attempted to pass off that misstatement. It is not likely that he was believed, but he succeeded in killing the Texas Pacific, and in “seeing the grass grow over Tom Scott.” The subterfuge no doubt was useful.
Mr. Huntington having buried the Texas Pacific, and also Colonel Scott, as well as other worthy people (of whom no mention has been made in this book), now proceeded to demand that the Government surrender to him and associates, the land subsidy granted by Congress to the Texas Pacific.
This, surely, is an “aggravation of excess!”
The House Committee on Public Lands in their report on the “forfeiture of the Texas Pacific land grant” reviewed Mr. Huntington's acts with merited severity. Amongst many other truths the report says: “The Southern Pacific claims to ‘stand in the shoes’ of the Texas Pacific. Your committee agree that ‘standing in the shoes’ would do if the Southern Pacific filled the shoes.” But it does not. It never had authority or recognition by Congress east of Yuma. For its own purpose, by methods which honest men have denounced, greedy to embrace all land within its net-work of rails, to secure monopoly of transportation, surmounting opposition and beating down all obstacles in its way, and in doing so, crushing the agent Congress had selected as instrument to build a road there, doing nothing, absolutely nothing, by governmental authority or assent even, and having succeeded in defeating a necessary work and rendering absolutely abortive the attempt to have one competing transportation route to the Pacific built, it coolly asks to bestow upon it fifteen millions of acres of lands; to give it the ownership of an area sufficient for perhaps one hundred thousand homes, as a reward for that result.
And the committee (with one dissenting voice only) reported their opinion that the Southern Pacific Railroad Company had neither legal nor equitable claim to the lands of the Texas Pacific which Mr. Huntington wished to appropriate.
But is it not a painful admission that these few men should have thwarted and defeated the purpose and intent of the Government of the United States of having a competing railway in the Texas Pacific? Not only Colonel Scott, and Hon. John C. Brown, and Mr. Frank T. Bond, the President and Vice President of this road, but also Senator Lamar, Mr. J. W. Throckmorton, Mr. House, Mr. Chandler, of Mississippi, and many, many other able speakers, honorable, upright men, all endeavored faithfully to aid the construction of the Texas Pacific. All failed. The falsehoods disseminated by ex-Senator Gwin, which Senator Gordon and others believed, and thus in good faith reproduced, had more effect when backed by the monopoly's money.
But Tom Scott is laid low, and so is the Texas Pacific; now the fight for greedy accumulation is transferred to California. The monopoly is confident of getting the land subsidy of the Texas Pacific—after killing it; of getting every scrap that might be clutched under pretext of having belonged to the decapitated road. Thus the lands that the City of San Diego donated to Tom Scott on condition that the Texas Pacific should be built, even these, the monopoly has by some means seized upon. No Texas Pacific was built, but nevertheless, though clearly specified stipulations be violated, San Diego's lands must go into the voracious jaws of the monster. Poor San Diego! After being ruined by the greed of the heartless monopolists, she is made to contribute her widow's mite to swell the volume of their riches! This is cruel irony indeed.